תגית: Hamas

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.

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 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.

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.


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.

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 7th 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.

Oslo Accords Mediators Probed Over Epstein Ties Threaten Norway's Diplomatic Legacy

Norway's reputation as a peace-broker could be tarnished by the allegations against the country's elite.

Published in Haaretz: Oslo Accords Mediators Probed Over Epstein Ties Threaten Norway's Diplomatic Legacy – Europe

The release of court documents in the U.S on Jeffrey Epstein in February has sent political shockwaves far beyond Washington. From American power brokers to British royalty and European decision-makers, the files reference powerful figures across the globe. In Norway, the fallout has struck a blow to the country's self-image, as well as its image abroad.

Traditionally, Norway, which has one of the world's most comprehensive welfare state systems, has had a high level of trust in its public officials, and until recently the country was best-known internationally for the Nobel Peace Prize and for humanitarian and peacemaking efforts.

Now high-profile Norwegian public figures are facing criminal investigations as a result of their links to late convicted sex offender Epstein, and the country is reckoning with the fallout. The most high-profile Norwegian figures to be implicated in the files are Crown Princess Mette-Marit, who exchanged hundreds of emails with Epstein between 2011 and 2014 and stayed at his Palm Beach residence in 2013, and former Prime Minister and former Chair of the Nobel Committee Thorbjørn Jagland who has been charged with gross corruption as a result of his ties with Epstein.

But the files have also revealed that two members of Norway's diplomatic elite – married couple Terje Rød-Larsen and Mona Juul – had connections with Epstein. The couple were among a small group of diplomats who facilitated the back-channel negotiations between Israeli and the Palestine Liberation Organization representatives in the early 1990s which led to the Oslo Accords in 1993.

Norwegian authorities have now opened an investigations into Juul – who resigned as Norway's ambassador to Iraq and Jordan earlier this year – on suspicion of gross corruption and Rød-Larsen on suspicion of complicity in gross corruption in relation to gifts and favors the two received from Epstein. According to the released files, they maintained extensive personal and financial ties with Epstein over several years. They visited his private island, their two children were bequeathed $10 million by Epstein in his will, and Rød Larsen was appointed executer of the will (which was later revoked).

According to lawyers for Juul, who has also served as Norway's ambassador to Israel, the U.K. and the UN, she "does not recognize" the allegations against her. For his part, Rød-Larsen has acknowledged the relationship with Epstein but denies wrongdoing. He has not held a public role for over two decades and resigned from his position as president of New York-based think tank the International Peace Institute in 2020 following revelations about his ties to Epstein.

Norway's efforts to facilitate secret Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in the early 1990s leading to the Oslo Accords helped forge its identity as a peace-brokering power, and the current association of key figures from that legacy with Epstein has prompted a discourse in the country about political oversight and elite networks.

"Norwegian diplomats are loyal people, but if they were honest, they would say that the behavior of these two individuals has been an open secret for many years," Professor Torkel Brekke, an Oslo historian who works for the Norwegian think tank Civita and also studies Norway's relations with its Jewish minority and with Israel, tells Haaretz.

Brekke added that "People probably didn't know about the most serious part of the allegations, the ones concerning trafficking [the files show that in his capacity as president of IPI Rod-Larsen wrote recommendations letters for U.S. visas for young Eastern European women at Epstein's request], but the rest of it was known to many. They just didn't want to talk about it".

According to Brekke, Rød-Larsen, in particular, is well-known for his tendency to promote himself and there were many rumors within diplomatic circles of inappropriate conduct and inappropriate associations.

Beyond the personal allegations, what has this done to the political discourse in Norway?

"In Norway the concept of trust has been elevated and is almost sacred," Brekke said. "You always hear Norwegians speaking about trust being more important than oil and that it's what makes us special as a society. So, the question many people are asking now is if this is going to destroy trust in our society. I often personally think that the concept of trust is sometimes sprinkled as a kind of gold dust and that too much trust in government is probably not a good thing. We may need trust that's a bit more critical."

According to Brekke, political implications span the spectrum. While Jagland was a Labour party prime minister and Juul and Rød-Larsen served under Labor governments, former Conservative foreign minister Børge Brende also stepped down as president and CEO of the World Economic Forum following scrutiny of past interactions with Epstein.

"The Royal Family too is a great concern," Brekke adds. "Crown Princess Mette-Marit has been in close contact with Epstein. The communication between her and Epstein is hard to explain and combined with the court case against her son. [Marius Borg Høiby, the crown princess's son from a former relationship, is currently facing multiple criminal charges, including rape, which he denies.] It's concerning to many Norwegians. Even more concerning than party politics."

When it comes to the Israeli angle, does the fact that officials involved in the Oslo Accords are now implicated affect Norway's peacemaking legacy and relations with Israel?

"First, I think that although there were several hard-working, very decent diplomats who created the Israeli-Palestinian back channel, there were, at the same time, others who tried to make it into something a lot more important than it really was. Rød-Larsen tried to make himself seem much more important than he really was. When it comes to relations with Israel, I don't think there will be much of an impact, apart from maybe giving Israelis another reason to be critical of Norway [Many Israelis' resent Norway's criticism of Israeli conduct in the Gaza war which has also led to tension between the two countries' governments].

I'd expect some Israelis will feel some kind of schadenfreude after the recent souring of relations," he said. Two weeks after October 7, 2023, Norway condemned Israel's war in Gaza, and drew anger from Israel after deciding not to recognize Hamas as a terror organization. Oslo also continued funding UNRWA – and campaigned to defend it abroad – despite allegations some staff took part in the October 7 attacks.

"However, relations with Israel will probably only improve if there is a new government that will be able to set things back on track after the way things were handled from the Norwegian side after October 7."

The argument that Norway's role in the Oslo process was more facilitative than decisive is not a new one. Many analysts contend that the end of the Cold War and political shifts within Israel and the PLO were the primary drivers, and Norway's role was mainly to provide a discreet venue.

But while the Norwegians' influence over the content of the Oslo accords was limited, Rød-Larsen was influential in his role as the facilitator of the secret channel, and in that sense he and his wife had an important role in the Oslo story.

Continues: Oslo Accords Mediators Probed Over Epstein Ties Threaten Norway's Diplomatic Legacy – Europe

Can Swedish journalists understand the chaos, suffering, and fear of war

When two Israeli soldiers visited Stockholm, their story was misunderstood, writes Israeli journalist David Stavrou.

Published in Kvartal: https://kvartal.se/erikhogstrom/artiklar/svenska-journalister-forstar-inte-de-israeliska-soldaterna/cG9zdDo2MTgxMg

Two young Israeli soldiers recently visited Stockholm together with an activist from Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organization that collects and publishes testimonies from Israeli veterans and, in many cases, acts as a whistleblower by exposing alleged human rights violations and war crimes. The Swedish visit was organized in collaboration with the Christian aid organization Diakonia, which arranged interviews with the Swedish press (SVT, Dagens ETC, Dagens Arena, and Jewish Chronicle). In the interviews, the soldiers used pseudonyms, and their faces were not shown.

In some of the publications, the interviews were presented as evidence supporting the gravest accusations against Israel. For example, Dagens ETC wrote: “The serious allegations have been dismissed as Hamas propaganda by commentators like Alice Teodorescu Måwe. But everything is now confirmed by Israeli soldiers.”

In the interviews, the soldiers reportedly said things like, “we were ordered to shoot all Palestinians we considered ‘military-age men’” and “we used Palestinian men as human shields.” Other claims included that many buildings were destroyed in Gaza and that, during the first weeks of the war, there was a lack of rules of engagement. Later, the soldiers said, rules were introduced, but they were weak and not always applied. As a result, unarmed men were shot.

They also reported that journalists and healthcare workers were considered legitimate targets, even if they themselves did not participate in such incidents. The two soldiers also described a discourse that dehumanized Palestinians.

Many Israelis have strong objections to Breaking the Silence. They argue that this type of testimony contributes to hatred of Israel, causes the country to be treated unfairly, and that even if the reports are true, they should be discussed domestically rather than in a hostile international stage.

Of course, Swedish journalists do not need to concern themselves with this—but it can help to understand the context. Many Swedes would likely raise an eyebrow if Swedish organizations on the political fringe were setting the agenda for Sweden’s image abroad. In this case, the soldiers are telling an important story—the problem is that the Swedish press misunderstood it.

A key issue concerns how to distinguish between different types of armed forces. Traditionally, there is a difference between terrorists or non-state actors who use violence against civilians and state-controlled armies with formal military forces, command structures, and legal frameworks. That definition is largely irrelevant for Israelis because Hamas is a hybrid actor. Although the organization uses terrorist methods, its military branch—the al-Qassam Brigades—is structured like an army, with battalions and brigades, elite units, command chains, and modern weapons systems. During the war, this was also supported by high-tech disinformation campaigns, a financial empire of global investments, leaders living luxuriously outside the region, and alliances with some of the world’s most tyrannical regimes.

This paints the Israeli soldiers’ testimony in a very specific colour since Hamas, despite its military structure, is not bound by international law. Its militants can behead, rape, and execute civilians, burn people alive, and take children as hostages—with or without uniforms—while exploiting its other source of power – the power of sovereignty, and the civilian control the organisation holds in Gaza. Expecting Israel not to act against individuals simply because they are not in uniform in this asymmetric conflict may be understandable, but it is hardly surprising that the reality forces terrible dilemmas and tragic decisions.

The Israeli soldiers confirm that Israel, despite the genocidal nature of the Hamas attack against it, at least tried to maintain some form of legal framework. They say civilians were evacuated, leaflets were dropped as warnings, orders were given not to shoot women and children, and no-go zones were established in order to limit Israel's massive firepower. Using human shields is obviously illegal and should be punished. But the claim that journalists and healthcare workers are always protected in a reality where Hamas has been shown to use both journalistic and medical infrastructure for attacks on Israeli civilians is detached from reality.

Israel claims that intercepted communications show Hamas used ambulances to transport fighters, weapons, and equipment. Hamas also hid weapons and command centers in hospitals, schools, mosques, and private homes. The IDF has released images that allegedly confirm this. Furthermore, at least three civilian hostages—Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv—were reportedly held in a family home in Gaza where the son was a journalist and the father a doctor. There are also allegations that so-called freelance journalists were embedded in Hamas units on October 7 and documented the massacre for propaganda purposes.

The fact that Hamas controlled the Gaza Strip with an iron grip for years means that almost everything in Gaza effectively became part of the effort to destroy Israel. When the soldiers say they were told “everything is a military target,” this is viewed as condemning evidence against Israel—but in reality, it is not far from the truth.

International law recognizes these complex circumstances. While it may seem unfair to those unaccustomed to war, under the Geneva Conventions civilian structures—including hospitals—can lose their protection if they are used for military purposes. Even unarmed combatants and civilians participating in hostilities can, under certain circumstances, be considered legitimate targets. This is not what Israel claims—it is how international law works.

The reality described by the Israeli soldiers is horrific. Some of it, such as the use of human shields, also appears illegal. It can and should be discussed. It can and should be used for journalistic purposes and, hopefully, ultimately, for reconciliation when the heartbreaking testimonies from both sides become part of a healing process. That said, nothing in what the soldiers said in Sweden confirms allegations of genocide or deliberate starvation of civilians. Using these stories to imply that these horrific accusations are true is an abuse of the witnesses and their experiences.

Finally, there is one more aspect to consider. Being scared, wanting revenge, and not adhering to strict moral ideals under fire is natural in armed conflict. So too are remorse and shame. The Israeli soldiers who came to Stockholm were brave enough to share this with the world. But a reasonable question to pose to Diakonia, which organized the visit, is: Where is the Palestinian Breaking the Silence? Where are the remorseful Hamas fighters? Where are the Islamic Jihad militants ashamed of massacring Israeli civilians and now revealing their actions as “deeply immoral and devastating to our neighbors,” as one of the Israeli activists put it? Are these ignored by Diakonia—or do they simply not exist?

Medelhavsmuseet's Selective History

When it comes to the past, Medelhavsmuseet (The Swedish Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities) largely ignores Israel, but when it comes to the present the museum presents only different shades of the same narrative, one that excludes a balanced, mainstream Israeli perspective. This in itself is not necessarily a problem. However, since public funds are being used and this is all payed for by tax-payers money, why not invest in presenting all sides of the story? Are Israelis so dehumanized that their pain, loss, and sacrifice are not considered worthy of being told?

Published in Swedish in Svenska Dagbladet: https://www.svd.se/a/K8Bn37/medelhavsmuseets-selektiva-historia

The lecture hall at Medelhavsmuseet was full on September 4th. The evening seminar which took place there was called "Repair, Return and Reconstruction for Palestine’s Decolonized Future", and in case the message wasn’t clear enough from the name, during most of the evening there was a photograph of Gaza and a slogan in Arabic and English projected on the screen behind the panel members. The slogan read: “Glory to Gaza”.

The seminar itself wasn’t exactly intellectually challenging and the message was pretty straight forward. When Israel was mentioned by all speakers it was associated with very specific words. Genocide, occupation, oppression, destruction, starvation, ethnic cleansing, collective punishment and settler-colonialism were some of the favourites. There was also a consensus about the Palestinian reaction to the Israeli aggression. Here the popular words were: education, culture, conservation, de-colonization, renovation and restoration. Listening to the panel members it sounded like Palestinian resistance is all about Mahmoud Darwish poems, architecture podcasts and a struggle for free press.

In an hour and a half of debate there was nothing about Palestinian terror or violence, there were no suicide bombings or rockets, Hamas wasn’t mentioned and October 7th was just the date when the current Israeli offensive started. Since all panel members were engaged in architecture and restoration and apparently very well acquainted with Gaza, it was interesting that the immense military underground tunnel infrastructure, a remarkable architectural achievement in itself, was not mentioned. There was also no mention of another kind of physical destruction – the one of Israeli communities. No destroyed and abandoned kibbutzim, no apartments demolished by Qassam rockets and no homes burned to the ground with entire families still inside. There were no hostages, no executions and no organized rape and sexual violence. The whole event felt like a motivational inspirational gathering for activists, where all the speakers clearly presented a Palestinian narrative, and many in the audience were members of the so-called "pro-Palestinian" movement. Some wore kaffiyehs, a couple of them even had red triangles (a Hamas symbol) on them.

In itself, all this is completely legitimate. In a democracy, people are free to organize whatever seminar they wish. What is, however, somewhat troubling is that Medelhavsmuseet is part of a government agency (Statens museer för världskultur) funded by taxpayers, with tens of millions of Swedish Crowns each year. When Rani Kasapi, Head of Content and Learning at Världskulturmuseerna, opened the seminar, she also mentioned that other institutions were also involved in organizing it: the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI), the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII), and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. All of these are also fully or partially funded by Swedish taxpayers, raising the question – why should funds that could be spent on education and culture for the benefit of all be used for a one-sided, highly political event based on foreign policy propaganda?

Perhaps, the idea was to have another event to balance the message and show another side and a different narrative. And indeed, on October 7th, a very symbolic and politically charged date, another event was planned by the museum. This time the title was: What’s Happening in Israel Now? (Vad händer i Israel nu?). In a perfect world, this could have been the the missing piece, the event that shows that the situation is more complex than just propaganda. But the world isn’t perfect. According to publications, the event had only one speaker – Göran Rosenberg. The same Rosenberg who only a few months earlier described Israel as a "morally dead project" and questioned its future existents in its current form. It’s as if the museum invited an anti-vaxer to lecture about the importance of vaccinations. Was it really so hard to find another voice to describe the situation in Israel? One who at least believes in its future?
Medelhavsmuseet has hosted more events about the region in the last couple of years — for example, there was a book talk with Cecilia Uddén, one of Swedish media’s most critical voices when it comes to Israel. There was also a UI event featuring several Israeli left-wing activists. But the bigger picture is that, aside from rare exceptions, Medelhavsmuseet largely presents different shades of the same narrative, one that excludes a balanced, mainstream Israeli perspective. This in itself is not necessarily a problem. However, if public funds are being used, why not invest in presenting all sides of the story? Are Israelis so dehumanized that their pain, loss, and sacrifice are not considered worthy of being told?

Looking a bit deeper, it’s obvious that Medelhavsmusset doesn’t ignore the Israeli perspective only when it comes to the current conflict. For some reason, it ignores Israel’s existence all together (apart from occasionally mentioning it as a colonial bully destructing the fascinating, authentic and noble people of the orient). Israel as a modern state and the ancient Jewish entities in the Eastern Mediterranean like the Kingdoms of Jehuda and The Northern Kingdom of Israel are a treasure of history, archaeology and ancient culture. They’re the origin story of Christianity and Western civilization and a fascinating story of cultural, social and linguistic revival. Still, in the last twenty years of exhibitions, it seems like Medelhavsmuseet hasn’t had a single exhibition presenting Israeli or Jewish culture and history. I spoke with two historians who have studied this in detail. One of them said that “ancient Jewish history is almost completely erased from the museum’s portrayal of the ancient Mediterranean region”. The other said that for historical reasons, the museum focuses on Egypt and Cyprus, which is fine, but even when those cultures had strong connections to Jews in the region, those connections are usually not mentioned, and even on the rare occasions that they are the name Israel never is.

And they're right. Medelhavsmuseet has presented many exhibitions about Egypt, Greece, Rome, Syria, Cyprus, Turkey – and even non-Mediterranean countries such as Iraq. In fact, the only recent exhibition that touched on Israel was “Nakba,” which according to the Jewish Central Council was highly one-sided and sparked debate over whether the museum was pursuing a political agenda. The museum responded that “it is not a historical exhibition, but a small audio exhibition with stories”. When representatives from the Jewish Central Council met with the superintendent of Statens museer för världskultur regarding this, their concerns were not taken seriously.

There’s no doubt that the story of the Nakba should be told. It’s an important part of the region’s history. But if this was only a “small audio exhibition with stories”, where is the next audio exhibition with the other stories from the same war – for example, those about Holocaust survivors who were killed in the battle field after being freed from Auschwitz, or those about massacres of Jews that took place during the same time, or the ones about the Jordanians expelling the Jews from Jerusalem’s old town or the Egyptians illegally occupying Gaza?

During the debate with the Jewish Central Council, the museum mentioned one exhibition – Egypt’s Jews (Egyptens judar), perhaps as one with a more “Jewish narrative”. But the truth is that even when the exhibition explains how Egyptian Jews were attacked, harassed, arrested and expelled in the 1950s and 60s, it’s clear that the message is that this is a direct result of Zionism. The exhibition explains how for 3,000 years Jews were “totally integrated in the surrounding society” (helt integrerade i det omgivande samhället) and only when the UN decided to “divide Palestine” and the 1948 war broke out, Egyptians started “anti-Zionists riots” and resisted “foreign influence”. These texts are a wonderful example of verbal acrobatics. There’s no Egyptian antisemitism, no Muslim Brotherhood (the mother movement of Hamas) promoting genocidal racism against Jews, just an unfortunate mixing up (ihopblandning) of “Jews” and “Zionists”. This makes sense since one of the exhibition’s production partners was Magda Haroun, Head of the Jewish Community Council in Egypt and a vocal opponent of Israel who claims that Zionism is a racist movement. Interestingly, the exhibition which mentions the wars between Israel and Egypt, doesn’t discuss Egyptian President Saadat’s historic recognition of Israel and the resulting Israel-Egypt peace agreement. One can only assume that the reason is that if the museum tells its visitors about Egypt recognizing Israel, this may lead to a demand that Medelhavsmuseet does the same.

Zero tolerance” is no longer enough after Bondi Beach. Political action is required – and it is urgent

Published in Swedish in Kvartal: https://kvartal.se/erikhogstrom/artiklar/hur-paverkar-politiken-terrordad-mot-judar/cG9zdDozNzA5NA

Reactions to the terrorist attack at Bondi Beach have largely focused on the hateful rhetoric believed to have contributed to the violent extremism that claimed 15 lives – the deadliest attack on Jews since October 7. That focus is understandable after two years of global demonstrations under slogans such as “globalize the intifada.”

At the same time, the attack is rooted in more than a toxic debate climate. It also involves a geopolitical and security dimension that has primarily been raised by Israeli officials.

According to Israeli intelligence assessments, links had already existed for several months between Australian pro-Palestinian activists and groups such as the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Against this backdrop, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Australia’s prime minister of betraying the country’s Jews. After the attack, Netanyahu stated that he had already warned in August that recognizing Palestine would, in his words, “pour fuel on the antisemitic fire, reward Hamas terrorists, and encourage threats against Australia’s Jews.”

This raises a number of questions. Does Australia really need Israeli intelligence to identify threats against its Jewish population? And more importantly: is Netanyahu truly the right person to lecture others about being unprepared for Islamist terrorism, when his own government bears responsibility for Israel’s worst catastrophe in decades?

But Netanyahu is not the central issue. What matters is that the warnings proved correct. A massacre of Jews took place in Australia, carried out by men who had ISIS flags in their car. Australian authorities knew that one of the perpetrators had ties to ISIS and that his father, the other perpetrator, legally owned at least six weapons. Despite this, no warning flags were raised, and the Jewish event lacked police protection when the attack occurred.

Islamists operate freely in Sweden

Against this background, Europe should ask itself a clear question. If Australia’s policies over the past two years resemble those pursued in many European countries, could what happened at Bondi Beach happen here?

Both domestic and foreign policy must be scrutinized. Domestically, this concerns insufficient resources to protect Jewish sites, an inability to counter conspiracy theories, and complacency toward Islamist actors. These challenges affect all European countries, including Sweden. Swedish journalists have recently exposed how Islamists operate freely in Sweden, how Iranian actors direct terrorist activity via Swedish organized crime, and what links Swedish activists have to terrorist movements such as the PFLP.

“Jews in countries that do not take Islamist terrorism seriously end up paying the price, regardless of whether government passivity stems from fear, incompetence, or indifference.”

Sweden is not alone. According to a recent Europol report, jihadist terrorism remains a central security challenge for the EU, with groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State exploiting the conflict in Gaza. Added to this is Hamas, which, according to Israel’s Mossad and European intelligence services, has planned attacks against Jews in Europe since 2023. The causal link is clear: Jews in countries that do not take Islamist terrorism seriously pay the price.

Kvartal

Why foreign policy matters

How, then, does foreign policy factor in? Can recognition of Palestine or harsh criticism of Israel encourage terrorism? Countries such as Spain, Norway, and Ireland pursue a clear line against Israel. Like Australia, they have recently recognized Palestine; they voice strong opposition to Israel in international forums and serve as comfortable host countries for movements that not only oppose Israeli policy but view the state itself as an illegitimate colonial project.

Australia’s prime minister firmly rejected Netanyahu’s claim that the country’s foreign policy had any connection to the attack. He may be right – such accusations require evidence. But that does not mean foreign policy is irrelevant to the climate surrounding antisemitic hate crimes.

First, governments – unlike individuals – must understand the unique situation Jews face. Demonstrations are marked by hatred, aggression, Nazi comparisons, terrorist symbols, and boycotts. Of course, protests are legitimate in a democracy, and no one seriously claims that all participants are violent antisemites. But at the political level, it is unclear whether countries such as Norway fully grasp what their Jewish populations are forced to endure. The situation is worsened by the fact that no other conflict in the world is covered as intensely – and, according to many, as one-sidedly – in Norwegian media. This has an enormous impact on Norway’s small Jewish community.

Second, does the tax-funded public sphere remain neutral, or does it contribute to an unsafe environment for Jews? What do teachers say? What do libraries display? How do healthcare professionals behave? This is a matter of public safety, not freedom of speech. In February, a video went viral showing two nurses at Bankstown Hospital in Sydney boasting about refusing care to – or even killing – Israeli patients. In Ireland, an official report found that school textbooks contain serious distortions of the Holocaust and Jewish history, which Jews in the country say fuel antisemitism. In Spain, Jewish organizations similarly warn that some teachers use classrooms for anti-Israel activism.

“Zero tolerance” is no longer enough

We can continue debating the limits of protest, but we must also scrutinize institutions. The state must protect freedom of expression, but it must also guarantee safety. That requires schools, hospitals, and libraries free from political propaganda and symbolic acts intended to influence public opinion.

Finally, it is a fact that jihadist terrorists in Europe are often exposed with the help of Israeli intelligence. Can Jews in Spain and Ireland truly trust that their governments will cooperate with the Mossad to save lives, when those same governments cannot even tolerate Israel’s participation in Eurovision?

After Bondi Beach, Europe’s governments must decide where they place their resources and political capital. If they are serious about protecting their Jewish populations, “zero tolerance” and symbolic gestures of solidarity are no longer sufficient. Political action is required – and it's required urgently.

No Löfven, Hamas isn't Israel's Fault

Published in Swedish in Kvartal: https://kvartal.se/erikhogstrom/artiklar/nej-lofven-hamas-ar-inte-israels-fel/cG9zdDoyMjc1NA

A popular proverb says that a half-truth is a whole lie. The latest episode of SVT’s Utrikesbyrån about Hamas was a good example of that. That does not mean it wasn’t interesting. It was. Nor is there any doubt that the three participants — former Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, political scientist Marco Nilsson and Middle East analyst Bitte Hammargren — knew what they were talking about. But when it came to the analysis of Hamas, we were given only a half-truth.

The questions the presenter Rebecca Randhawa asked were: what is left of Hamas, will they lay down their arms, and who will govern Gaza. The first and the third questions are almost impossible to answer. Even Israeli intelligence does not know what remains of Hamas’s military capability, and Gaza’s future governance depends on a complicated geopolitical process. The second question, however, can be answered based on a deep understanding of what Hamas is, the choices it has made in the past, and what its ideological and political DNA is.

According to Löfven, Hamas’s power is the result of a paradox. Despite being one of Israel’s greatest enemies, its power originated with Israel’s political leadership. “Such an organization receives support (from Qatar, for example) simply because Israel wants to avoid the Palestinian Authority (PA) gaining any power.” Hammargren agreed and said that Hamas was a political asset for Israel. “Netanyahu’s line was that by letting Hamas grow in Gaza we don’t have to hear about a Palestinian statehood,” she said. This is a common analysis and it is partly true. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders do indeed oppose a two-state solution. Because of this, his strategy was to weaken the PA, and many argue that one of the ways he did this was by allowing Hamas to grow. But this is only half the truth.

The other half, and the real reason Hamas rose to power and was able to retain it, is much simpler. The source of Hamas’s power is support from large parts of the Palestinian people. Even now, after two years of destruction and death that are a direct consequence of Hamas’s decision to massacre Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, Hamas is still supported by many Palestinians. The international support from Qatar and Iran that Löfven and Hammargren mentioned is also not hard to understand. Iran’s regime has a long-term goal of eliminating “the Zionist entity,” and Qatar built its international position on supporting its ideological Muslim Brotherhood allies. Sure, Netanyahu miscalculated Hamas’s capacity and misread its intentions, but it was not he who made Hamas’s ideology popular, and it was not he who turned Qatar and Iran into dangerous regional destabilizing powers.

But where is Hamas heading? Utrikesbyrån’s two-and-a-half-minute clip tried to provide background. According to the clip, “Hamas removed the demand that Israel be destroyed, but still does not recognize the state of Israel.” This is not even a half-truth. Hamas is absolutely committed to the destruction of Israel. Yes, it created a new charter for foreign audiences, because the old document contained antisemitic propaganda that was not particularly popular on university campuses and in some Western circles. But even the new charter demands “all of Palestine” from the river to the sea, it does not accept the Oslo Accords or the two-state solution, and it still endorses “armed resistance,” which has been a decisive part of Hamas’s nature long before October 7. That includes blowing up buses and restaurants full of civilians as well as kidnapping, torturing and murdering Jews of all ages, genders and backgrounds. One interesting thing Utrikesbyrån did not mention is that Hamas activists have on several occasions been arrested in Europe for planning attacks on “Jewish targets.” Worth mentioning if anyone took the “new charter” seriously.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the violence, Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006 in both the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians are not blind or politically incapable — they knew exactly what they were voting for. According to Utrikesbyrån’s experts, Netanyahu could have fought Hamas by strengthening the PA. It’s an interesting theory. Only problem is that it’s not true. Not during the years when Hamas was building its reign of terror, anyway. The reasons are that Netanyahu was not Israel’s prime minister at that time. Between 1999 and 2009 the prime ministers of Israel were Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. The first was an outspoken advocate for a two-state solution, the second ended the occupation of Gaza, and the third was probably the one who offered the PA the most generous territorial compromise. Hamas was not impressed. It continued to build the fundamentalist, jihadist, genocidal faction within the Palestinian nationalist movement. Hamas did not need Netanyahu for this. It was fully capable of doing it on its own, while many Israelis were still considering peace and reconciliation.

Utrikesbyrån downplayed all of this. In the program there were no blown-up buses, no tunnels, rockets, high-tech international propaganda campaigns or brutal executions of Palestinian “collaborators.” October 7 was only mentioned in passing, as another point on the timeline. No hostages, no burned neighborhoods, no executed families. This is not a complaint that they “forgot October 7,” but a critique of incomplete analysis. How can one answer the question about Hamas’s intentions without taking into account that the organization recruited thousands of people who were willing not only to kill but also to commit gang rapes and sexualized torture in the name of Allah?

Netanyahu can and should be criticized for many things, but not for this. Sure, he did not destroy Hamas before October 7, and through his incompetence and corruption he may have contributed to the opposite. Israelis should hold him accountable for that. But this is far from the cause of the catastrophe. Hamas began building its advanced military capability long before Netanyahu, it remains standing, and many Palestinians still support it. Let us imagine that Netanyahu had decided to wipe out Hamas back in 2014. Now that we know that not even the destruction of Gaza did the job, would Stefan Löfven have supported an Israeli offensive on that scale? Would the Obama administration have allowed it? Would the UN have accepted it? Of course not. Everyone can complain about Netanyahu and everyone can criticize Hamas, but in the end — whose responsibility is it to eliminate Hamas, and who will support such an effort?

It is obvious that Stefan Löfven in no way supports Hamas. In Utrikesbyrån he spoke very clearly about the necessity of a political process with a reformed Palestinian Authority moving toward a two-state solution. But putting the blame for the situation on the Israeli government while ignoring Hamas’s inherently genocidal nature is a classic half-truth. It leads people to believe in conspiracy theories about secret Israeli involvement in the massacre of its own citizens, and more importantly — it shifts the focus to the wrong side. To reach a lasting ceasefire it would be wiser to focus on the “de‑Hamasification” of Gaza and support moderate forces on both sides that can help their communities recover from this two-year trauma and build a future together.