In English – דיויד סטברו

Hélène Cixous: ‘I Accept Israel’s Existence, but I Don’t Identify With It’

The pioneering French feminist thinker returns to her family’s roots in Germany and Algeria in her Berman Prize-winning book. In an interview with Haaretz, she discusses Netanyahu’s government and why she still wants Israel to survive.

Published in Haaretz: Hélène Cixous: 'I Accept Israel's Existence, but I Don't Identify With It' – Art & Culture

Three years after Hélène Cixous was born in Algeria, she recounts in an interview with Haaretz, “I was dispossessed of my Frenchness” as part of the anti-Jewish legislation of the Vichy regime in 1940. “My father was a doctor and was forbidden to practice medicine. Our rights were stripped from us by the French government. Was I French? No. I despised France, and some of my suspicion toward it still exists.

“France has still not truly managed to confront its sins. This continues to rot French politics to this day. At least Germany had the courage to confront the horror for which it was responsible. That is important. When I was a child, racism and antisemitism raged around me, and I directed myself to oppose these dark forces.”

Zero Jews

“And zero at the end of the war. Zero, that’s enormous, and according to the Nazis, too much, an innumerable number… It had been a long time since Osnabrück was without a Jew, there were zero Jews in the charming streets and around the solid, square body of the cathedral of Zerosnabrück”.

This passage from Hélène Cixous’s book Osnabrück Station to Jerusalem captures the essence of her latest work. Part memoir, part family history, the book combines the great Jewish tragedy with philosophical reflections on Jewish existence.

As is her custom, Cixous employs her creative powers in writing not only in relation to her characters but also toward language itself. Osnabrück, the German city from which her mother’s family originated, becomes “Zerosnabrück” after it is emptied of its Jews. In 1934, 435 Jews lived there, Cixous writes; after the war, the number was zero.

Both historically and magically, the city is linked to Jerusalem: both become landscapes of memory and longing, both are inhabited by the living and the dead and stand at the center of the attempt to understand what it means to be Jewish when one’s world is shaped by displacement, catastrophe and the search for a home.

Osnabrück acquires an almost mythical status throughout the book. For Cixous, it is not just “Zerosnabrück”; it is also “the Paris of Lower Saxony.” Like Jerusalem, it is both real and a surreal dream where living characters meet the dead, and where the book itself becomes a character and speaks with its author. All of this occurs across timelines and locations that jump between the Holocaust in Europe and Algeria and the Middle East, incorporating biblical references, Greek mythology, European classics and Shakespearean tragedy.

All of this greatly resonated with the Swedish Berman Prize for Literature committee, which selected Cixous and her book – published in French in 2016 and in English in 2020, and not yet translated into Hebrew – as the 2026 prize winner. The award ceremony will take place in October. It is one of the most prestigious literary prizes, including a cash award of one million Swedish kronor, approximately 320,000 shekels, and is awarded to writers whose work illuminates Jewish life while also addressing universal human questions.

The prize was founded in 2020 by Swedish philanthropists Thomas and Catharina Berman, through a private donation intended to support Jewish culture and strengthen Jewish literary tradition. Thomas Berman said that the rise in antisemitism was one of the reasons for establishing the prize.

The first recipient was David Grossman, for his body of work, and other recipients include Hungarian author Péter Nádas, Russian-Jewish author, poet and journalist Maria Stepanova, and Jewish-Guatemalan author Eduardo Halfon. This year, the prize committee praised Osnabrück Station to Jerusalem, describing it as a work that “traces the void left by the displaced, maps absence and gives voice to those who can no longer speak.”

A Wonderful, Mysterious Place

“Osnabrück is like Jerusalem: one must go there, one must present oneself before its faces, one must let it speak and advance toward its language as before the monster Behemoth about which God boasts to Job, one must touch it with one’s fingers, one’s feet; one cannot know it from a distance. It’s like the sea: even from two yards away one doesn’t know it, one must throw oneself into its arms yelling.”

Cixous was born in Oran, Algeria, in 1937 to a German-Jewish mother who was a midwife and a Sephardi-Jewish father. For more than six decades, she has addressed questions of identity, language and memory. She is best known as the author of the essay The Laugh of the Medusa (1975), one of the foundational texts in modern feminist literary theory, which established her status as an influential thinker and one of the mothers of post-structuralist feminism.

Cixous worked closely with Jacques Derrida, who referred to her as “the greatest living writer in our language.” In her early 30s, in 1968, she participated in the Paris student revolt and in the founding of Paris 8 University, an institution intended to serve as an alternative to the traditional French academic environment. In 1974, the university became home to a center for women’s studies founded by Cixous, the first of its kind in Europe. She also maintained a lifelong interest in questions concerning her Jewish history. These questions are at the heart of Osnabrück Station to Jerusalem.

Is her book intended to give voice to those who can no longer speak? “When I write, it’s not I who has intentions, it’s the book,” she replies. “The book has its urgency and it doesn’t aim at this or that consideration. It’s true that it gives a voice to the void, like everything else that has been written, because of the huge field of tragic events. But writing is always giving a voice.

“In this case, it’s all somehow in the title, it’s a singular experience, of my relation to history, to politics, to tragedy. The voice of my writing is a mixture of tragedy and comedy and my material is partly autobiographical, partly theater and the obsession that led me to the book was going to Osnabrück.”

The obsession she describes is preservation through family dialogue, fantasy and therapy. Throughout Osnabrück Station to Jerusalem, the dead refuse to disappear, and the book seems full of ghosts – mothers, grandmothers, murdered relatives and those born long after the war, vanished neighbors and destroyed communities. All reappear in dreams, conversations, fragments of language and works of art. The living and the dead merge into one another. The visit to Osnabrück thus becomes not only a journey to a specific place but an encounter with the voices of a lost world.

The city that gives the book its title occupies a remarkable place in Cixous’s imagination. “It’s a place that no one knows. Even the Germans don’t know it,” she says, “but it’s a historic city, one of the two where the Treaty of Westphalia was signed in 1648, ending the Thirty Years’ War. It’s a wonderful, mysterious, fantastic place which fascinated me as a child. I was born to a mother who came from Osnabrück and lived in Oran, an Algerian city which was then part of a French colony. I saw Osnabrück as kind of a light in the distance, just like Jerusalem is seen by so many people.”

She recalls visiting Germany repeatedly with her mother and grandmother while carefully avoiding the city itself. “We went to Berlin, to Cologne, to Bonn, but never Osnabrück. It became something I wondered about – what’s wrong with Osnabrück? Why do we never go there?” She remembers how an official invitation from the city itself arrived for her mother and aunt to come back to the city for a visit. A discussion then began between the two women, which started as a conversation about hotels but became an argument about history and forgiveness.

Eventually, her mother decided to go. “This generation is not our enemy,” Cixous recalls her mother saying. “We don’t have to forgive them. We have to go on and accept the reality of history”. Years later, when Cixous suggested to her mother that they return to Algeria together, her mother refused, explaining: “In Germany, they invited me and asked me for forgiveness. In Algeria, I was kicked out after helping thousands of Algerians come into this world as a midwife.” Only after her mother’s death at the age of 103 did Cixous herself finally travel to Osnabrück.

Since then, she says, she has become “a kind of honorary citizen” there. When she spoke there, she reminded the city’s residents that peace itself can never be taken for granted, and that her own presence is conditional. “If in twenty years you become Nazi, as it sometimes happens,” she said, “it won’t be possible.” This remark captures the central tension in her book: the best and worst possibilities remain simultaneously present.

Does the book represent a return to Jewish roots after decades primarily spent on gender and feminist theory?

“Things are not that simple. The Jewish theme has always been there in a way,” she says and adds, smiling, that “I have a history in resisting the forces of evil. I grew up in colonial Algeria in a family opposed to racism and colonialism, while simultaneously becoming victims of antisemitism. I have, of course, always been on the side of the colonized.

“This wasn’t easy in Algeria where the colonizers were French. I hated the French since I was born. My family was in a situation of being part of a small minority of those who were strictly hostile to racism and colonialism. But this was not perceived in Algeria. From their perspective, we were supposed to be French.

“Later, when I was 18, I arrived in France, and I became ‘re-Frenched,’ although I doubt if one can really become re-Frenched and the truth is that I feel like I never really arrived in France. Then the social and political landscape changed, it was totally foreign, and gradually in two or three years, I started to think that antisemitism isn’t the question any more. On the other hand, I got this horrible feeling that they hate women here".

“It wasn’t an issue of class – it was men against women. Everywhere in society. The urgent fight wasn’t for Jews; it was for women. This is a fight of thousands of years. It’s still that way and it will go on. But every now and then, there’s another cause that becomes the main one for a specific period, and you have to decide, like a general of an army, where your forces are most needed. In the last few years, for example, it happened with Ukraine. And then Israel and Gaza came back again. Sometimes, you need to divide your strength.”

Hesitation Is Food for Fascism

“I can be many things, but being Jewish is always there,” Cixous says. She explains that she can easily make peace with her identity as a woman. “It may be divided into all kinds of tendencies but it’s basic, it’s primitive.” Her Jewish identity and her relation to Zionism and Israel is a different matter.

“It goes back to my mother,” she says. “She grew up in the days of a ‘beautiful Zionism’ – the dreams of young socialist Jews. But she resisted because of her story, which was against anything nationalist. Her father was enrolled in the German army and was killed as a German Jew, and so her way of looking at history was very rational.

“I was a girl when Israel was created, and I saw in Algiers the first emissaries trying to get Jews to go to Israel. I was prudent to that. I immediately thought that I wasn’t going to feel at home with a movement that unfraternally became colonialist. It was unavoidable. So, of course, I understand the creation of Israel, of course I was moved by it. But it couldn’t escape colonialism. “I came from a country where the Arabs were colonized. So, I just watched Israel. I never thought that belonging to what they called ‘the Diaspora,’ which we’re not, is negative. It is a way of being a citizen of the universe. My mother went to Israel to visit the part of her family that moved there. I refrained from doing that. I thought that I shouldn’t go if I don’t identify with Israel. I didn’t want to just be an observer. I like to be involved.”

Couldn’t what you call colonialism also be understood as Jews returning to their homeland?

“I could understand that the emissaries thought that they are returning to their homeland. I could also understand those like the members of my family who escaped the destruction of the Holocaust to Palestine which later became Israel. But for me, this wasn’t the only way. I thought we could be free and choose, and we had many ways to react to these terrible events. I accept Israel, but don’t identify with it. And this is the case for many people”.

Cixous’s attitude to Israel is complex. She doesn’t accept Jewish nationalism, but also doesn’t deny the tragic dimension of Jewish history and the antisemitism that led to Zionism and the establishment of the Jewish state. She is also well aware of how people react to disasters, and in this case, it is a central part of the story of the exodus from Europe and the establishment of Israel.

One of the most powerful themes in your book is the inability to recognize an approaching disaster – as happened in Osnabrück with the rise of the Nazis. How can this be understood?

“The hesitation when a radical change in one’s life is involved is common. In our days this mechanism of the human psyche is obvious when we’re facing the possibility that extreme right fascism will win the presidential elections in France. France is a very political place so everywhere I see people talking to each other about our next elections saying things like ‘next year in hell.’ They discuss what they will do on election day. Some say it’s not going to happen, others say it will happen if we don’t unite. All these discussions are taking place everywhere, and you can see the human soul hesitating”. For her, this hesitation is dangerous. “It’s the food for fascism,” she says.

The contrast within her own family remains instructive. “My grandmother stayed and didn’t leave Osnabrück until after Kristallnacht. My mother, who was a young woman, left the moment she smelled the stink of fascism. She never hesitated.” Other family members perished.

In Israel’s current war, there is a place where gender, sexual violence, and Middle Eastern politics collide in a tragic way: the sexual violence committed during the Hamas attacks of October 7. Many Israelis felt deeply alienated and outraged by the way parts of the international feminist movement appeared unwilling to express sympathy for Jewish victims. What do you think about this?

“This is a monstrous event. It will remain in history and the consequences go deeper and further than can be imagined. To the horror of my kind of people, it divided even the feminists. There was something hideous about the fact that when French Jews reacted passionately to that horrible event, some parts of the French feminist movement were so anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian that they had no sympathy for the Jewish women who were affected.”

Cixous described this as a moral failure. “These are the perversions of the way people identify with one cause and exclude others. It’s horrible.” Her own position, she says, was unequivocal. “For me, of course, there were no hesitations. This was a terrible crime. Hamas is a cruel, hateful movement like many other movements in the Arab world. The whole world is a victim of Hamas. But now, so many people, countries and movements are also victims to the blindness and craziness of the Netanyahu government.

“The time has come, and it came a long time ago, to stop being colonial and accept the fact that others also have rights. History has decided that this piece of the planet Earth should be shared by Jews and Palestinians.” She worries that Israel is exhausting reservoirs of international goodwill built over generations. “They’re self-destructing and they’re destroying the capital, the inheritance of sympathy and understanding from others.”

This is criticism stemming from concern rather than detachment. “I would like Israel to survive,” she concludes, “but it’s alienating the countries that support it. It’s tragic”.

For Cixous, Israel is not only its politics; it is also the story of exile and migration. “Each migration has its own structure. It requires such courage. It requires giving up and starting again. That’s one of the reasons that I understand the creation of Israel, and literature gives these experiences their deepest human meaning. I really admire Israeli literature which deals with this and the great writers who give these events their deep humanity.” When asked for examples, Cixous says that she loves the works of Aharon Appelfeld and enormously admires David Grossman.

The Gatekeepers

Toward the end of the interview, Cixous reflects on the present moment. “Very often I think that what is happening now, I have already lived through as a young girl, in the 1930s,” she says, but adds that history never repeats itself exactly. “Obviously, technology, the fact that we may be dispossessed by ourselves with AI, is unimaginable. We – who read, who still want to think, the guardians of art – we have to strengthen that part of mankind. Whenever a European country goes the way that Hitler’s Germany went, it contaminates everything, it becomes possible, it seduces other countries. We can be thrown into a period like the one of the plague.

“People keep saying that Europe is weak, divided and ungenerous. That’s why Europe needs to have an army. In the past, it went against its humanistic principles, but this pacifism doesn’t work. It’s not enough to just be on the side of peace and diplomacy. No, when arms are used, you have to resist with arms.”

And beside an army, what’s the role of public intellectuals in such times?

“The concept of public intellectuals is a recent invention. It started with the Dreyfus affair – and it’s extinct. There are no important public intellectuals. There may be media intellectuals. It doesn’t mean that it won’t happen again. I don’t know. Something may come back, but these wonderful moments of light, like the one in 1968, are extinct.”

Cixous’s concern about recurring patterns of extremism and hatred, and the temptation to underestimate danger, runs like a thread throughout Osnabrück Station to Jerusalem, which deals with how people remember and how they forget. The Berman Prize jury praised the book for giving voice to the silenced. In fact, it does more than that. It revives lost worlds – like those of Osnabrück and Jerusalem. In doing so, Cixous poses a long series of questions about memory, reality, exile and belonging. Most remain open. At 89, she offers no definitive answers.

A work boycotted because its creater was born Jewish in Israel – Sweden should not accept this kind of discrimination

In practice, anti-Israel boycotts are often directed at virtually anything with a connection to Israel. They also affect Jews who are not Israeli and people with no connection whatsoever to Israeli policy.

Published in Swedish in Svenska Dagbladet: Sverige bör inte godta diskrimineringen

In recent years, calls to boycott Israel have become increasingly visible. Campaigns to exclude Israel from Eurovision, initiatives declaring various institutions and places “apartheid-free zones,” academic boycotts, and demands to terminate cooperation with Israeli companies have become increasingly common in public debate.

At the same time, the same argument is repeated whenever boycott advocates are accused of antisemitism: the boycott is described as an expression of solidarity with the Palestinians and a struggle against the policies of the Israeli government, rather than as action directed against Jews. As then-Foreign Minister Ann Linde (Social Democrat) put it during a parliamentary debate in 2019, in response to a question from Lars Adaktusson (Christian Democrat): “Advocating a boycott of Israel by peaceful means with the aim of ending the occupation is not antisemitism”.

One can agree with that in theory, but in practice boycotts are often applied without regard for nuance and they're directed at virtually anything connected to Israel – sometimes very indirectly. They also affects Jews who are not Israeli and people with no connection whatsoever to Israeli policy.

One of them is Israel Aloni. Born in Israel and educated at two of the country’s leading dance and art schools, Aloni moved to Sweden more than 25 years ago. Here, they (the artist’s chosen pronoun) built an international career as an artist, dancer, choreographer, educator and artistic director. After spending time with the Göteborg Opera Dance Company, Aloni, together with another Swedish-Israeli dancer, founded ilDance in 2012, which has since developed international performing-arts projects in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe.

A few years ago, Aloni created Boys Just Want to Have Fun, a multidisciplinary dance and performance work for museum exhibition spaces, described as an exploration of masculinity and an attempt to challenge taboos surrounding male sensuality and sexuality in contemporary Western culture. The work received support from Perform Europe, an EU-funded program for international performing-arts collaborations, and became the only Swedish performing-arts project included in the program’s international touring activities. During 2024 and 2025, it was performed in Serbia, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands.

This year, the Estonian Museum of Contemporary Art (EKKM) decided to present the work. Ahead of the performance, the Swedish Arts Council awarded the company SEK 64,000 in travel funding, thereby judging the work worthy of representing Sweden internationally.

Everything seemed settled. But then came the boycott.

After more than a year of dialogue between Aloni and the Estonian museum, after all the funding had been approved and the museum had committed to hosting the performance, the announcement came during a Zoom meeting: “Unfortunately, we have some bad news. It will not be possible to stage the performance here in August.” No new date was provided.

A postponement without a new date or any guarantee that the project will take place is, in practice, a cancellation. This came despite the initial enthusiasm and close contact with the curator for more than a year, during which no objections had been raised. But the message was clear. The reason was that the work’s creator had been born Jewish in Israel.

No, they never explicitly said that the issue was that Aloni is Jewish. But the museum was simultaneously planning to present an exhibition featuring Palestinian artists and believed that the “political climate in Tallinn” made it impossible to present the two projects at the same time. This was despite the fact that the work has no connection to Israel, Middle Eastern politics or the Israeli state. Nor has the choreographer ever expressed support for the Israeli government. Aloni’s only “fault” was their background.

The Palestinian exhibition, which opens in October and is curated by the same person who invited Aloni, is described on the museum’s website as an attempt to shift the perspective from “news feeds and statistics” to people’s stories and lived experiences. This, it says, would make art and culture “carriers of resilience, memory and imagination.” That the same principle might also apply to an Israeli Jew appears never to have been considered.

When I spoke with Aloni, it became clear that the concern went far beyond the artistic, financial and career consequences: “It is a dehumanizing experience.”

But there are also other dimensions to the issue that concern Sweden. At ilDance, support from the Swedish Arts Council is not taken for granted. Such funding is handled with care. Since the company regards itself as part of the Swedish cultural ecosystem, this was not merely an insult to Aloni. It was also an insult to Sweden.

This is not an isolated case. Israeli artists – and, as in this case, even Jews with only an indirect connection to Israel – are regularly cancelled, excluded or shut out across Europe, even when they have no connection to the Israeli state and are often themselves critical of the Israeli government. There are numerous examples of artists being told that they are welcome only if they publicly distance themselves from Israel and demonstrate that they are on the “right side” politically.

In this case, the Estonian museum argued that presenting a performance by Aloni would make it appear as though the museum had a political agenda. Aloni pointed out that they are a Swedish citizen who left Israel as a teenager and have lived most of their life in Sweden; that they have never made any political statements; and that ilDance is a Swedish company with no connection whatsoever to Israel. None of this made any difference. After all, Aloni had studied in Israel. When Aloni proposed a dialogue with the Palestinian artists, it became clear that the decision had already been made.

If Sweden wants to demonstrate that it does not accept this kind of discrimination, there is an obvious first step. Sweden’s cultural establishment – from the Minister for Culture and the Swedish Arts Council to independent cultural institutions – should clearly protest against an Estonian museum boycotting a Swedish dance company funded by Swedish taxpayers solely because of its founder’s origin. If there has ever been an issue on which Sweden’s self-proclaimed anti-racists ought to be able to agree, this is it.

The Swedish Left Party’s letters reveal what amateurs they are

The first objection to Swedish MPs sending romantic letters of solidarity to people convicted of murder and terrorism is, of course, a moral one. The second concerns poor judgment. But the third is about something else: amateurism, writes Israeli journalist David Stavrou.

Published in Swedish in Kvartal: V:s brev avslöjar vilka amatörer de är – Kvartal

In the space of just a few days, journalists Sofie Löwenmark, Nathalie Rothschild and Inas Hamdan published investigations showing how members of the Swedish parliament had sent letters of solidarity to Palestinian prisoners convicted of very serious terrorism offenses and had participated in an organized campaign in which several of the recipients are serving life sentences for attacks against civilians.

In 2023, SVT revealed that aid money from the Left Party’s international organization had gone to a project with links to the DFLP, an organization that participated in the October 7 massacre. The following year, prominent Left Party figure Kristofer Lundberg was expelled after expressing support for the terrorist-designated PFLP. In Malmö, Orwa Kadoura left the party following criticism over antisemitic messages. In 2025, MP Lorena Delgado Varas shared a classic antisemitic conspiracy image, and as recently as June this year, the Left Party removed a large number of candidates who had praised Hamas’s October 7 attack, spread Holocaust denial and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories.

All of this is, of course, serious. By now, it is clear that the Left Party has a problem with romanticizing terrorism and spreading antisemitism and conspiracy theories. This can no longer be dismissed as anecdotal. Every time you think rock bottom has been reached, another investigation appears with new revelations. But precisely for that reason, it is almost no longer interesting to discuss this as a question of values. Left Party members are free to believe whatever they want. The truly interesting issue is something else.

Politics is not merely an ideological arena. Politics is a profession. There are laws, practices, institutions and rules of the game. And then there is what in British politics is sometimes described as simply not done – things that may not actually be prohibited but that politicians nevertheless know not to do. It is like any other profession. Surgeons do not operate on gut feeling. Judges do not rule according to whom they instinctively like best. Even a passionate politician is expected to be able to control that passion long enough to do the job.

The Left Party’s explanation in the latest affair illustrates the problem. The party secretary has said that the names came from the Palestinian Association of Sweden and that the Left Party carried out no checks of its own. “There had been a mistake in the fact-checking,” MP Ilona Szatmári Waldau wrote. Nooshi Dadgostar has repeatedly resorted to variations of the same defense during the scandals of recent years. In June, she referred to the large number of Left Party representatives – more than 4,000 – and stressed that those exposed represented only a small proportion. She then said that “there are occasions when people turn up whom you haven’t kept track of.” She promised to tighten the party’s procedures, but that is clearly an almost impossible task, since many other Left Party members defend people who have expressed support for terrorist organizations.

If a blue-haired 17-year-old activist sends a love letter to an ideologically motivated murderer he saw on TikTok, perhaps he can get away with shrugging his shoulders or shouting along with Rage Against the Machine: “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” But members of parliament are not teenagers. They are adults, and adults are expected to evaluate their sources critically and ask questions. What does it look like when we become fixated on prisoners from a single international conflict while ignoring others? What diplomatic, trade-policy and security-policy consequences could our statements have? Which people and organizations are we legitimizing?

Is that boring? Does it involve compromise? Perhaps even moral coruption? Perhaps – if you live in a syndicalist collective, eat out of tin cans beneath posters of “freedom fighters” and say that “when the forest is felled, the chips will fly”. But the Left Party’s MPs are well-paid public officials who participate in – and enjoy all the privileges and perks that come with – professional politics.

That means it is part of the job to investigate the people and organizations you cooperate with, read court judgments, speak to embassies, diplomats, experts and lawyers, ask what is disputed and what has been established, and understand the consequences of your own symbolic politics. For example, when a professional politician becomes involved in another country’s prison system by writing a letter, they must understand how the people they are writing to are perceived by their victims, as well as understand another society’s sensitivities and collective trauma.

To a Swede, Ahmad al-Moghrabi or Ibrahim Abu Mokh may be unfamiliar names on a list of “Palestinian prisoners.” To an Israeli, those same names may signify deadly suicide attacks against civilians, murdered children or a young conscript who was kidnapped on his way home and never returned. You do not have to accept Israel’s policies in the West Bank or agree with the Israeli courts. You only need to be able to imagine the reverse situation. Imagine if foreign parliamentarians wrote to Jackie Arklöv and praised his “courage and perseverance” without checking the judgment against him. The first Swedish response wouldn't be a complex debate about Scandinavian geo-politics, it would be: Have you even bothered to find out who this person is?

This kind of disregard for the rules of politics – in which passionate conviction is allowed to cloud judgment and consequences and basic due diligence are ignored – has a name. It is called populism.

For many years, the Sweden Democrats have struggled with a similar transition – from a protest movement to a party with influence over the state. As part of that process, the party has run internal training programs under the title The Road to Power (Vägen till makten), although there is, of course, no reason to romanticize the results. SD continues to be plagued by recurring scandals. A training course cannot magically erase a political culture.

And this is where the parallel with the Left Party becomes even more uncomfortable. V has already tried the educational route. Following several antisemitism scandals, in the spring of 2025 the party invited its members to a two-hour training session on antisemitism. Every member received an invitation. Yet one year later, the party found itself with 25 candidates removed from its lists following revelations involving, among other things, precisely antisemitism. As the Swedish elections draw closer, the party is finding it increasingly difficult to convince voters that sympathy for terrorists, conspiracy theories and antisemitism among its politicians and activists is a bug. In its case, it seems much more like a feature.

Norwegian Holocaust Center Events on Nakba and Gaza War Draw Ire From Israeli Embassy

Israel's embassy in Norway condemned the events organized by the Norwegian Holocaust Center in Oslo, saying they 'legitimize antisemitism.' The center said the aim is to 'understand shadows of historical traumas without equating them'

Published in Haaretz: Norwegian Holocaust Center Events on Nakba, Gaza War Draw Ire From Israeli Embassy – Jewish World

Israel's Embassy in Norway called for an independent Holocaust studies center in Oslo to cancel two upcoming events that it claims are a "grotesque distortion of Holocaust memory."

As part of a lecture series titled "In Shadow of War – The Way Forward," the Norwegian Center for Holocaust Studies and Religious Minorities is hosting two events with the University of Oslo this spring. The first event, which took place on Thursday, was a lecture by Prof. Nadim Khoury titled "Nakba and Holocaust as cultural traumas."

According to the University of Oslo's website ahead of the event, Khoury – a Palestinian professor of international studies at the Innland Norway University of Applied Sciences – "will trace their trajectories since 1948 and explore how they are intertwined and how the tensions between them are shaping the path forward in Israeli and Palestinian lives."

A second event, scheduled for June 3, will feature Israeli historian and Brown University professor Omer Bartov, whose contributions to Holocaust scholarship were recognized by Yad Vashem in 2019.

In an April 28 X post, Israel's embassy in Norway called on the HL Center to cancel the events "immediately."

"The Norwegian Holocaust Center's decision to host events drawing parallels between the Holocaust, the 'Nakba' and the war in Gaza is a grotesque distortion of Holocaust memory," the post read. The embassy added that the center has chosen political activism over historical responsibility and it called upon it to cancel the events and stop "legitimizing antisemitism in its modern forms."

Addressing the criticism in a social media post, the HL Center explained that it invited academics from different environments and backgrounds as speakers in order to "address and reflect on challenging topics without ending up in polarized debates where constructive nuance tends to disappear."

HL Center director Jan Heiret told Haaretz that the event with Khoury was supposed to follow another event hosting Martin Auerbach, former director of the National Israeli Center for Psychosocial Support of Survivors of the Holocaust and the Second Generation (AMCHA). Auerbach couldn't come due to uncertainty around the ongoing conflict with Iran, but Heiret said the center will make another attempt to host him in the autumn.

Heiret added that both events are meant "to find a way out of a destructive spiral of hatred, dehumanization and violence."

"We must understand the long-lasting shadows of historical traumas without equating, or even putting up, the Holocaust with the Nakba – which would be a historical distortion given the events are so different in nature, course and scope," Heiret said. "We acknowledge that the consequences for the individuals and collectives traumatized by them are interconnected, and that the denial of the trauma of the other lies at the core of the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Leif Knutsen, an activist and the chair of the Jewish Community of Norway, says the academics invited to speak at the HL Center "represent a fringe element," and that it's a recurring issue.

"The center doesn't question them; it doesn't bring anyone to balance the discussion and it doesn't present their perspectives in anything like a critical light," Knutsen said. "It's always in the same direction – one that's beyond critical to Israel. Someone should be sitting on stage and presenting an alternative point of view or at least a nuanced one."

Knutsen said Norway's Jewish population of about 2,000 is particularly vulnerable due to a sharp rise in antisemitic attitudes. In its most recent report published in early 2024, the Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies documented an increase in antisemitic attitudes among Norwegians, with 11.5 percent of survey respondents having "pronounced prejudices" against Jews.

Images from Norway, 2024

"The center should be combating antisemitism rather than promoting a one-sided program," he said. "Even worse is the effect that such extreme voices have on Norwegian Jews who are being lectured about their own understanding of reality on the basis of a supposedly academic framework that completely ignores the real conditions in Norway."

According to its website, the Norwegian Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities is a research, education and documentation center intended to focus on the Holocaust and other genocides, as well as antisemitism and minority rights in Norway. The center's exhibitions receive roughly 50,000 visitors each year. It was established in 2001 using capital from a national restitution settlement over World War II between Norway and the country's Jewish community.

The center has previously faced criticism for its programming. In a letter sent in September 2024, more than 100 Norwegian Holocaust survivors and their descendants accused the center of failing to use "its mandate to combat the hostility we experience," and that instead of fighting antisemitism it was positioning itself as a "critic of Israel's policies and military tactics." The letter also said the center manifests "bias in its choice of experts and supporting a narrative that's negative toward Israel as a Jewish state."

In another letter from January 2025, the Norwegian branch of B'nai Brith criticized Heiret for mentioning Palestinians twice while delivering a speech on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, amid Israel's war in Gaza.

"By focusing on Gaza and Palestinian civilians who have lost their lives during the commemoration of the Holocaust and the genocide of the Jews in Europe, at a time when one-sided and anti-Israel portrayals make debates related to Israel very un-nuanced, the director has in a blatant way contributed to the tendency to relativize the Holocaust and the genocide of the Jews," the letter said.

"As the center's own research shows, demonization of Israel leads to increasing antisemitism in Norway. Trivialization of the Holocaust is, as is well-known, defined as antisemitism."

She Grew Up in an Exiled Iranian Opposition Group, That Turned Into a Brutal Cult

Atefeh Sebdani was born in Iran to parents active in the MEK but was torn from them and sent for molding to a family in Sweden. In an interview, she describes life in the exiled cult and its rejection of Persian culture.

Published in Haaretz: She Grew Up in an Exiled Iranian Opposition Group, That Turned Into a Brutal Cult – Middle East News

At a protest in Stockholm in April, alongside the Lion and Sun flags representing pre-revolution Iran, Israeli and American flags were also waved. As in similar events around the world, the demonstrators praised the Israeli-American attack on Iran and expressed support for Reza Pahlavi, son of the shah who was deposed in 1979, as Iran's future leader.

The rule of the ayatollahs unites many Iranian exiles against the regime, and threatens political activists operating against it in Europe. However, one of the women who helps the organizers of the Stockholm demonstrations, Atefeh Sebdani, has suffered for most of her life from another Iranian group – an organization that was once part of the Islamic Revolution but later became its enemy.

Mujahedin-e Khalq was founded in 1965 by a group of Iranian students who opposed the shah's rule. The organization combined elements of Shiite Islam with Marxist and anti-imperialist ideas and operated underground during the 1970s. During this period, it attacked regime targets and gained support as an opposition organization.

When the Islamic Revolution emerged in the late 1970s, MEK even joined Khomeini on his path to power. Yet after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, conflict arose between it and the new regime and by the early 1980s, the MEK was attacking government targets. That was countered with brutal repression that included the execution of thousands. The MEK leadership fled into exile in Iraq, where it formed a controversial alliance with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War.

Atefeh Sebdani in Stockholm, 2026. Photo: David Stavrou

Atefeh Sebdani's story begins in the clash between the ayatollahs' regime and the MEK. "My parents were imprisoned after the revolution because of their rivalry with the new regime. They were considered enemies of the state and like other MEK members, after they were released, they were forced to leave," she says.

She was two years old at the time. Sebdani recounts that she, her younger brother, her father and her pregnant mother fled to Pakistan and lived there destitute on the streets. Her father continued from Pakistan onto Iraq, where he joined other MEK members in a camp called Ashraf, which later became the movement's center.

"After some time, we also moved to the camp. By that stage it had become a kind of small town with kindergartens, parks, and schools – mainly for propaganda purposes. They wanted to show how good things were there so others would join," she says. "For me, it was like paradise. I had everything; it was idyllic. I was with my mother and I was happy."

Then, without warning, everything ended at once. She hadn't even turned five yet but her mother told her she would have to take care of her two brothers by herself. She didn't explain why or how, but when the day came, Sebdani found herself standing by a bus with a group of crying women. When the bus departed, five-year-old Sebdani became a mother in practice.

"On the way, I had to take care of one brother who was still a baby and wanted to breastfeed, and another who was very ill," she recalls. She adds that the expulsion of the children from Camp Ashraf was a process. She doesn't know exactly how long it took, but she remembers children disappearing from kindergarten without knowing why or where they were going.

Eventually, all the roughly 900 children in the camp were separated from their parents and transported to other countries.

"The place was emptied of children's voices," she says. "And children's voices are the most human thing there is – the core of life – and that was taken away."

Why were the children expelled?

"The children were an element that disturbed the organization's leader, Massoud Rajavi. The ideological struggle to liberate Iran turned into the struggle of a narcissistic leader who wanted all the power in his hands. He wanted the men and women in the movement to be under his absolute control, and the children stood in his way. The movement began as an ideological movement, but it became a cult."

What Sebdani describes aligns with what is known from other sources about the MEK. During the 1980s and 1990s, the organization became highly centralized, developing political and military branches that operated from bases in Iraq. At the same time, the National Council of Resistance of Iran was established as a political umbrella organization.

'The family I came to was politically obligated to take children. It's not that they loved children or wanted us. We underwent heavy indoctrination and were forced to constantly work for the organization.'

During this period, allegations indeed emerged about cult-like characteristics such as strict internal discipline, ideological control, and exclusion of dissenters.

However, the organization's leader, Rajavi, has not been seen in public since the early 2000s, and his fate remains unclear, as the organization has not disclosed information about his whereabouts nor announced his death. Meanwhile, his wife, Maryam Rajavi, serves as the public face of the organization – contributing to an atmosphere of secrecy and uncertainty regarding its structure and decision-making.

After several months and a long journey that included stops in Jordan and Germany, Sebdani and her two younger brothers arrived in Gothenburg in western Sweden.

"For all that time, I was sure we would soon be reunited with my mother," she recalls. "We sat on planes and trains, I saw things I didn't know, I saw climates and people change, there were new languages and places – but alongside the excitement, I constantly feared we were moving further away from my mother and worried she wouldn't be able to find us."

In Gothenburg, they were told they would soon meet their mother. "I was very excited. But what actually happened was different – we stood on a train platform, and instead of my mother, two other people I didn't know arrived, a woman and a man, and we were told: these are your mother and father. That's when the nightmare began."

The people who took Sebdani and her brothers were MEK members living in Sweden and working for the movement. They also had a child of their own, and took in two other children out of roughly 200 MEK children who arrived in Sweden. Sebdani says she later traced the fate of hundreds of other children who were "exported" from Camp Ashraf and that she obtained a document listing their destinations – including Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Canada, and the United States.

"The family I came to was politically obligated to take children," she says. "It's not that they loved children or wanted us. We underwent heavy indoctrination and were forced to constantly work for the organization." She does not reveal the identities of her foster parents, but her childhood memories expose the nature of the organization as it became a cult.

According to her, MEK families abroad were completely mobilized. They engaged in recruiting members and funds, organizing demonstrations, fighting opponents, and harassing defectors. She describes this society as oikophobic (one that is hostile, dislikes and rejects its own "home" culture, country and traditions). "They hated anything Iranian that wasn't related to the MEK. We weren't allowed, for example, to listen to Persian music unless it was the music of MEK members. I didn't read books in Persian. There was no Persian culture—everything was subordinated to the organization."

As far as you know, is this still the case?

"Yes. They still have offices in different countries and a strong presence on social media. The headquarters is in Auvers-sur-Oise, a suburb northwest of Paris, where political leadership members and full-time 'soldiers' are based. At the same time, there are activists like my foster family, and MEK members in Camp Ashraf 3 in Albania. That camp is essentially a 'troll factory' that produces large numbers of accounts and spreads propaganda in Persian and English. They write articles about themselves, smear their opponents, and create the impression of support – even though they have no real support."

Camp Ashraf 3 is the fortified camp to which most MEK members – estimated at 2,500 to 3,000 – were transferred from Iraq between 2013 and 2016. The move was carried out with the support of the United States, the United Nations, and the Albanian government. It took place because after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the MEK was no longer protected in Iraq, and international actors worked to evacuate them. Although the organization had been designated a terrorist organization in the U.S. for many years, it was removed from the list in 2012 as a result of pressure applied by the movement, and some American and other actors even saw it as a partner in opposing the Iranian regime. According to reports, the MEK no longer engages in military activity, but the camp in Albania has become a center of political and media activity with a highly centralized and controlled structure.

"It's a place where entry and exit are not free, and in the past there were physical punishments and torture of those who wanted to leave," says Sebdani. "I know stories of people who disappeared and of mandatory daily confessions about 'dirty thoughts' – for example, sexual thoughts and masturbation. You weren't even allowed to think about your children or speak with members of the opposite sex without permission. Today, with defectors speaking out and social media, the movement can no longer allow itself to use such methods."

Sebdani is not alone in her claims about the MEK. The French newspaper Le Monde conducted interviews in 2024 with former members of the organization living in Europe, including two named Amir Vafa and Amin Golmaryami. Vafa described how he and others were forced to participate in public confession sessions in which, once a week, everyone had to describe their sexual fantasies. He added that friendships were closely monitored: "It was forbidden to have lunch with the same friend twice in a row."

Golmaryami added that during clashes with Iraqi security forces in 2011, MEK leaders sent him and his comrades to go "in front of Iraqi bullets to increase the number of casualties." He claims they did this in order to "put pressure on Europe and the United States to remove the organization from the list of terrorist organizations and facilitate the relocation of its members to another country."

Another MEK member, Reza Torabi, said that at the age of 17 he was a zealous member and was assigned the role of "welcoming" young newcomers. "Our objective was to brainwash them, make them forget their previous lives, and instill in them the ideology of the Mujahedeen," he said. "My dedication was unwavering." In hindsight, he believes that he too fell victim to manipulation and regrets "the harm [he] caused in the course of his duties."

A 2005 report by Human Rights Watch, based on in-depth interviews with former members, also described a reality of beatings, verbal and psychological abuse, coerced confessions, threats of execution, and torture.

How do you believe control of MEK member is maintained today?

"If you look at people like the father, you see someone who joined in his twenties and spent his entire life inside this system. He never paid a bill or looked for a job – everything was handled by the organization. He doesn't know how to buy a plane ticket or even drive to the end of a street. The MEK infantilized these people, and there is no one to take care of them if they leave."

Does that mean there are no new members?

"That's right. There are no new members. It's a movement of older people – but they pay young people to attend demonstrations. If you go to MEK protests, you'll find Poles and Ukrainians who don't speak Persian and don't know what they're protesting about, alongside Swedes with no connection to the organization who were paid to join."

Who pays for all this?

"From what I saw and was part of, many people pay the MEK monthly so they won't harass them – Iranians in exile subjected to pressure, propaganda, flattery, and social coercion. There are also welfare funds, for example for foster families, as well as political donations and funding from human rights organizations influenced by the group's propaganda."

Beyond the political activity, the period that Sebdani stayed with her foster family, had another aspect. She talks about indoctrination and the constant threat that was used to make her stay.

"From the age of five, I experienced sexual abuse, physical abuse and psychological abuse in the foster family," she says, "but I couldn't say anything because they threatened to separate me from my brothers. I was not allowed to be a child. The first thing that happened to me in the foster family was that my father began to show interest in my naked body. He wanted me to do things. I felt it was wrong and frightening, but I knew nothing about sex or sexuality and I didn't understand.

"Over time, it only got worse, and my foster brother abused me too, encouraged by my foster mother. I had no childhood; it was just survival. I was the one who cleaned and tidied, I had to be a good student, and also the one who went out to demonstrations and went to Mujahideen conferences around the world". Talking to Sebdani she describes a reality full of exploitation, punishment, crying at night, and deception of Swedish welfare services.

As an adult, she eventually left, moved to Stockholm, became an engineer, and worked for Microsoft. After a personal crisis, she began telling her story and wrote a book (Min hand i min, "My Hand in Mine", published by Albert Bonniers förlag, 2024). Today she is married and has three children.

Politically, Sebdani is active among supporters of Reza Pahlavi. "I saw the difference between the two leaders," she says. "I met Maryam Rajavi as a child, and recently I met Pahlavi in Paris with a group of other former MEK children. I support the Iranian people, and the people support Pahlavi. He is exactly what Iran needs – a secular, humane person, with a family, who knows what living a normal life is, who listens and can unite people."

After Sebdani's meeting with Reza Pahlavi and other "MEK children" she became the target of an online campaign against her. Sebdani says that this isn't the first time and she has been targeted by a smear campaign led by the MEK on several previous occasions before.

"This kind of harassment happens to everyone who has left the organization and spoken out," she says. This time, the MEK website denied Sebdani's account through a letter it claimed was written by her biological father. "For me, as a father, seeing 'Atefeh Sebdani' at a gathering of the Shah's son was painful… Atefeh is the same person who, by spreading defamation against the organization under the false pretext of being part of a group of 'child soldiers,' has for many years become a full servant of Iranian intelligence."

The text claims that Sebdani was never part of the MEK and accuses her and her associates of collaborating with the regime in Tehran. Sebdani does not know whether her father actually wrote the text, but she says that everything in it is false and that she is familiar with other examples of letters that MEK members were forced to write under coercion.

Following the letter, a senior figure in the organization, Freydoun Salimi, also spoke out, accusing Sebdani of never having been a member of the group and of acting as an agent of the regime. In responses to his claims on X, supporters of the organization repeat the accusations and insult Sebdani. On other social media platforms, she is also accused of assisting Israel, betraying Iran, and supporting Americans attacking her country.

Sebdani's personal MEK story has a positive ending – she escaped, her siblings left, and even her mother eventually left the organization. The organization itself, however, is still very much alive. It even claims to still have networks inside Iran, though most analysts believe its influence there is limited. "The MEK is more of a European problem than an Iranian one," Sebdani concludes. "In Iran, they have no real support, not even with regime critics. But after the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' protests, it's clear that a unifying leader is needed, otherwise, there will be no change – and I have no doubt that Pahlavi is the right person."

Did a Secret Resistance Network Assassinate Sweden's Prime Minister?

For 40 years, the assassination of Sweden's prime minister, Olof Palme, has remained unsolved. Now, some are revisiting a dark possibility: not a lone gunman, but a covert network embedded deep within Swedish society – part of a secret Europe-wide effort to resist a Soviet invasion

Published in Haaretz: 40-year Mystery: Did a Secret Resistance Network Assassinate Sweden's Prime Minister? – Europe

The most shocking event in the history of modern Sweden occurred almost exactly 40 years ago. On the evening of Friday, February 28, 1986, Prime Minister Olof Palme and his wife, Lisbet, went to see a movie in central Stockholm. It was a cold winter evening in the capital. As he often did, Palme dismissed his bodyguards and the couple travelled three subway stations to the theater without a security escort. When they emerged onto the street, they met up with their 25-year-old son, Mårten, and his partner. The four bought tickets and went in.

Shortly after 11:20 P.M., while the prime minister and his wife were walking back home along a main street in the city, a man approached them from behind and fired a gun at close range. Palme was hit and collapsed on the frozen pavement. A second shot was fired immediately afterward, lightly wounding Lisbet. Bystanders attempted to help but it was in vain. Palme died on the spot. An ambulance was called and evacuated his body and his wife to a hospital, arriving less than 20 minutes after the shots were fired.

The hours that followed were dramatic. News of the murder spread in the Swedish media and overseas. The country went on high alert, and Deputy Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson convened the cabinet. At 5 A.M. Saturday morning a press conference was held. Flags were subsequently lowered to half-mast, flowers and candles were placed at the murder site, and an atmosphere of national mourning and crisis permeated the country. At the same time, it emerged that almost every possible mistake was made in the investigation of the murder: The shooter immediately fled; police arriving at the scene failed to apprehend him. They also did not set up roadblocks or cordon off the area. Coordination between law enforcement forces at the site was poor; no situation room was established, and testimonies from eyewitnesses were neither systematically collected nor fully documented. These errors were never corrected in the intervening four decades.

Olof Pale's Murder Site on Sveavägen in Cenral Stockholm

In the years following the murder, what is referred to by Swedish authorities as "the largest and longest-running murder investigation in the world" was launched, but despite significant resources, it was marred by disputes and conflicts and did not lead to any definitive outcome. Many investigative directions were pursued but no one was charged. In the first year, the Kurdish PKK organization was a central focus. Later, theories involving possible actors from various countries, such as South Africa – which allegedly had both a motive and the capability for executing a political assassination abroad – were explored but did not result in indictments. Such was also the case following investigations of theories involving terrorist organizations from the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

In 1988, a local criminal named Christer Pettersson was convicted of the murder, mainly based on a controversial identification by Lisbet Palme; a year later he was acquitted on appeal due to lack of evidence. In June 2020, the Swedish prosecution announced that the investigation was closed, declaring that a man named Stig Engström was the probable suspect. Engström had allegedly been present at the scene on the night of the shooting and had been interviewed as a witness in later years, but he died in 2000 and therefore could not be prosecuted. His motive was unclear, and the evidence against him was circumstantial and unconvincing. Nevertheless, this was enough for the prosecution to close the case.

But this was not the end of the story: In December 2025, the prosecution reversed its position. In a surprising development, it announced that a renewed examination of the investigative material had concluded that there was insufficient evidence against Engström, and thus he was no longer officially considered to be the suspect. At the same time, no other names were suggested, nor was the investigation formally reopened. Thus, 40 years later, the Swedish public still does not know who killed its prime minister or why. Meanwhile, on the margins of these developments, a discussion has surfaced about another historical phenomenon, which – like the identity of the man who pulled the trigger – was heretofore unknown to the Swedish public and kept in the shadows for decades.

"Today, we know no more about the murder than we did the day after it happened," says Gunnar Wall, a journalist and author who has dedicated years to researching and writing books about the Palme assassination. "We do not know if it was a lone assassin or an organized group, we do not know the motive, how the killer escaped, whether he was Swedish or foreign, or whether he is still alive today and, if so, is he in Sweden or abroad. Given this situation, there are countless speculations and theories."

Wall, recipient of the 1998 and 2024 Guldspaden (Golden Spade) award, Sweden's most prestigious prize for investigative journalism, for books he wrote about the incident, notes that while there are those who claim to know who the murderer was, despite years of research, he himself does not.

However, Wall points to an interesting issue. The decision not to reopen the investigation late last year is strange, in his view, because about 15 years ago Sweden changed its legislation regarding statutes of limitations. Serious inquests into crimes such as murder, under the new law, are no longer closed after 25 years as was previously the case, and can remain open indefinitely. The prosecutor who last December chose not to resume the whole process justified that by saying there were no conditions for doing so – even though he admitted that he had examined only the Engström lead and not other possibilities.

When the previous prosecutor closed the case in 2020, it was possible to say that happened because he had reached a dead end – but the same cannot be said about his successor's decision, since he said he had not even attempted to evaluate materials that did not concern Engström. And yet, he seemed determined to leave the case closed nonetheless.

Olof Palme, Photo:Bert Verhoeff / Anefo / Nationaal Archief (CC BY-SA3.0 NL)

"The investigators of the Palme murder examined, almost until the very last moment, indications of [involvement by] a larger group that went beyond Engström alone," says Wall, who bases his claims on interviews he conducted with the investigators themselves and with additional witnesses, as well as on reviews of countless documents, reports and other materials. "Their main hypothesis was that forces within a secret Swedish network were behind the murder, and they tried to link Engström to these actors. When they failed, they abandoned the hypothesis and Engström remained the sole suspect. Five years later, because the evidence against him was weak, it all ended with no conviction and no suspect."

Suggestions about some secret entity having been behind the Palme assassination may sound like far-fetched conspiracy theories – but they are not. For decades, underground organizations called stay-behind networks existed in Sweden and many other European countries. While a direct link between the Swedish stay-behind network and Palme's assassination has not been proven, the existence of the group is an established fact. These clandestine bodies were created after World War II as a way for countries to prepare for a possible invasion and hostile occupation. Their work included drafting blueprints for underground resistance groups, maintaining contact with a government-in-exile and actively opposing an occupier.

In the early days of the Cold War, following World War II, the threat of Soviet aggression was tangible. Across Europe, secret networks were created in various countries, in order to forge connections between the military, police, intelligence services and civil society. Initially, these organizations were intended to prepare for a Soviet invasion, but over time some engaged in other activities, sometimes even conducting covert operations within their own borders, including false flag operations – designed to appear as if carried out by others to justify certain political or military reactions.

The most famous example is the Italian network and operation code named Gladio, whose existence was revealed to parliament in 1990 by Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. Some claimed that this stay-behind network participated in domestic acts of political terrorism in the 1970s and '80s. Parliamentary inquiries looked into its operations and ties with foreign actors and intelligence bodies such as the CIA and NATO, and exposed its involvement in guerrilla training, communications networks, weapons storage and sabotage. There were also suspicions that Italy's network operatives engaged in domestic political activity, including terrorism designed to strengthen the Italian right and diminish the left. Similar underground groups have been documented in Belgium and Switzerland, and evidence of same exists in France and Germany, although without confirmation of domestic violence. There are also hypotheses about the involvement of such networks in coups and politically motivated violence in Greece and Turkey.

The investigators' hypothesis was that forces within a secret Swedish network were behind the murder, and they tried to link Engström to these actors. When they failed, they abandoned the hypothesis.

The whole phenomenon remains highly controversial and difficult to research due to the secrecy and compartmentalization surrounding it, yet there is general agreement that stay-behind networks have existed across Europe, operating without parliamentary oversight and known to only a small circle of decision-makers.

After years of rumors and official denials of such bodies existing underground in Sweden, in 2013, one of the country's major newspapers, Dagens Nyheter, published an article by Inga-Britt Ahlenius, a civil servant who worked at the Ministry of Finance, the National Audit Office and the United Nations. Based on evidence and research that had emerged since the 1990s, Ahlenius wrote: "While the initial disclosure of Sweden's institutional but unofficial Cold War connections with Western powers was met with denials and outrage, it was eventually accepted as the new truth. Thus, the revelation of stay-behind networks is often treated more like a romantic spy adventure than a historical fact." She noted that the secret resistance movement established in Sweden, and closely linked with Western powers, was likely initiated by Prime Minister Tage Erlander (Palme's predecessor) along with several ministers.

"[It was] initially led by Alvar Lindencrona, CEO of Thule insurance, three department heads and regional/local 'cells' operated under him," she wrote and added, "meetings occurred in secret rooms in Lindencrona's house or Thule's offices, and funding came from secret sources. Between 1951 and 1953, the CIA under William Colby, stationed in Stockholm and later CIA director, helped establish the network in Sweden, although the Swedes retained top-level control."

Journalist Wall adds some background information: Experience from World War II, he says, showed that countries that were occupied had been unprepared for such an eventuality – there were no resistance movements and they in essence had to be improvised. Thereafter, it was in the interest of those countries and others to prepare properly for the threat of military occupation; in Sweden, various actors dealt with this scenario at an early stage. Immediately after the war, a secret, state-level initiative was launched by the prime minister; the CIA entered the picture in the 1950s. Before that certain extremist elements had worked toward similar aims – among them war veterans who supported the Nazis during the war and volunteered to fight alongside them in the Continuation War in Finland. In the end, these three trajectories evolved into the Sweden's stay-behind network, although it is unclear exactly what remained of them in its final iteration.

"Unlike in other places, despite the cooperation with American and other actors, the Swedish network was established and organized by Swedes," says historian Mats Deland, a senior lecturer at Mid Sweden University (Mittuniversitetet) in Sundsvall. "Sweden did not participate in World War II, but it could learn from the Nazi invasion of Norway in 1940. The Norwegians sank the Blücher, one of the German ships on its way to capture the Norwegian capital in the Oslo fjord, which delayed the Germans and caused them heavy losses, while at the same time giving the Norwegians time to evacuate the royal family and their government northward.

"This experience was important for both the Norwegians and the Swedes who learned from it and came up with the idea to establish an organization that could evacuate the Swedish royal family and the government, but also 'stay behind' and protect the country. This goal of staying behind was the result of another experience from World War II: the NKVD, the Soviet security service under Stalin, who remained behind and became partisans in the German-occupied areas."

So, in the Swedish case, the stay-behind network was not controlled by the Americans or by NATO?

Deland: "Correct, in Sweden this was a local initiative. The Americans arrived a little after the network was established, and even then, they did not take control; they only integrated needs arising from NATO doctrine, which was based on the fact that only the United States had nuclear weapons. In the case of a Soviet invasion and the need for American aircraft to fly over Sweden, the idea was, like the French resistance – and to some extent the Belgian and Dutch resistance – to create escape lines that could smuggle out downed crews. But the United States did not establish the network and did not manage it. This may have changed in 1965, when Swedish security services were reorganized [when the Cold War-era external intelligence agency, T-kontoret, and internal intelligence agency, B-kontoret, merged into a single, secret organization], partly with the involvement of Olof Palme. It is possible that American involvement increased then."

How much was the Swedish stay behind network controlled by the state, and how much of its activity was conducted by civilian or military actors without the knowledge or control of the political leadership?

"Between 1947 and 1951, there were many volunteers in the network, including people who had served alongside the Germans during World War II, some of whom were highly problematic. Because of these types, the secret police discovered the network even though they were not supposed to know about it. Only the people directly involved – Prime Minister Erlander and a small part of the security apparatus – were meant to be 'in the loop.' Following this discovery, which angered Erlander and the security apparatus greatly, the network was reorganized, removing the problematic elements and incorporating trade union members and the business sector."

,Olof Palme, Tage Erlander, Sten Andersson and Ingvar Carlsson (1968) Photo: Lennart Nygren / SvD / Scanpix

According to Deland – and in keeping with Ahlenius' observations, as mentioned – the network was indeed led by executives such as Alvar Lindencrona, the head of the Thule company, a businessman with relatively progressive social views for his time, and it recruited forces from the trade unions that had a traditional affinity to the ruling Social Democratic Party. "These were ordinary people," he says, "not former soldiers. Although they needed training, they could be trusted, and the network remained secret until the 1990s." In other words, even though neither the Swedish parliament nor the rest of the government knew about the network, it was indeed an official entity. Indeed Deland notes that a recent book revealed an interesting document: an official government decision from the 1950s forming Sweden's stay-behind network, showing that it was legal and above board. The diaries of Prime Minister Erlander show that he may have given it a green light as early as 1947.

The book Deland refers to is Johan Wennström's "Sweden's Cause Was Our Cause: The Secret Swedish Resistance Movement" (2023). Wennström calls his country's stay-behind underground a "resistance movement," and reveals that the organization's code name, used by its members at the time, was Metro. Wennström says Metro was not established or controlled by NATO and it did not act on the latter's behalf, although he confirms there was cooperation with MI6 in Britain and, to some extent, with the CIA, mainly concerning programs such as evacuating Swedish decision-makers to England if necessary.

Furthermore, Wennström writes, Metro likely included several hundred people, as well as a sort of "invisible combat unit" that could expand to as many as 3,000. The underlying principle was that the network's members would recruit additional people from their immediate circle if necessary. The author also describes the group's structure was fairly cooperative, with representation from various sectors of Swedish society; information about its activities, he says, was distributed on a strict "need-to-know" basis. The organization was formally legalized in 1955, having been mandated by an earlier government decision. Typically, it was involved in organizing potential resistance and civil defense activities, such as mapping escape routes, planning acts of sabotage of critical infrastructure that could fall into Soviet hands, rescuing government officials and storing weapons. Wennström does not know when the organization ceased to exist, or if it exists today.

The phenomenon remains highly controversial and difficult to research, yet there's general agreement that stay-behind networks existed in Europe, operating without parliamentary oversight and known to few decision-makers.

Regarding other countries that had stay-behind networks, it is clear, both from Wennström's book and other sources, that heterogeneity was the keyword. Each country built its organization differently depending on perceived threat and the nature of the country's political, military and industrial power structures. Even in NATO member states, the networks were not necessarily under that organization's control. Parliamentary or public oversight was generally minimal, and there is still controversy over what their involvement was in domestic activity beyond preparing for a possible Soviet invasion during the Cold War era.

One of those who has focused on the phenomenon at the European level is Swiss author and researcher Daniele Ganser, whose controversial 2005 book – "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe" – is one of the best-known on the subject. It received praise but also criticism by some who claim that it is based on an unsubstantiated conspiracy. In it Ganser claims that Western intelligence networks operated secretly in Allied countries during the postwar era, sometimes beyond the bounds of proper legal and political oversight. He cites Italy, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Turkey, emphasizing that in some of these countries the stay-behind networks were indeed involved in terrorism, false-flag operations and political manipulation.

Mats Deland collaborated with Ganser on the Swedish edition of the book, which includes a chapter on the possible connection to the Palme assassination.

Did Prime Minister Olof Palme know about the network?

Deland: "We know he was aware of it during the tenure of his predecessor, Erlander, because he worked on it as one of Erlander's people in the 1950s. What he knew later, we do not know for certain. But it is reasonable to assume that all prime ministers knew about the network, although there are no official documents on the matter."

What can be said, to the best of your knowledge, about the Swedish stay-behind network in the 1980s, during Palme's second government?

"We don't know. We have some information about the network in the 1950s, but very little about the 1980s."

When did suspicions arise about a connection between the network and Palme's assassination?

"These were suspicions that arose from the very beginning. There was an investigative attempt as part of the official inquiry, and there were also discussions about people from the Stockholm police who could have been involved in the murder, but these are speculations and I do not deal with them."

Sometimes it's difficult to know whether a fact uncovered in an investigation is the key to solving a (murder) mystery or just a coincidence. The last person suspected of killing Prime Minister Palme, Stig Engström, who died 26 years ago, was nicknamed the "Scandia Man" because his workplace was in a building called the Scandia building. The building had previously housed the headquarters of the above-mentioned Thule insurance company Thule merged with Scandia in the 1960s and was run by Alvar Lindercrona who, as said, apparently headed country's the stay-behind network; indeed some of its meetings took place in that same building. In other words, if Engström murdered Palme, he did so while leaving a place where in the past – and possibly as late as the 1980s – meetings of senior members of the country's stay-behind network were held. Is this a coincidence? And even though there is no evidence that Engström was actually connected to the underground organization, is there any logic to the claim that it was involved in Palme's murder?

Wall, the journalist, is not unequivocal on this matter, but he does suggest some key historical points that should be taken into account. "One of the things that happened during Palme's second term as prime minister in the 1980s was a series of alleged Soviet submarine incursions into Swedish territorial waters," he explains. "These incidents caused a severe security crisis, and some argued that they were preparations for an invasion and the establishment of espionage infrastructure. Within the Swedish security establishment, there were claims that Palme did not take the threat seriously and that, because of this, he posed a security risk to Sweden.

"Furthermore, Palme was supposed to travel to Moscow to meet Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in April 1986. Palme, who returned to serve as prime minister in 1982, was active on the international stage on issues of arms reduction and nuclear disarmament. His opponents argued that he had close and controversial ties to the Soviet Union, although a more balanced description would be that he was open to discussions with Soviet leaders about disarmament – something that went against both NATO's view and the opinions of senior Swedish military officials. The assassination on February 28, 1986, meant that it was Palme's successor, Ingvar Carlsson, who met Gorbachev."

As far as is known, the issue of disarmament was not on the agenda at that Swedish-Soviet summit.

Wall adds that there were a number of people who claimed to have received offers to kill Olof Palme; in several cases, it was suggested that Swedish intelligence services were behind those offers. But no one known to have actually belonged to any of these secret services has ever come forward to confirm that they were approached. Wall also provided Haaretz with documents he's collected showing that evidence indicating that people with radio devices were present in the area on the night of the assassination was not taken seriously by the investigators. He does not claim that there is proof that the murder was organized by political actors, but argues that it is certainly a line of inquiry worthy of serious examination.

And he is not alone: Ahead of the 40th anniversary of the assassination, a public appeal was launched to encourage the Swedish government and parliament to establish a "truth commission" to finally resolve any outstanding questions.

"On February 28, 1986, Olof Palme fell victim to a brutal attack on an open street in central Stockholm," the appeal begins. "The assassination of the prime minister of Sweden was a unique attack on our democracy. In a country governed by the rule of law like Sweden, everything possible should have been done to solve this murder. The fact that it remains unsolved 40 years later is unacceptable, especially when not all possibilities for an indisputable and absolute solution have been investigated."

The text cites problems that may have prevented discovery of the truth – still-classified archives, false answers given to the investigators by secret service personnel and investigative files that have disappeared. Possible involvement of the Swedish stay-behind network is also mentioned, and the conclusion is: "This is the only assassination of a political leader in modern Europe that may remain unsolved. Clarifying all the circumstances surrounding Olof Palme's murder will strengthen Sweden."

Still, at this rate, it is doubtful whether the mystery will ever be solved. Even if it is, the relatively recent revelations regarding stay-behind networks in Europe are just another example of how, even if and when the public discovers the truth, it sometimes comes decades too late, in the form of very old news.

The Left Party Sees All Racism — Except Its Own

In light of Ina Hamdan's widely discussed revelations about members of Sweden's Left Party (Vänsterpartiet) who have expressed support for violent organizations or spread antisemitic propaganda, there is reason to revisit an interesting publication that the Malmö branch of the Party released in 2023 under the title Anti-Racist Handbook.

Published in Kvartal: V ser all rasism – utom sin egen – Kvartal

Vänsterpartiet's Anti-Racist Handbook is a strange document to read in light of current Swedish discourse. On the one hand, it's an ambitious text about how racism and discrimination should be fought. The reader learns about structural racism and intersectionality, Islamophobia and Afrophobia, colonialism and gender power structures and there's an almost academic overview of the various manifestations of racism in Swedish society. In light of this, the book argues that the party should actively recruit "non-white comrades," and proposes a range of symbolic, political and educational measures to combat racism.

On the other hand, there is very little about Islamism and contemporary antisemitism. This is interesting because it may be the key to understanding why people who devote their lives to "anti-racist politics" sometimes end up supporting violent, genocidal and fundamentalist movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah, while spreading propaganda against Jews and their national movement.

The point is the striking difference in how much nuance, complexity and analytical sensitivity the leaders of the Swedish Left Party in Malmö are willing to apply to different social phenomena.

When it comes to racism against Black people, the handbook explains how racism has changed form and modernized. Although African Americans are no longer sold from from one cotton plantation to another and are no longer viewed as people with smaller brains, racism still exists. In Sweden, the handbook explains, there is Afrophobia, manifested through hostility and hate crimes, insults and discrimination, exclusion and structural inequalities resulting from "norms of whiteness" and ideas of white supremacy.

But when it comes to antisemitism, the analysis seems to stop in history.

In the past, Jews were portrayed as the killers of Jesus, as people who kidnapped Christian children and used their blood, or those who started revolutions. The result was pogroms, state violence and discrimination. Twentieth-century antisemitism instead revolved around ideas of Jewish control over governments, the media and financial systems. The result was the Holocaust.

Antisemitism after the Second World War is different, and it is certainly about more than merely "racism against Jews." Christer Mattsson, one of Sweden's leading scholars of antisemitism and violent extremism, describes contemporary antisemitism as an "Israelized antisemitism," in which traditional anti-Jewish stereotypes are no longer expressed directly about "Jews" but are instead projected onto "Israel" or "Zionists."

Thousands of people in the streets of Stockholm shout "No Zionists on our streets" on a weekly basis. This is just a new version of "Jews Out!". Their demonstration "street theatre" also portrays Israelis as bloodthirsty creatures who drink the blood of dead infants, or as people who secretly control governments.

Recently we've also witnessed court cases of Swedish so-called pro-Palestinians who have spread messages on social media destorting the Holocaust and presented images of snakes and hyenas adorned with Stars of David killing Palestinian children. Their defence strategy, which actually convinced the court, was that the Star of David represent the Zionist flag rather than rabbis and synagogues.

This is where the handbook's blind spot becomes visible, and the results are obvious.

At the end of the Left Party's handbook there are quotations from representatives of the Party that reveal the same pattern: extreme sensitivity toward every conceivable form of discrimination on the one hand, and total blindness to extremism and racism when it comes to Jews and Israel on the other.

For example, Amelia Bartholdson wrote in the handbook that combating racism requires "awareness, humility and self-awareness." Yet after October 7 she shared a video accusing her own party secretary of being a Zionist because he did not regard October 7 as a legitimate act of resistance (the post came from EPYU, an organization that spreads conspiracy theories and blood libels). She also shared an open letter decorated with a red triangle (known as a Hamas propaganda symbol) supporting Kristofer Lundberg, a well-known supporter of the PFLP, one of the organizations organizations behind the October 7 massacre. Truly a fine display of awareness, humility and self-awareness.

In other posts, Bartholdson compared the situation in Gaza to the Holocaust and supported boycotts and so-called "apartheid-free zones." This is an interesting point, because many of those quoted in the handbook support boycotts that are not directed at products from the West Bank or at far-right Netanyahu supporters, but essentially at anything connected to Israel. It is a bit like boycotting Bruce Springsteen or Beyoncé because of U.S. immigration policy. In an American context that would seem absurd, but when it comes to Israel everyone is lumped together. How does that fit with Sabrin Omar Högelius's statement in the handbook that people should be able to "simply exist, without having to defend their origins"?

"Anti-racism should permeate the party's politics and practice and build broad alliances with civil society," Anders Neergaard wrote in the handbook. Last week he was scheduled to lead a seminar celebrating an intifada (a term that in political contexts clearly implies violence against Israeli and Jewish targets). The other seminar leader was Orwa Kadoura, who was also quoted in the 2023 handbook condemning "racist behaviors, structures and organizations," yet in recent years he has repeatedly shared antisemitic and pro-Hamas material.

Another prominent former Left Party member quoted in the handbook is Lorena Delgado Varas. "Western anti-racism goes hand in hand with feminism and socialism," she wrote. A few years later, as is well known, there the "hand in hand" had an entirely different meaning as Delgado Varas shared an image on X showing a hand with the Israeli flag controlling a hand with the American flag, which in turn controlled soldiers carrying the flags of various other countries, accompanied by a text claiming that "Zionist Jews control the world" through threats, blackmail, the media, banks and control over the U.S. Congress, Senate and government.

These examples do not even include the individuals Inas Hamdan wrote about in Expressen, because the party's antisemitism problem extends far beyond 25, 50 or even 100 people. The most important lesson of the Anti-Racist Handbook is not what it says about racism, but what it does not say.

It's not about hating Jews. It is about a worldview that blames one people, one movement and one country for all the world's evils and fails to understand what contemporary antisemitism is. Or perhaps understands it perfectly well, but chooses to exploit it in order to win votes.

Sweden Fails to Protect its Jews From Incitement

We have spoken about hatred and threats for decades. Why is Sweden still unable to recognize them when it comes to Jews?
Published in Sweden in Svenska Dagbladet: Rättegång om hets mot judar missar målet | David Stavrou | SvD Ledare

In recent years, we have seen what hate propaganda, conspiracy theories, and dehumanizing rhetoric can lead to — especially when it concerns Jews.

A long series of arson attacks, stabbings, and shootings has made Jewish communities around the world increasingly vulnerable. In many cases, the perpetrators were influenced precisely by hate propaganda, conspiracy theories, antisemitic incitement, and Islamist ideology portraying Jews as legitimate targets of violence.

At the same time, two recent court cases in Sweden — one in Helsingborg and one in Gothenburg — concluded in a way that shows that Sweden is beginning to understand the importance of combating extremism, while still failing to fully understand it.

The Helsingborg case concerned charges of incitement against an ethnic group involving antisemitic publications on social media, Holocaust distortion, and conspiratorial content. The defendant was convicted on several counts, including Nazi salutes, publishing antisemitic images, and spreading theories like the one claiming that “4 out of 5 American slave owners were Jewish,” equating Jews with rats, and portraying Jews as a satanic force controlling the world.

At the same time, the man was acquitted on certain counts related to Holocaust distortion — a newer component of Sweden’s incitement legislation. The prosecutor argued that the man’s statements formed part of a broader antisemitic conspiracy narrative involving references to the Illuminati and Freemasons. But the district court was not convinced. During the questioning of Christer Mattsson, an expert on violent extremism and antisemitism and director of the Segerstedt Institute, the defense demanded answers to questions about the number of people cremated in Belzec, Treblinka, and Sobibor, and discussed the extent to which the Israeli government does or does not “weaponize antisemitism”.
Despite Mattsson’s clear answers, and instead of the court telling the defense attorney to stop wasting time on historical revisionism, the result was an acquittal. The defendant’s statements claiming that it would have been impossible to “dispose of 6 million bodies in the ovens,” and the publication of a video describing the figure six million as false, were not considered contrary to generally accepted historical facts and were not considered serious Holocaust distortion.

The problem with the verdict is that the court failed to see the forest for the trees, and the broader antisemitic context disappeared as the court got lost in details. No one has ever claimed that six million bodies were burned or that six million is an exact number. Six million is a widely accepted estimate, supported by millions of confirmed victim names, as well as Nazi documentation, demographic studies, transport records, camp archives, postwar investigations, eyewitness testimony, and forensic evidence.

No serious historian has argued that limited crematorium capacity would suggest exaggerated death tolls or inconsistencies in the history of the Holocaust. The entire debate is absurd. Anyone who has studied this kind of rhetoric knows that Holocaust denial and Holocaust distortion — referred to in academic literature as Holocaust distortion — are very rarely expressed by claiming that the Holocaust never happened. It is usually about relativization, contextualization, and minimization.

This kind of denial is not merely a lie about the past — it is a precondition for genocide: minimizing, justifying, or erasing the crimes and thereby continuing the dehumanization of the victims while obstructing historical accountability and remembrance. In this case, it is not only an insult — it is a call to renew the violence.

In the Gothenburg trial, a woman was acquitted on Wednesday after being charged with incitement against an ethnic group. The images she published online contained classic antisemitic symbols: a snake with a Star of David on its head and large fangs about to attack a naked child; a snake shaped like a Star of David wrapped around a baby bottle with text describing Zionists as child murderers; and an image depicting a hyena eating a child while staring at another child hiding nearby wearing a Palestinian flag on its shirt. The hyena wears a kippah with a Star of David on it.

During police questioning, the woman claimed she had nothing against Jews. “It is Zionists I am speaking against, and what is happening in Gaza is horrific. Seeing children slaughtered every day,” she said.

Christer Mattsson, who also testified in this case, explained that research has long established that snakes and the killing of children are common antisemitic symbols. Anti-Zionism, he explained, becomes antisemitism when it adopts antisemitic stereotypes, conspiracy theories, and so-called antisemitic tropes, such as the notion that evil Jews control global media and governments. Mattsson explained that in this form of “Israelized antisemitism,” “Zionists” assume the role historically assigned to Jews in classic antisemitic ideology and are portrayed as uniquely evil, manipulative, powerful, and conspiratorial.

Despite this, the court missed the point. The fact that a message is critical of Israel does not exclude the possibility that it is simultaneously antisemitic. The Star of David, the snakes, the conspiracies, and the innocent dead children should have been enough. It seems Swedish courts will not act until someone explicitly says, “I really hate Jews and now I’m going to kill a few,” or “Auschwitz is a fictional place.”

But that is not what antisemitism sounds like today. To minimize and distort the Holocaust and spread hatred against the legitimate national movement of the Jewish people is not an exercise in free speech — it is spreading hatred and encouraging violence in disguise.

Things should be called by their proper names, and words have consequences. History gives us many examples of this and they are often associated with specific names – Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC, the Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Bondi Beach in Sydney, the Krystalgade Synagogue in Copenhagen, the Hypercacher supermarket in Paris, the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester, the Halle Synagogue in Germany, Chabad of Poway Synagogue in California, Golders Green Road in London, the Ozar Hatorah School in Toulouse, and the El Ghriba Synagogue in Tunisia.

All of these acts began with words.

We have spoken about hatred and threats for decades. Why is the state still unable to recognize them when it comes to Jews?

Once again, hatred and incitement by “pro-Palestinian” demonstrators in Stockholm — this time while they are rightly opposing a new Israeli law

Published in Swedish in Kvartal: Bisarrt judehat – mot en skamlig israelisk lag – Kvartal

The weekly so-called pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Stockholm often include an element of street theatre. These street shows are usually extremely untasteful and they’re often defamatory. Some of the greatest hits include actors dressed as a blood-stained Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and KD party leader Ebba Busch holding a Falun sausage in an implied sexual position. There’s President Trump dressed as an SS officer, Prime Minister Kristersson dancing around with a dead baby, Netanyahu in devil horns, and characters wiping their behinds with an Israeli flag.

This weekend a new show hit the streets of Stockholm – a character who appears to be a religious Jew because of the kippah on his head holding a glass of blood beside a Palestinian woman being hanged. Those who follow Middle East politics were probably supposed to understand that the Jewish character is Israeli right-wing extremist minister Itamar Ben Gvir celebrating the legislation of the new Israeli death penalty law.

There’s a lot to be said about the Israeli law, but before that’s done the obvious should be pointed out. For those who don’t follow Middle East politics, what happened on Saturday is that Swedish police blocked streets, SL cancelled buses, and taxpayer money was spent in order to allow a group of activists to act out an antisemitic blood libel hundreds of years old, in which a Jew is using the blood of a non-Jewish innocent victim.

The activists will no doubt claim that their protest is legitimate. The character they acted is not all Jews, they’ll say, it’s only Ben Gvir, or only Israeli Jews, or only Zionists. However, the red-stained glass, the grotesque nature of the Jewish characteristics, and the timing make that claim laughable. The performance took place during Passover, the holiday that European Jews have been blamed since the Middle Ages for using Christian children’s blood for making their special holiday bread. The context of their other shows is that Israel controls the world, the American president and Sweden’s government are maneuvered by the Zionists – Israel’s Prime Minister and Jeffrey Epstein (both Jews of course). They relativize the Holocaust and they mock every Israeli symbol by attaching it to blood and money. Sure, they’re not antisemitic, just anti-Zionists. If anyone is so naive as to think that there’s a difference, perhaps they can explain it to Swedish Jewish children who may have passed by in central Stockholm and wondered why they’re being accused of hanging innocent Palestinians. Again.

Still, the new Israeli legislation deserves a serious discussion, even if those who demonstrated against it in Stockholm are on the wrong side of history. Israel’s new “death penalty for terrorists” law was passed in the Israeli parliament in March. The bill stipulates that the death penalty will be imposed on a terrorist who killed a person “with the intent of denying the existence of the State of Israel.” This wording creates a distinction that effectively designates the law almost exclusively for Palestinian terrorism. However, the court will be authorized to impose a life sentence instead of the death penalty if it finds “special reasons” for doing so or if “exceptional circumstances” are present.

It’s important to point out that the Israeli opposition voted against the law, and many in Israel hope that it will be cancelled if a new government takes over after the next elections. This may be the case because the law, which was pushed through by the most extreme Israeli politicians, was also opposed by other Israeli authorities. An official in the Ministry of Justice said that establishing the death penalty in the West Bank through civilian legislation is “highly problematic”. IDF representatives said that the law contradicts international conventions to which Israel is committed, and officials from both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Security Council opposed it.

The objections are not only technical. Israeli parliamentarian Gilad Kariv (The Democrats, former Labor Party) said that the law contradicts the values of the State of Israel and that it is disgraceful both in its substance and in the political manner in which it was approved. He also said that the party will bring the constitutional question before the High Court of Justice. This is an important point because the law is indeed expected to be reviewed by the High Court of Justice, and there is a possibility that it will be changed, amended, or cancelled.

However, apart from the extreme right, parts of Israeli society who used to be against such legislation in the past have become more positive towards it because of the 251 Israelis who were kidnapped on October 7th. They argue that many of the people who led and participated in the massacre, including Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, were prisoners who were released from Israeli jails. If they had been executed for their previous crimes, the most horrific crime in Israeli history could have been avoided. Perhaps the main point supporters of the law point to is the possibility of prisoner exchanges which in Israel’s reality have always been an incentive for Palestinian terrorists to commit more attacks. Capital punishment could, according to the law’s supporters, prevent future Israeli kidnapped civilians from being used as bargaining leverage.

Israeli security officials, including several chiefs of staff of the IDF and heads of the Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, objected to this reasoning and claimed that terrorism is not meaningfully deterred by the threat of execution because attackers who carry out suicide or high-risk operations are often not motivated by personal survival. Increasing the severity of punishment does not change behavior. Instead, capital punishment could escalate tensions, increase incentives for revenge attacks, and complicate intelligence cooperation and prisoner-management strategies.

Other objections, made by Israeli NGOs, are purely ideological. The Zulat Institute for Human Rights, for example, stated that the legislation “is fundamentally based on racial discrimination, is illegitimate, and has existed in the darkest regimes of modern history.” This is, in short, a very controversial issue in Israel, in many ways it’s another part of the bloody aftermath of October 7^th and the regional war that is still going on, and the last word hasn’t been said yet.

Back to Stockholm. Considering the complexities of the Israeli legislation isn’t high on the agenda of the Swedish activists. This is a classic situation of a clock being correct twice a day even if it stopped working. Yes, they’re entirely right in their objection to the Israeli death penalty, but they are the last people in the world to preach on this subject.

First, recently more and more Iranian flags are seen at their demonstrations. The regime in Teheran executes over 1,000 people a year. Still, in the Iranian example, Swedish activists prefer demonstrating in support of the bloodthirsty regime against the “imperialist American-Israeli attack” while conveniently ignoring the institutionalized public hangings of women, homosexuals and regime critics from cranes. Other countries which have had the death penalty for years, from the US, China, and Japan to Iraq and Saudi Arabia, are never mentioned in any demonstration. Only Jewish executions, it seems, are morally wrong as far as they’re concerned.

Second, believe it or not, the Palestinian Authority, the same Palestinians the demonstrations are all about, has a death penalty law. In the West Bank it was used in the past and death sentences are not carried out in practice in recent years, but in Gaza, Palestinians have been executed by Hamas on a large scale, both officially and unofficially. Whoever is really worried about the legal execution of Palestinians should have been demonstrating against Hamas long before demonstrating against Israel.

And the finally, for many Israelis (including the one writing this text), the new law is a source of embarrassment and deep concern. It’s like many Swedes see things like NMR, or Swedish volunteers to the SS, or Swedish imams preaching about Jews engaging in black magic. The fact that in Israel a similar phenomenon is powerful enough to legislate is terrible. Still, the ones who will fix this are democratic and liberal Israelis, not a bunch of extremist wannabe actors from Sweden who believe that Israel never had a right to exist whether it has a death penalty law or not.

Israel Between Peace and the Sword

The choices the region will face after the Iran-US-Israel War, and does international law have anything to do with them.

Published in Swedish Svenska Dagbladet: Israel måste alltid ha svärdet redo | David Stavrou | SvD Ledare

The Swedish discourse on the war in Iran has been dominated by the question of its legality. In recent weeks, international law scholars, academics, politicians, and columnists have explained why the American and Israeli attack is “illegal under international law.” There is much to say about this reasoning, but a reasonable question is what the point really is. In the real world, the legality of war matters very little, because international law, in general, has hardly had any real significance over the past decades.

The main reason is simply that it doesn't work. International law has been used by some of the world’s worst despots, from Gaddafi to Assad, to delay international action against their crimes, and when it was finally used for intervention—in many cases, it made the situation even worse and led to more violence and failed states.

International law has also given legitimacy to regimes such as Qatar and Somalia, which have gained seats on the UN Human Rights Council despite their total lack of such rights. Terrorist organizations have used it in their propaganda to avoid the consequences of their actions, and China’s and Russia’s veto rights in the UN Security Council ensure that aggressive dictators go unpunished.

“If the U.S. illegally invades other countries, Russia will do the same” is a common argument against the American offensive. But the truth is rather the opposite: Russia did not wait for the Americans to attack Georgia or Ukraine, and—like Turkey in Syria, Azerbaijan in Armenia, and Eritrea in Ethiopia—has ignored international law for decades. No country is waiting for Israel or the U.S. to legitimize their actions according to the “law of the jungle”.

For a country that has not been at war since 1814, the question of the legality of military interventions may seem like the most important one. Theoretically, even a superpower like the U.S. should be concerned with issues of limiting its global power. But for a country like Israel, which is constantly threatened by real enemies who want to annihilate it and kill its population, this question appears fairly academic.

There is, however, another question that from an Israeli perspective is extremely important. It is simple but crucial, and it should concern other countries as well—it is not whether the war is legal, but whether it is effective. Or more broadly: can military power by itself solve Israel’s problems with Iran and other enemies?

“When all you have is a hammer,” as the well-known saying goes, “every problem looks like a nail.” Israel undoubtedly has a powerful hammer. Could it be that the country has become accustomed to solving all its problems with it? Previously, Israel used many forms of power to strengthen its security and international standing. Diplomats engaged in creating complex alliances, its soft power included outstanding achievements in culture, art, agriculture, science, and technology, and governments were willing to participate in peace negotiations and consider compromises.

The Hamas massacre on October 7 and Iran’s persistence in combining nuclear ambitions with threats to wipe Israel off the map changed all of this. The Israeli foreign service has been marginalized; the country’s artists and scientists are boycotted around the world, and its enemies are blown to pieces rather than invited to ceremonies on the White House lawn. Considering that many of Israel’s enemies are ruthless killers, this is hardly surprising. Anyone who sees value in human life should not shed tears for people like Hassan Nasrallah, Yahya Sinwar, and Ali Khamenei. But do military operations improve reality if they are not accompanied by other measures such as diplomacy, economic development, and new creative political alliances? This is not only an Israeli question. A new world order is taking shape before our eyes, and if we are not heading toward total anarchy, the question of limiting military power and understanding what it can and cannot achieve is crucial.

One indication is the situation in Gaza. After more than two years of extensive military force and enormous destruction, the reality is that Hamas not only still exists, it is armed and controls many state functions. In Lebanon, Israel may have achieved significant military successes against Hezbollah, but the Israeli are still spending far too much time in bomb shelters, and despite everything, Hezbollah is still alive and kicking. Both militarily and politically.

Israelis are once again deprived of basic necessities—schools are closed, workplaces shut down, flights canceled, thousands have lost relatives, been forced from their homes, and suffered injuries and trauma. Not to mention that Israel is deeply divided on issues concerning its democracy, which can only be resolved when the shooting stops. Meanwhile, Israel has also, without justification, become the punching bag of the international community. All the world’s power seems to be of little use in solving this.

And then there is Iran. Now that the war has begun, it should, for the sake of both Iranians and Israelis, end with a regime change—and no regime change is possible without the use of force. The Iranian people themselves, who ultimately must liberate themselves, have asked for foreign intervention, and giving it to them is the right thing to do. But what then?

“From the moment we decided that only here, in the land of Israel, could the Jewish state arise, we accepted that more than a hundred million people from the Arab world, from the Arab nations, and from the Palestinians would be our neighbors,” said Israel’s former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin a few years before he was assassinated in 1995. “There are now only two possibilities: either a serious and determined effort is made to achieve peace—peace and security—or the sword will always rule.” In the 1990s, Rabin chose the first option, but since then, leaders across the region, including Israeli leaders, have developed a dependence on using force. Perhaps even an adiction.

When the war in Iran is over, Israel will face a choice. Previously, the country combined pragmatic diplomacy, careful alliance-building, and visionary openings toward the Arab world. In a region like the Middle East, this is risky. Israel will always need to keep a sword ready, but with security guarantees and economic support instead of anachronistic laws and self-righteous moralism from other countries, peace may once again become an option.