Stockholm – דיויד סטברו

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.

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?

Amid Tensions, Oscar-nominated Israeli Animation Sparks Dialogue Between Jews and Muslims in Sweden

Filmmaker Tal Kantor's Israeli-French coproduction, the animated short film 'Letter to a Pig,' exploring intergenerational trauma and its potential to lead to empathy, has received numerous accolades. Now, a rabbi in Sweden has shown the film to Jewish-Muslim audiences to encourage dialogue post October 7 and the Israel-Gaza war.

Published in Haaretz: https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2025-12-11/ty-article-magazine/.premium/oscar-nominated-israeli-animation-sparks-dialogue-between-jews-and-muslims-in-sweden/0000019a-fd77-d2e4-a1ff-fff7ab270000

Israeli animation filmmaker and visual artist Tal Kantor, 37, has taken her film "Letter to a Pig" to more film festivals, master classes, school seminars, and public screenings than she can easily remember. These events have taken place all over the world since the film was first screened in 2022, and there are more to come. From Harvard University to the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, from the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in L.A. to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, it seems like Kantor and her film have been everywhere.

The 17-minute piece of animated art has also won Kantor multiple prizes. These include the Ophir Award, known as "the Israeli Oscar," the Best Narrative Short at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, the Excellence Award at the Japan Media Arts Festival and prizes, and honorable mentions at animation festivals in Belgium and France, and even an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film in 2024.

The film itself took about five years to complete because of the meticulous hand-drawn animation style, which is combined with live action and involves visionary techniques and imagery. It was produced by The Hive Studio in Israel and Miyu Productions in France. It is based on one of Kantor's real-life childhood memories, and it depicts the way pain and collective trauma are transmitted from one generation to another, and the role they play in human history, society, and identity.

The film's main character is a girl who, together with her classmates, listens to the testimony of a Holocaust survivor in an Israeli school. Part of the testimony is a letter that the survivor wrote to a pig which, as he remembers, saved his life while he was hiding from the Nazis in a pigsty. In the film, the young schoolgirl sinks into a disturbing surrealistic dream while listening to the testimony. During the dream, new perspectives of good and evil are created in the girl's mind, and these expose her and her fellow students to the results of violence, victimhood, and trauma.

The pig's role shifts from savior to monster to victim, while the young children also go through a transformation. They start out as passive listeners and gradually become a threatening mob. The Holocaust may be the film's starting point, but "Letter to a Pig" is not a "Holocaust film." It's about universal motifs such as violence and suffering created by intergenerational trauma, which develops into a siege mentality. But it's also about empathy and the possibility to recognize other narratives through dialogue.

For Rabbi Moshe David HaCohen, 46, the narratives of pain and suffering, leading to endless conflict, actually drew him to the piece. HaCohen has just started his second term as the rabbi of the small Jewish community in Sweden's third-largest city, Malmö. In 2017, at the beginning of his first term as Malmö's rabbi (which ended in 2022), HaCohen founded Amanah, an organization based on his cooperation with a local imam to counter discrimination and build trust between the city's Jewish and Muslim populations. For a few years this worked very well, but the organization gradually dissolved as a result of the October 7 massacre, the ensuing Israel-Gaza war and the polarization caused by these events.

HaCohen is now launching a new organization named B.R.I.T – an acronym for Building Resilience, Identity, and Trust, and a reference to the Hebrew word for "covenant." He says the organization will work to counter polarization and foster relations between Jews and Muslims in several European countries. "I saw how Tal took something which is seen as almost holy like the Holocaust, and I was impressed by the way she asked complex questions that society today has to deal with," HaCohen told Haaretz in an interview in Stockholm. "The most serious question is how do we dismantle this complex conflict and create trust. Telling stories, like Tal does in her film, is a way to reach the real issue and move forward to create that kind of trust. People need hope, and I thought that during this time of conflict it would be good to create a debate based on the film."

One of the side effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the conflict in many European countries over the last two years, between Jewish Israel supporters and Muslim Palestinian supporters, who are entangled in cycles of suspicion and hostility. Jews have experienced rising levels of antisemitism, aggressive demonstrations at which protestors declare support for Hamas, and accusations of being responsible for the situation in Gaza because of their support for Israel.

Many European Muslims have found themselves on the receiving end of traditional anti-immigration and xenophobic attitudes, which are now amplified in response to the actions of elements of the pro-Palestinian solidarity movement. Even though there is now a cease-fire in the Middle East, tensions between the pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian camps and their supporters in many European countries persist.

And so Rabbi HaCohen asked Kantor to bring her film to Sweden in November to try to create productive dialogue. Kantor says that the film has taken part in about 150 festivals so far, and she has attended many of them personally. Meeting audiences together with the international crew who worked with her on the film is always important to her. "The film started from a very personal experience, and it has now become universal. Meeting audiences …. means everything to me," she says. "After screenings, people open up to me; they talk about their own experiences and their own perspectives. Some of them cry and open their hearts while talking about the multi-generational trauma they see in the film."

Still, for Kantor this wasn't just another invitation to a European cultural event. Instead of festival curators and ceremony producers, the invitation came from a rabbi who wanted to show her film as a tool for creating change and providing hope. Kantor couldn't refuse.

From right: Rabbi Moshe David HaCohen, Somar Al-Naher, Tal Kantor and Anneli Rådestad. Photo: Peter Lööv Roos

"Moshe David explained who he was and told me about what he does," Kantor told Haaretz in a local Stockholm café a day before she returned to Israel. "I immediately understood that he wasn't interested in the film because of its Oscar nomination or its international success. It was about the film's content…. The way he talked about it moved me deeply. He recognized its exploration of the danger of inherited trauma, fear, and narratives of cruelty, and how remaining in a place of victimhood can keep that cycle alive.

"He also saw how the film gestures toward compassion for all people [and towards] humanity and hope. It meant a great deal to me that he saw in the film a tool for opening a space for dialogue in such a polarized moment."

Rest of the article here: https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2025-12-11/ty-article-magazine/.premium/oscar-nominated-israeli-animation-sparks-dialogue-between-jews-and-muslims-in-sweden/0000019a-fd77-d2e4-a1ff-fff7ab270000

The state of antisemitism in Sweden

As Sweden is marking 250 years of Jewish life, the reactions to the October 7th massacre, the war in Gaza and the tone of the rhetoric in the public debate are reasons to be concerned about Swedish antisemitism. But what is the true extent of this scourge, what is its impact on Sweden’s Jewish community, and how is it being addressed by the authorities? By placing these issues in a broader historical context, David Stavrou’s investigation, which we are publishing as part of our partnership with the DILCRAH, seeks to answer these questions.

Published in K. in English: https://k-larevue.com/en/sweden/ and in French: https://k-larevue.com/antisemitisme-suede/

In 1973 a young Moroccan army officer named Ahmed Rami arrived in Sweden asking for political asylum. He said he needed protection because he was part of an unsuccessful coup d’état in his homeland the previous summer. More than a decade later, after obtaining asylum in Sweden, Rami started broadcasting Radio Islam, a radio program which subsequently turned into a newspaper and later, a web-site. The focus of these enterprises became clear right at the beginning – it was not about Islam; it was about Jews. The radio program and the website featured some of antisemitism’s greatest hits; conspiracy theories about how Jews and Zionists control the world, Holocaust denial, Nazi propaganda, lists of influential Swedish Jews and Israel bashing. During the last three decades, Rami has been investigated, charged, convicted and fined for hate speech and hate crimes and his radio station was shut down by the authorities more than once. Still, now aged 78, Rami’s legacy lives on. He has published books, voiced support for Hezbollah and neo-Nazi groups, his website is still very much alive and the internet allows his work to continue.

Radio Islam is an important landmark in the history of Swedish antisemitism for several reasons. One of them is that the precedential trial which sent Rami to prison for six months also gave a small and relatively unknown Swedish organization called The Swedish Committee Against Antisemitism (SCAA, or SKMA in Swedish) an important role in the Swedish public arena. “SCAA is a religiously and politically unaffiliated NGO which was founded in 1983”, says Mathan Shastin Ravid, the organization’s office manager, “it was founded by a group of activists who wanted to raise awareness about antisemitism. It was a period with a clear wave of antisemitism in Sweden and other European countries during and after the Lebanon War in 1982. Antisemitism was not a new phenomenon in Sweden back then, but this was on a new scale, there were all these accusations with motives and images that targeted not only Israel, but Jews as a group. When the Radio Islam broadcasts started in the end of the eighties, it was clear to us that the radio station was a megaphone for anti-Jewish hatred and propaganda. On the basis of SCAA´s report to Sweden’s Chancellor of Justice, Rami was convicted of hate speech. But it was clear that in those days we stood pretty much alone. Not many people understood the problem, people did not want to talk about it and there were many known figures who came to Rami’s defence saying it was only criticism of Israel, not antisemitism”.

A lot has changed in Sweden since then and SCAA probably has an important part in the change. Shastin Ravid says that since the nineties, the organization has become more than just an activist watchdog. It now also focuses on education. “These days we stand on two legs”, he explains, “one of them is monitoring, information and advocacy, as we try to follow what is happening in Sweden and the world and follow the Swedish and international debate regarding antisemitism. We then react when we see antisemitism in different forms. The other leg is education. We have educational programs for different target groups such as teachers and pupils in Swedish schools, journalists and politicians. We also work with some governmental authorities like the police, which often lack a deeper knowledge of contemporary antisemitism and how it spreads. It is my understanding that there is more awareness in this area today than there was ten years ago and that positive things are happening as part of a higher level of knowledge and consciousness in general in Swedish society today when it comes to antisemitism. But there is still much work to do..”

When Shastin Ravid is asked for an up-to-date description of antisemitism in Sweden, he starts by saying that more research is needed to get a better understanding of the problem. That said, it is clear that in many ways Sweden is not different from other countries. “The development in Sweden is connected to global developments”, he says, “antisemitic conspiracy theories have been spread and legitimized by important political actors in recent years. In Europe we have for example seen it in countries like Hungary and Poland amongst right-wing nationalist parties and governments, but we have also seen it in other countries including the US where amongst others Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the MAGA movement have legitimized and spread antisemitic propaganda. This global phenomenon has affected Sweden too and has sparked hate speech and hate crimes. And then there is, of course, the strong global wave of antisemitism after Hamas’ attack in Israel on the 7^th of October 2023 and the war in Gaza. It is not the first time an escalation of the Israel-Palestinian conflict triggers antisemitism in Sweden and other countries, but the level of propaganda, hate, threats and attacks against Jews has been unusually high.”

“Studies show that antisemitism in the form of negative beliefs and attitudes towards Jews exists, in varying degrees, in all Swedish society, in many different groups and milieus. Within Swedish mainstream politics, the problem has long been visible in the right-wing nationalist Sweden Democrats party. For years, the party has tried to portray itself as a party which opposes antisemitism and is pro-Israel, but antisemitism continues to be a problem in the party. We often find high- and low-level representatives of the party spreading antisemitic propaganda and we see many connections between the party and right-wing and even Nazi extremists. In addition, the Sweden-Democrats do not deal with antisemitism within their ranks unless they are exposed by the media, and even then, there are many cases of people within the party who have kept their jobs after they were exposed”. The party’s proclaimed “Zero Tolerance” policy towards racism and extremism, including antisemitism, Shastin Ravid says, is “a joke”.

“But the nationalist and populist right is just part of the problem. Antisemitism does, for example, also regularly appear within the pro-Palestine movement and parts of the Swedish left, where it is often related to Israel and the Israel-Palestinian conflict. In these circles there is sometimes a denial or an unwillingness to see the problem of antisemitism, sometimes rooted in the misperception that Jews are “white” and therefore cannot be victims of racism. In the last year, there has been a big debate in Sweden about the fact that several representatives of the Swedish Left Party have spread antisemitic propaganda, many times on social media. And when criticized, those party representatives have been backed by many others within and around the party who have denied that the propaganda is antisemitic. The SCAA and many others have strongly criticized all of this, and the fact that the party leadership many times has been slow to act and condemn the spread of such anti-Jewish racism and those party members who defend and excuse it.”

“And of course, movements linked to radical Islamism must also be taken into account”, Shastin Ravid adds. According to him, antisemitism is most virulent within those movements and Nazi and other right-wing extremist movements. “For all of them, antisemitism is an ideological foundation, a “worldview,” a way of understanding and describing events both locally and globally. Jews are constantly portrayed as conspirators and blamed for all the world’s ills”. Furthermore, Shastin Ravid adds, “antisemitism has long been a weapon of regimes in the Middle East, where it is deeply rooted, openly expressed, and legitimized. The spread of this type of propaganda via the internet by regimes such as Iran has contributed to the globalization of this hatred. Recently, it was revealed that the Iranian regime is suspected of having planned to murder Swedish Jews, among them Aron Verständig, the chair of the Official Council of Swedish Jewish Communities (Judiska Centralrådet). According to the Swedish Security Services (Säpo), Iran has also recruited Swedish criminal networks to carry out attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets. The Swedish National Centre for Terrorist Threat Assessment (NCT) has reported that the biggest terror threats in Sweden come from violent Islamists and right-wing extremists, which both have Jews and Jewish institutions as some of their primary targets”.

Even without physical violence, Swedish antisemitism is present in the public sphere and one of its main outlets are the numerous demonstrations in support of the Palestinians and denouncing the “genocide” in Gaza. The days right after October 7th, and before the Israeli ground attack on Gaza began, were a good example. While the massacre in southern Israel was still ongoing, there were a couple of spontaneous demonstrations in southern Sweden which included music, dancing and convoys of cars honking their horns in support of the Hamas attack. Right after that, in the course of one weekend in Stockholm, three different organizations demonstrated separately but with similar slogans. A part from the mainstream Pro-Palestinian movements, there were more radical organizations on the streets. One was Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamic group advocating the creation of a caliphate governed by Sharia law from Uzbekistan to Morocco, with a small branch in Sweden. It was granted permission to demonstrate despite being banned in several countries. Next came the Nordic Resistance Movement, a neo-Nazi group with a few hundred members who demonstrated in support of the Hamas attack. They were followed by the Revolutionary Communist Youth, which claims that Palestinians have the right to “fight by all means against the occupying power to liberate their land.” The latter described the October 7 attacks as an act of liberation that “caught the Zionists in their beds.” Both organizations, one neo-Nazi and the other Marxist-Leninist, support the Palestinian slogan calling for “crushing Zionism.”

Since then, there have been numerous demonstrations in Sweden, many of them on a weekly basis. These demonstrations are legal, the organizers deny that they feature antisemitic content and they are seen by many Swedes as legitimate opposition to Israel and solidarity with Palestinians. However, they often include slogans which are considered antisemitic by many such as supporting a “global intifada” and “crushing Zionism”, promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories and calling for a “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea”.

Still, demonstrations are not the main concern when it comes to current Swedish antisemitism. There have been numerous reports of activists who have used school classes, universities and even pre-schools to spread radical anti-Israeli political propaganda which is seen by many as antisemitic, the culture world has been full of calls for boycotting Israel and ending cooperation with Israeli artists, the BDS movement which was hardly present in Sweden before the war has been publicly active in promoting boycotts against companies which they claim are complicit with Israel’s “illegal occupation and apartheid politics” and parts of Swedish academia have become hostile to Jewish and Israeli students. In Gothenburg University, for example, activists were allowed to take over the premises of the university’s art and design school and they distributed Hamas propaganda. In Stockholm, Lund and Uppsala there have been reports in Swedish media of pro-Palestinian encampments and so-called “liberated zones” which together with harsh rhetoric from members of senior university staff who are also political activists made students hide their Jewish identity and caused concerns about their safety and well-being.

Demonstration in Stockholm, June 2025

How prevalent are antisemitic crimes?

“Many Jews in Sweden have experienced antisemitism in one way or another”, Shastin Ravid says, “we need more research, but studies have indicated that many Swedish Jews have been targeted by antisemitism and many of them have not reported these incidents. This is also true for other hate crimes, most of them are probably never reported to the police”. Some of the studies Shastin Ravid is referring to were made by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rådet, Brå). They show that there is a small and inconsistent increase in the number of reported antisemitic hate crimes over the years, but some years there is a sharp rise. “These are often the years when the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has escalated, like the last war in Gaza. According to a study from Brå, there was a sharp rise in reported antisemitic hate crimes during the last part of 2023, almost 5 times as many as during the same period the year before”.

But other global events may also have been important in this respect. “The pandemic, for example, brought at least two kinds of antisemitic effects”, Shastin Ravid says, “First, there were accusations against the Jews, who were blamed for starting the pandemic and for profiting from it. Then, there were parts of the anti-vaccination movement which instrumentalized and diminished the Holocaust, claiming that they are treated the same way as the Jews in Nazi Germany. The war in Ukraine also triggers antisemitism on a global scale as do the discussion about Quran burnings and the debate about migration and refugees which fuels the antisemitic so-called replacement theory. These days antisemitic propaganda is often spread online with code words replacing the word Jews. Instead, it is Zionists or Globalist or specific names like Soros or Rothschild. These words are used globally as symbols of a big Jewish conspiracy, and they are widely spread in Sweden too”.

Another study Shastin Ravid speaks of was made by a government agency called The Living History Forum (Forum för Levande historia), which was founded in the beginning of the 2000s to “work for democracy and equality between all people, using lessons learned from the Holocaust”. According to Shastin Ravid, the study from 2020, showed that there had been a decline in antisemitic attitudes and notions over a period of 15 years, but that antisemitism still exists within different parts of the population. “I think that this is an important point to make”, he says, “the study showed that around 5 % of the respondents displayed antisemitic attitudes with a stronger intensity, which is a rather low figure compared to many other countries. However, if you broaden it and look at the group of people who agreed with one or more of the study’s antisemitic statements, the number is 34 %. This does not mean that 34 % can be said to be antisemitic, but it indicates that antisemitic ideas exist among a bigger part of the population than many think. We should not only focus on the most extreme groups. According to the study, higher levels of antisemitic beliefs correlated among other things with, and were more common amongst people who are: older, have lower levels of education and have a low trust in public institutions. Antisemitic beliefs were also more common among people who have sexist and anti-immigrant attitudes, people who sympathize with the Sweden Democrats party, people who were born outside Sweden or Europe, and people with a Muslim religious affiliation. Another interesting factor is that traditional and Holocaust related antisemitic beliefs tended to be slightly more common among men, and Israel-related antisemitic attitudes and notions tended to be slightly more common among women”. However, Shastin Ravid points out, the study is now a few years old, and many things have happened since that could affect the results of the next study, which is supposed to be published in 2026.

One group which is particularly exposed to antisemitic hatred is the group of school pupils and teachers who in many cases are scared to be open with their Jewish identity. “We have studies from among other places Malmö and Stockholm which show that there are serious problems with antisemitism in some Swedish schools. Sometimes it is related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, sometimes the word Jew is used as a curse and sometimes we see antisemitic conspiracy theories which fascinate youngsters. We also see jokes about the Holocaust, swastikas on benches or lockers, and Nazi salutes. Jewish pupils often feel that their teachers and schools do not take the matter of antisemitism seriously, and they say that there is a lack of knowledge and support. This is something that many Swedish youngsters have told us at the SCAA through the years”.

Sweden is home to the largest Jewish community in Scandinavia. It’s estimated that about 15,000 Jews live in the country which has a population of just over ten million. That said, there are probably many more Swedes who have a Jewish background, as Jewish immigration to Sweden dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries and many have married into Swedish families. The largest community in the country is the one in the capital Stockholm which has three synagogues, including the conservative Great Synagogue adjacent to the Raoul Wallenberg and Holocaust monuments and an office building which houses various Jewish organizations. A few minutes’ walk away, there’s a relatively new cultural centre called “Bajit” which houses a Jewish primary school, a Jewish kindergarten and a variety of Jewish activities for all ages, as well as a Kosher shop and a café. Smaller Jewish communities and associations exist in Malmö, Gothenburg and a couple of other smaller towns. Sweden’s Jewish communities are united under an umbrella organization, the Official Council of Swedish Jewish Communities (Judiska Centralrådet) which usually takes part in national discussions concerning Jewish life in the Swedish Parliament, Government and other authorities.

Since the problem of antisemitism isn’t new to Swedish society, it’s no surprise that in recent years the Swedish government has made many attempts to address it. After decades of ignoring the problem, dismissing and repressing it, recent Swedish governments have put it on their agenda and have tried many different approaches. Petra Kahn Nord who served as the World Jewish Congress’ representative in the Nordic countries, says that the current Swedish government appointed a special inter-ministerial task force in order to combat antisemitism and improve the conditions for Jewish life in Sweden. “This government task force was set up to be a ‘one point of contact’ authority, which is something we’ve suggested before”, she says, “it was founded in January 2023 and the first issue that it focused on was government funding for security for Jewish institutions like synagogues and schools. The second issue was, and still is, addressing antisemitism”. Kahn Nord explains that the previous government had the political will to secure security funding, but the budget mechanism didn’t really work. The current government, however, addressed the issue, increased funding and gave additional funding after October 7th. But protection against violent antisemitic incidents isn’t all that’s needed.

In 2021 Sweden hosted The Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism. The conference, hosted by then-Prime-Minister, Social-Democrat Stefan Löfven, asked the participating countries and organization to make concrete pledges that would strengthen Holocaust remembrance and tackle Holocaust distortion, Holocaust denial and contemporary antisemitism. The Malmö forum was seen by many as a natural continuation to the steps another Social-Democratic Prime-Minister, Göran Persson, made twenty years earlier. Persson founded what is now called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and initiated the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust which brought together political leaders, state officials, religious leaders, survivors, educators, and historians from around the globe. When Löfven initiated the 2021 events, one of Sweden’s pledges was to form an inquiry on strengthening Jewish life in the country. The idea was that fighting antisemites is one thing, but making Jewish life flourish was another subject. One that has been neglected for many years.

This indeed happened and various issues which Jews in Sweden were concerned about were discussed seriously. These included the threats of illegalizing Jewish circumcision and banning the import of Kosher meat which were supported by some political parties. Another important issue was the status of Jewish schools in Sweden which doesn’t have almost any real private schools. There are so-called independent schools, including a couple of Jewish ones, within a charter system, but because of reports of radicalization in some of Sweden’s independent Muslim schools, new legislation was put in place which affected Jewish schools too. The new legislation imposed the definition of “denominational schools”, and with-it necessary restrictions, on existing Jewish schools. Another concern was an initiative to limit the establishment of new denominational schools. These were all concerns in the Swedish-Jewish pre-October 7th reality. Community leaders were saying then that “Swedish Jews may be able to survive a terror attack, but not legislation forbidding Brit Mila or Jewish schools”.

Today, after October 7th, it’s clear that the majority of political parties, and certainly the ones which are part of the Swedish Government, are committed to addressing these Jewish concerns. Antisemitism, however, is not necessarily a problem which the government can easily address since its origins are well-rooted and widespread in many parts of Swedish society. All recent Swedish governments have therefore realized that combating antisemitism is as complicated as it’s important. And it’s a work in progress. Petra Kahn Nord mentions two major shifts in the last few years. “First, before 2015 it was not acceptable to talk about antisemitism which came from immigrant groups from the Middle-East. This made members of the Jewish community feel abandoned. Sweden has now changed and it’s now possible to talk about it and deal with the problem”, Kahn Nord says, “the second shift has to do with the fact that the populist right-wing Sweden-Democrats party is supporting the government. So far, however, the party hasn’t caused any policy shifts aimed at the Jewish minority. But October 7th created a new reality. We’ve seen an increase in the number of antisemitic incidents in schools and universities, we’ve seen politicians, especially in the Swedish Left, who spread antisemitic propaganda and we’ve seen support for Hamas in demonstrations and online”. Kahn Nord says that schools and social media are a particular concern. “The problem in these arenas is serious”, she claims, “and it can’t be dealt with by using old “action plans” that previous governments suggested. Many of these plans, including pledges made in Malmö four years ago, focused on Holocaust education and educational strategies against racism in general, as opposed to antisemitism as a specific phenomenon. The Malmö Pledges, for example, included the pledge to establish a new Holocaust Museum in Stockholm (which has indeed been opened since then) and another to contribute 5.5 million SEK to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation. “There’s a Swedish tendency to focus on dead Jews”, Petra Kahn Nord says, “perhaps now, especially after October 7th, it’s time to focus on the living ones”.

And indeed, when it comes to living Jews and real concrete Jewish communities, combating antisemitism and taking measures to improve Jewish depends on strong support and clear stands by governments.

In Sweden, the subject of antisemitism has been on the agenda for decades and different governments have handled it in different ways. Today, the government minister who holds the relevant portfolio is Parisa Liljestrand, a forty-two-year-old minister from the center-right Moderate party. Liljestrand, immigrated to Sweden as a young child from Iran and worked as a teacher and school head-master before getting involved in local politics. In 2022 she received her first post on the national political scene and became Sweden’s Minister of Culture. In an interview conducted in her Stockholm office she explains that one of her responsibilities is addressing issues connected with Sweden’s five national minorities. The minorities and their languages, which are considered official minority languages in Sweden, were recognized in the year 2000 and they include Jews and Yiddish; Roma and Romani Chib; the Sami and the Sami language; the Swedish Finns and Finnish and the Tornedalers and their Meänkieli language.

“Our government was appointed in October 2022 and the Prime Minister made it clear, as early as his first government statement, that strengthening Jewish life and working against antisemitism would be one of our priorities”, she says, “When we started our work, we decided that we need to understand what’s been done in Sweden today and to listen to the Jewish organizations which are active in Sweden. We wanted to understand what they think is needed. What we found out was that a lot of important work is being done, but there are things which still don’t work and there are things which are lacking. Sweden ranks well in global measurements of antisemitism, but there’s still widespread antisemitism in Sweden which we need to actively fight. This became even more evident after Hamas’s horrific attack on October 7, 2023. As in many other countries, we have seen the threat perception towards Swedish Jews increase, as has open antisemitism. The government takes this very seriously.

But it is not enough to work against antisemitism. We need to strengthen the possibility to live a free Jewish life, both in terms of Jewish culture and in terms of Jewish religious life. This is why we need to gather the work that’s done by different government ministries and by Jewish organizations. When we talked to the organizations, we found that it was sometimes hard to understand who’s responsible for what issue and it was important to make sure that things don’t end up in the wrong place. That’s why we founded the Government Task Force for Jewish Life as an inter-governmental work group which, beside the Prime Minister’s office, has eight more government offices represented in it”.

When asked if the fact that her government is supported by a party with roots in neo-Nazism doesn’t affect her attempts to fight antisemitism, Liljestrand tells a story of one of her meetings. “I met a Jewish father who told me about his son who went shopping while he was wearing a necklace with a Star of David. The father said that when the boy came to the cashier, the person who was working there told him that he was not welcome in the shop. This story really hurts. This can’t be our reality. This isn’t Sweden. We have a clear mission – making Sweden a free country to live in and supporting those groups who cannot live a de-facto free life here. So, I don’t feel the Sweden-Democrats are stopping me from doing this. I understand that there’s a concern, but I’m clear, and the government is clear in its message. One must remember that antisemitism is about gathering and capitalizing violence from various directions. That’s what makes it different from regular racism”.

**Parisa Liljestrand, Photo by Ninni Andersson Regeringskansliet**

Part of the violence Liljestrand is talking about is online and much of it is aimed at young people who have to grow up with it. “It’s extremely serious when antisemitism becomes a natural part of day-to-day life and it isn’t limited to the physical space and instead it’s spread digitally”, Liljestrand says, “it’s worrying and we need to fight it and work towards the goal of not having another generation which is exposed to the same kind of difficulties living a Jewish life or the same kind of antisemitic hate which previous generations were exposed to”.

Liljestrand seems to be serious about this particular aspect of her job. “I myself, with my background, know exactly what it’s like to live in a society which treats you differently if you have a different skin color or if you have a different culture”, she says, “I know what it’s like to fight your way into society and have the will to be part of it while still keeping a part of your culture and heritage”.

When it comes to antisemitism and the struggle against it, Sweden is indeed an interesting case. For much of its post war history, antisemitism wasn’t taken very seriously. Neo-Nazi movements operated freely while the close ties to Nazi Germany were ignored. This came together with a widespread ignorance about the Holocaust, antisemitic attitudes within the Swedish elite and free import of antisemitism with large waves of immigration from other countries. Then, in the last couple of decades, all that changed. Sweden became a world leader of Holocaust education and combating antisemitism. At least that’s what it presents itself as being. But are the museums, task forces, international conferences, research projects and educational initiatives really working?

On the one hand, it is clear that Sweden is much more aware of the problem and much better equipped to combat it than it has ever been. But any honest assessment of the situation must admit that, in many cases, Swedish schools and universities remain hostile dangerous places for Jewish students and teachers, who continue to suffer from harassment, social pressure and occasionally also violence, while teachers and principals avoid confronting the aggressors. It has been reported that in some schools, Shoah survivors haven’t been invited to share their stories because of the disrespect shown by some students.

Outside the education system, other problems remain unresolved. Although physical violence against Jewish targets is not common in Sweden, it has occurred and, according to police and the press, it remains possible. Molotov cocktails have been thrown at Jewish cemeteries, funeral homes, and synagogues, the Israeki embassy has been attacked and other cases of physical and verbal assaults against Jews have been documented.

The resurgence of pro-Palestinian demonstrations since October 7—where strongly antisemitic slogans, signs, and rhetoric have been documented—is also a cause for concern. The scale of the protests against singer Eden Golan’s participation in the Eurovision 2024 final in Malmö made international headlines, but the truth is that although those demonstrations may have been the biggest, they weren’t the most aggressive.

For many Jews who live in Sweden it’s not about the size of the demonstration and not about the legitimate right to demonstrate. Anyone who’s uncomfortable with these demonstrations can just avoid them. The problem is that when Sweden’s Jews see thousands of people who are collectively calling Israel, which is an important part of their identity, the worse things in the world and promoting a very high level of hate, they know that in that crowd there may be familiar faces – perhaps their children’s pre-school teacher or their local clinic’s nurse or doctor. And it’s not only that. The separation that some of the demonstrators try to make between criticizing Israel and attacking Jews doesn’t always work. When demonstrators wanted to burn an Israeli flag in Malmö in November 2023, they didn’t get on a train and go to Israel’s embassy in Stockholm. They did it outside the local synagogue. A couple of months later protesters from a group called ”Together for Palestine” chanted anti-Israeli slogans at people who were entering Stockholm’s Great synagogue for a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony. Some of the people who encountered this were Holocaust survivors. The demonstrators demanded that Sweden’s Jews will denounce Israel and its war in Gaza. These events send a message that 250 years after Jews were officially allowed to live and create a community in Sweden, their legitimacy is now conditional. If they speak out against their historic homeland and its government, they are tolerated. If not, all hell may to break loose.

A look at the Radio Islam website is a thought-provoking experience. It features lengthy texts about subjects like how Jews have controlled Sweden for centuries, how they “instrumentalize the Holocaust” and how racism, hatred and cruelty are the driving forces of the Torah and the Talmud. In a way this brings us full circle. Sweden has gone a long way fighting antisemitism since Radio Islam was persecuted back in the eighties. Since then, Swedish governments, Jewish organizations and civil society organizations have turned Sweden into a country known for its rigorous combat against antisemitism. However, with populist and racist political movements on the rise, with Islamist propaganda on and off-line, with an increasingly aggressive discourse against Israel and Zionism, demonstrations, boycotts, and burnings of flags and books on a weekly basis, it’s now clearer than ever that the fight against antisemitism still has a long way to go.

Swedish Teachers Use Schools for Spreading Political Propagand

Swedish school curriculum and school laws require factual accuracy, objectivity, and scientific basis from all teachers. Nevertheless, more than once or twice, Swedish teachers who are also political activists use tax-funded schools for spreding their political propaganda.

Published in Swedish in Svenska Dagbladet: https://www.svd.se/a/vg1455/larare-utnyttjar-skolan-for-propaganda

It was an ordinary Friday in January at an ordinary high school in Stockholm. At the end of a religious studies lesson, which was dedicated to self-study in preparation for a test, the teacher asked the students to direct their attention to a film.

The film showed a speech lasting about 20 minutes. Although it was supposed to be a lesson about Judaism, the film strangely wasn't about Jewish theology, Jewish traditions, Jewish texts, Jewish holidays, or Jewish history. Instead, it showed a radical political speech given in France in May 2024. It was about 'Israel's genocide, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes in Gaza' and Zionism as a murderous ideology that specializes in killing women and infants. The speaker also claimed that the USA, the UK, and France are 'fascists, neo-Nazis, and Israel’s best friends' and that 'there is no freedom of speech in Europe.'

The speaker, a self-declared 'anti-Zionist Jew' from the UK, referred to Hamas terrorists as 'real freedom fighters.' About Israelis, he said, 'they are not only not Jewish, they are also not human,' adding that 'a nation like Israel has no right to exist.'

Of course, the speaker did not mention the genocidal-like Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, nothing about the women, children, and elderly taken hostage, nothing about the lack of democracy and human rights in the Palestinian autonomous areas, or about Islamist terrorism and antisemitism, which have been characteristics of the Palestinian national movement since the 1930s.

Given all this, it is clear that the film did not belong in a religious studies lesson. However, according to a student who was there, the film was shown without context, without discussion, without questions, and without any explanation (except for the claim that it showed 'not all Jews are Zionists').

Moreover, the teacher's deep involvement in the issue and the teacher's personal views became clear as the students watched the video. It included sections with standing ovations from the audience. Belive it or not, one of the people seen cheering in the film was the Swedish teacher, making it clear where the teacher stands politically. When asked about it, the teacher confirmed this.

The incident appears to be yet another case of political activism in a Swedish school, which harms individual students and involves the misuse of the taxpayer-funded school system to spread extreme ideologies. In this case, the teacher is also a union representative and one of the organizers of a discussion evening about Gaza, held in Stockholm last May. As one of 'the union’s internationally responsible officers,' the teacher gave the other teachers an introduction and explained the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The teacher, who has also expressed extremely radical views in other contexts, is clearly not suitable to present a balanced view of the conflict. Yet, the teacher was allowed to do so for other teachers. This may be one of the reasons for other cases where extremist political views have been part of teaching in Stockholm's schools.

Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, Swedish schools have seen many such cases. Last May, SvD published an article about preschool teachers who imposed their political activism on 4- and 5-year-olds. At one preschool in Stockholm, for example, the children made jewelry with paint and beads in the colors of the Palestinian flag and handprints, which they placed on white sheets of paper with the heading 'Support Palestine.' According to a post on social media, the preschool was also involved in collecting money for Palestinian groups. In Jönköping, a couple of preschool teachers had children draw watermelons to 'show love and solidarity with Palestine.'

Older students in 39 Swedish schools were given their share of political propaganda from another direction. According to another article in SvD, these schools are 'partner schools' of Amnesty, an organization deeply involved in political activism focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and far from impartial. These schools use the 'Amnesty model' for teacher training, themed days, reading materials, and lectures. They even participate in global campaigns. Amnesty is known as an organization that disproportionately criticizes Israel, supports boycott campaigns against Israel, almost completely ignores attacks on Israeli civilians, uses information from Hamas propaganda, and some of its overseas partners have connections to terrorist organizations and Islamist movements.

A student at a high school in Stockholm shared that since the lessons on the Israel-Palestine conflict started, they feel 'I have to go to school to defend Israel. It's not that the teacher is lying, but it is very one-sided. For example, we had two lessons on the Palestinian Nakba and only half a slide about the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries.' When students were given texts on the subject, they received study questions like: 'What support is there to describe Israel as an apartheid state?' 'It’s uncomfortable,' says the student, who is concerned about their classmates. 'I feel like I need to present the other side. The others in the class don’t know the full picture.'

A mother of another student shared that her son had lost motivation for his social studies because of how the war was presented. The teacher continuously referred to all of Israel as occupied land and presented Hamas as one of what seemed to be two reasonable alternatives: a terrorist organization or an anti-colonial liberation movement.

Sometimes, Swedish teachers have not spoken about the topic at all but failed to protect students from politically motivated attacks. A few weeks after the war began, classmates of a Jewish boy in a primary school in southern Sweden asked him who he supported in the war. The 10-year-old boy replied that he supported Israel. The two others drew a crossed-out Israeli flag, crumpled it up, and threw it at him while saying, 'We hate Israel.' The teacher present in the classroom did nothing until the student’s mother contacted them.

The mother of a 16-year-old boy from a Jewish family attending a high school in western Sweden shared another disturbing story. She says a girl stood up in class and screamed, 'Slaughter, rape, and torture all Jews' at her son. The teacher did not react, did not stop the girl, or report her to the principal. The other students were also silent

Returning back to the Stockholm case from January, the school refused to disclose what sanction, if any, was taken against the teacher who used a high school classroom to spread extreme propaganda against Israel. The school’s principal says that the school does not comment on potential actions regarding individual staff matters. But it was confirmed that the teacher is still teaching at the school.Thus other teachers, students and parents will have to keep guessing – they know that the teacher exploited authority, a power position, taxpayer money and school infrastructure to advocate for political views that have nothing to do with the subject matter of the teaching. They also know that school curriculum and school laws require all teachers to be factual, objective, and based on scientific foundations. Still, we'll all have to stay in the dark when it comes to the implications of not doing so.

It is important to emphasize that the problem here is not discussing sensitive topics or censoring anyone. Different opinions are welcome, discussions in schools are important, and teachers, like everyone else, have the right to their political beliefs. The problem is the abuse of Swedish schools for pure political propaganda at the expence of the students and Swedish society.

One of the students who took part in the lesson in January has a Jewish background. She is now being taught by another teacher in religious studies. Since the school in this case reacted by separating the teacher from the student, even though it is clear that the problem lies with the teacher and not with the student, one must ask: would propaganda in teaching go unchallenged or without consequences if it concerned something other than Israel and Jews?

In Kulturhuset's Defence

Some places, the ones where we send our young children, the places where we treat our pain, and those where we invest our shared resources, should be free from polarizing content. Schools, hospitals, and clinics, and yes, if it’s public and taxpayer-funded – even Kulturhuset – have no place for Quran burnings, no place for NMR marches, and absolutely no place for polarizing political propaganda. Not even if 15-year-olds created it.

An article from Kvartal (January 22) tells of an incident in the Stockholm suburb of Husby last spring. High school students from a local school exhibited paintings they created in the foyer of Kulturhuset, which is owned by the City of Stockholm and shares premises with Husby’s public culture school. The paintings were the result of lessons on post-colonial theories and art at the students' school. A few hours after they were displayed, the paintings were taken down. Kulturhuset stated that the paintings were “strongly anti-Israeli” and “bloody, political, and violent.”

Reactions were swift. The school's principal defended the students' right to express their opinions, and the art teachers felt that the decision was a form of censorship. Lars Nittve, former director of Stockholm’s Modern Art Museum and London’s Tate Modern, wondered how “scary” drawings and paintings could be, and Makode Linde criticized concerns over art that distanced itself from the “ongoing genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine.”

Some of the paintings that provoked reactions were published in the media: a Palestinian flag over a map of Israel, and images depicting slavery and colonialism in Africa. One painting was not mentioned. This painting depicts one image of three men standing over a fourth man who is lying down, and another of two faceless soldiers leaning on a Palestinian flag. It’s unclear whether the flag is covering anything, but it is obvious who the soldiers are – they have armbands, similar to the ones Nazi soldiers wore with swastikas. On the armbands, there is an Israeli flag.

According to the Kvartal article, there is no documented evidence from Kulturhuset that anyone was upset by the exhibition.

However, it wasn’t hard to find such a person. “I came to Kulturhuset and saw that paintings were being hung on the wall. When I looked at them, my heart ached, I felt cold, and I started trembling with shock over seeing the hatred,” said a person with Jewish background who was at Kulturhuset when the paintings were hung up and chose to remain anonymous because he is worried about his safety.

For those who are not familiar with Middle Eastern politics, it might seem strange, but a map of Israel covered by a Palestinian map is as loaded and shocking as a map of Poland covered by a Nazi flag or a map of Ukraine covered by with a Russian flag. It symbolizes ethnic cleansing for Israelis. Paintings depicting Israeli soldiers as murderers support the narrative that Israel is the aggressor and the Palestinians are the victims, while ignoring the October 7 massacre, Israeli hostages, and rocket attacks on Israel. The context of post-colonialism challenges Israel's legitimacy as a state and its right to exist.

It doesn’t matter if these claims are true or whether such opinions should be allowed to be expressed. This is not about censorship or freedom of speech. Yes, students should be encouraged to think critically and creatively. Yes, we must encourage an open public debate. But the issue here is a different one – the relationship between publicly funded institutions and controversial political content.

Kulturhuset manager, Malin Dahlberg, pointed out that there is a responsibility to create a safe and comfortable environment in public spaces. According to her, removing only the most problematic paintings would be insulting to those who created them, which is why all the paintings were taken down. Leaving them up could also expose the students to a media storm that no 15-year-old could handle.

Dahlberg is right.

Sweden is a polarized country where people have strong opinions and personal connections to the conflict in Gaza. People are bombarded with extreme views on social media. Some believe it is an Israeli genocide, while others see it as an Islamist holy war of extermination against Israel. Many have relatives affected by the violence. Many are angry and scared.

These people have something in common. They all need healthcare, education, and welfare. We must be able to offer safe spaces for this. There are many places for political activism – squares for demonstrations, galleries for political art, youth movements for youth activism, organizations for humanitarian work, and media for political debates.

The Far-right Activist Who Sparked an Imaginary Pogrom in Stockholm

The question of whether the attack on Israelis in Amsterdam last month was an isolated incident or the beginning of a trend is critical to Israel's relationship with the rest of the world and the future of Europe's Jews. And according to several Israeli media outlets, two days after the incident in Amsterdam, a similar incident occurred in another European capital.

Published in Haaretz: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-12-12/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-far-right-activist-who-sparked-an-imaginary-pogrom-in-stockholm/00000193-b770-dd53-a3f3-f77b2ee60000

The online news site Mako reported that Jews were attacked "in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, during a ceremony commemorating the Kristallnacht pogrom." It said anti-Israel demonstrators yelled derogatory names at the ceremony's participants, snatched their Israeli flags, tore them up and threw them into the river.

The report was accompanied by a video titled "the difficult footage from Sweden." It shows police officers chasing a woman and arresting her. Channel 14 News added analysis and superlatives. "Antisemitism is having a feast day," it reported. "Pro-Palestinians brutally attacked Jews who gathered to mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht in Stockholm." The same news item, with some variations, appeared in other media outlets and was widely circulated on social media.

Meanwhile, in the real world, what happened in Stockholm is indeed troubling, but for different reasons. First, no ceremony commemorating Kristallnacht took place there. Second, no Jews were attacked. Third, this false information was disseminated by people who counted on the media to spread the lie, thereby providing them with free political propaganda. And they were right. The Swedish media refused to buy the goods, but the Israeli media sure did (I might add, for the benefit of Mako's investigative reporters, that Stockholm doesn't have a river).

What actually happened in Stockholm that night was revealed by Swedish investigative reporter Jonathan Leman in Expo magazine (which defines itself as fighting "racist ideas, myths and conspiracy theories"). On the evening of November 9, a pro-Palestinian march took place in central Stockholm. Such demonstrations have been happening in Sweden for more than a year now. The marchers chant slogans that some people (myself included) see as antisemitic, and they are filled with hatred for Israel. But usually, they are completely nonviolent.

This demonstration was the same, aside from one difference – the protest march was joined by a guest riding a bike, who was widely filmed by videographers broadcasting from the scene. One of them is known to work with media outlets identified with the Sweden Democrats, a populist right-wing party that has a neo-Nazi past.

The demonstrators immediately realized that the bike rider wasn't one of theirs. She was an older woman who spoke with the videographers and attracted attention because she had an Israeli flag attached to her bike (as well as the Finnish flag and Iran's flag from before the Islamic Revolution). She also had a loudspeaker through which she played Hebrew songs like "Am Yisrael Chai" and a megaphone via which she proclaimed that "Hamas murdered all the homosexuals in Gaza" and "Hamas planned to annihilate all the Jews."

At first glance, she appeared to be a courageous warrior who supports Israel. And that is indeed how she was depicted in reports from the videographers who were there. But this isn't true. As Expo discovered, the woman is actually a far-right activist. On social media, she spreads a mixture of antisemitism, Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, an Islamic takeover of Europe and the destructive power of Sweden's Jews, who "want to destroy the Nordic peoples" and constitute "a metastasizing cancer."

So why was she demonstrating against the Palestinians and seemingly supporting Israel? Anyone who tries to impose order on this eccentric activist's political theories will discover that her support for Israel stems from her hatred of Jews and Muslims in Europe. Despite her ideological hatred of Zionism, she wants the Nordic states to be free of Muslims and Jews, so she supports their expulsion. This isn't love of Zion, but radical racism and antisemitism.

The bike rider's appearance at the demonstration had the potential to cause an outbreak of rioting. But that didn't happen. Granted, there was some anger, but the organizers worked to calm it. At the end of the demonstration, one demonstrator grabbed the woman's Israeli flag, threw it off a bridge and was arrested on the spot. The headline the right-wing media gave this incident was "On the day we remember Kristallnacht, a Palestinian activist stole an Israeli flag and threw it into the water." What happened next is fascinating. People posting on numerous X, Instagram and Facebook accounts in several countries began adding details, limited only by their imaginations.

A ceremony that never took place was invented, groups of Jews who were attacked were created ex nihilo, one flag became many flags, and on some accounts, it was no longer flags that thrown into the freezing water of the Baltic Sea, but Jews. Anger boiled over, and there were thousands of shares and comments in groups with hundreds of thousands of members. When all this reached the Israeli media, the makeover was complete – the inventions became news. Even their rejection of the original videographer's false information didn't change anything.

Two conclusions can be drawn from the incident in Stockholm. First, the support Israel's government has found in Europe's far right is a broken reed. Beneath the hatred of Arabs and the nationalist fervor that the government likes so much lies a thick layer of antisemitism that cannot be mistaken. Second, the battle that honest politicians on all sides must join is the battle against the agents of chaos who create a world in which instead of truth and lies, there are only narratives.

The worship of likes and internet traffic, media outlets that dispense with checking facts and operators of trolls and bots aren't a threat to the opposition or the governing coalition. Rather, they are threat to the very existence of a free society.

The question of whether last month's attack on Israelis in Amsterdam was an isolated incident or the beginning of a trend remains critical. Yet anyone who reports on imaginary pogroms is not only undermining the media's credibility, but also creating a situation in which nobody will believe in or deal with the real ones.

Swedish Israel-Palestine Debate Won't Effect the War in Gaza

However, it can improve life for Jews, Israelis, Palestinians and Palestinian activists here in Sweden.

For almost a year, so-called pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Sweden have raised opposing reactions. According to some, they're a powerful sign of international solidarity. Others criticized them saying that they support terrorism and spread antisemitic propaganda. The common reply to this claim uses the term "smutskasta"(literally – throw dirt), meaning that calling the demonstrators antisemitic is a smear campaign design to de-legitimize them.

This started early on. A popular slogan of the global pro-Palestinien demonstrations is "From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free". Despite it's appealing and harmless sound, some claim that it's antisemitic since it implies that the Jewish state of Israel, which is currently between the (Jordan) river and the (Mediterranean) sea, will be violently annihilated. The answer was made by, amongst others, Shora Esmailian in Aftonbladet (November 2023) who said that this accusation is either ignorant or "a smear campaign against people and their quest for freedom and now also survival ".

Those who were persuaded that "From the River to the Sea" is a call for peace and harmony, may have been surprised when Sydsvenskan's Inas Hamdan and Jonas Nyren revealed what some of the demonstrators were shouting in Arabic. It turned out that it wasn't exactly calls for a cease fire and human rights. Instead, it was support for recognized terrorists and commitment to a violent struggle against any kind of compromise.

This time too, the comeback was accusing the accusers. " Sydsvenskan is now trying to discredit the organizers by insinuating their support for terrorism and speaking with double messages", Salahuddin Barakat, a famous Malmö immam, wrote claiming this is a result of islamofobia. Other Swedish pro-Palestinians went even further. In April Samidoun, an international "Palestinian prisoner solidarity network" which is active in Sweden and supports Hamas, claimed that authorities are aiming to " silence the movement promoting the legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance, especially the armed resistance". According to Samidoun, supporting armed resistance, which is a synonym for the massacre of Jews, is a natural right and preventing it is, once again, a silencing technique.

A pro-Palestinian demonstration in Malmö, May 2024

There are many more examples. A group of over 70 Swedish writers accused Swedish media of portraying Israel as a democracy fighting terrorist, while portraying Swedish protesters as "troublemakers or, in the worst case, anti-Semites" (Journalisten, August 2024). Another group, this time of 50 Lund academics, pointed the blame at Swedish politicians who instead of praising pro-Palestinian demonstrators as champions of democracy, call them "undemocratic, uncivilized and destructive", which is a "step in the development towards fascism" (Sydsvenskan, April 2024).

It's important to point out that this Swedish debate doesn’t really matter when it comes to the actual war in Gaza. The days when Swedish politicians, NGOs and diplomats could affect Middle-East affairs are over. In fact, they never really existed. Swedish demonstrators won't stop the war, bring Israeli leaders to the ICC or open the gates for humanitarian help in Rafah. But that doesn't mean they don't have an effect. They do. But it's not on foreign affairs – it's domestic.

This debate is a manifestation of everything wrong with Swedish discourse today – it's polarizing, it's full of fake news and conspiracy theories and lacks depth and complexity. and it's clear who the victims are. Demonstrations, boycotts, walk-outs, open letters and manifestations are affecting the sense of belonging and security of Jewish students and teachers in Swedish schools, they're effecting the debate climate on social media and work relations in the Swedish culture world, public sector and academia. This isn't a made-up problem; many Swedish Jews and Israelis are experiencing alienation from large parts of Swedish society.

But does the entire Swedish pro-Palestinian movement agree to dismiss criticism as "smutskastning", or will at least some of the thousands of demonstrators agree to enter a serious dialogue on this? Now, almost a year after the war started, it's time to reach some sort of understanding about what's considered antisemitic, undemocratic, uncivilized, and destructive. This will do absolutely nothing for the people of Israel and Gaza, but it may contribute a lot to Jews, Israelis, Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activists here in Sweden.

Just to get the debate started, here are three initial thoughts to be considered.

First, the idea that Israel is a colonizer state which shouldn't really exist and should be wiped of the map is antisemitic. One can quote Edward Said and Franz Fanon and make comparisons to Algeria or South-Africa, but it won't change the fact that Jews are natives to the land between the river and the sea and have been so since biblical times, many centuries before the Palestinians even existed. Despite post-colonial theories, the land of Israel is part of Jewish identity, history and culture and therefore the idea that "I don't have a problem with Jews, I only have a problem with Israel" is a fantasy based on a false idea about Jews (just like most other forms of antisemitism).

Second, the fact that there are some ultra-orthodox and some Marxist anti-Zionist Jews, doesn't mean that Zionism is an extremist or unauthentic manifestation of Judaism. In other words, Noam Chomsky represents Jews today in the same way that NMR represents Sweden. It's true that 150 years ago, the Zionist movement was a minority within European Jewry since most Jews though they could continue living in Europe. But then came Auschwitz. After that, Zionism became more or less a consensus. There are many kinds of Zionism – religious, secular, socialist, revisionist and populist, but the base is clear – Jews, like any other people, have a right to self-definition in a state of their own. Claiming you "don't have a problem with Jews, but you won't allow Zionist on your streets" is claiming that every people in the world have rights that jews don't have. If that's not antisemitism, what is?

And finally, Hamas is the new version of the genocidal wing of the Palestinian national movement which historically had a close ties with Nazi Germany. These days it's a modern movement, combining a conservative, fascist, chauvinist, fundamentalist, anti-democratic, homophobic and xenophobic ideology with Jihadism, high-tech disinformation campaigns, a financial empire of global investments, modern weapon systems and powerful alliances with the world's most tyrannical regimes. Many parts of the pro-Palestinian movements in Sweden support Hamas actively and spread its propaganda, while for Jews in this country, Hamas are today's Nazis. This would be a good thing to remember next time people with megaphones in a "peaceful demonstration" shout "Hela världen står med Hamas. Allahu Akbar".

Pro-Palestinian protesters, Stockholm, December, 2023

If there are people who march in "solidarity with Palestine" who don't support these ideas and are willing to make themselves heard and renounce their extremist partners, they may find surprising allies. These may include Jews and Israelis who are willing to denounce Netanyahu's government, to oppose the occupation of the West-Bank, investigate allegations of war crimes and support a peaceful two-state solution. All that is needed is a show of good will: oppose Israel's policy but not it's right to exist, oppose Israel's violent racist nationalist parties, but not the entire national movement of the Jewish people, keep Swedish tax-financed public sector out of the conflict and, for god's sake, don't impose the conflict on Jewish school children, university students and work colleagues. Sadly, the war in the Middle-East will continue whatever we do here, but if we can agree on this, at least we can end its Swedish extension.

Should Swedish Teachers be Forcing Their Activism on School Children

Don't teachers know that getting school and pre-school children involved in their "support Palestine" is against Swedish school laws and regulation?

Published in Svenska Dagbladet: https://www.svd.se/a/rPW3RA/kulturdebatt-ska-forskolebarn-patvingas-politisk-aktivism

It was a regular day at a regular Stockholm pre-school. The children arrived in the morning and after the parents rushed off to work, they got busy making cute creations using paint and beads. But this day had a special theme – the bracelets the children made were all in the colors of the Palestinian flag, as were the hand prints that they put on white sheets of paper titled "Support Palestine". According to a social media post, the pre-school was also involved in raising money for the Sewedish Palestinagrupperna NGO.

This wasn't just a local initiative. It turns out that a self-titled "preschool teacher and lecturer who fights to strengthen the preschool's mission", who has tens of thousands of followers on social media, has been giving ideas and inspiration for what he called "pre-schools for Palestine day". The content itself was hardly impressive, but it made an impression on some pre-school teachers who decided to impose their political activism on 4 and 5-year-olds. In Jönköping, for example, a couple of pre-school teachers got children to draw watermelons to "show love and solidarity with Palestine". in Upplands-Bro, a pre-school teacher claimed on social media that "the children have been given beads and crafts in the colors of the Palestinian flag" and went on to say that the children will ask their parents to buy food for Palestinians and let Palestinians live in their homes.

Where is all this coming from? Surely, Swedish educators know that political activism in schools is opposed to the school law. In order to understand the phenomena, I went to a teacher's union meeting dedicated to a discussion about the union's policy concerning Gaza. Since the teachers attending the meeting, some of them wearing so-called Palestinasjals, didn't know who I was, they spoke freely about their concerns.

One spoke passionately about the disgrace of Swedish teachers supporting the Nazis in the 1940s. She then said "in twenty years someone will write – 'my teachers were silent!' I don't want to bear that shame". Another spoke about the cowardly silence in Swedish schools and said that many teachers are willing to speak out and show civil courage. The use of "civil courage" is interesting here. Civil courage means that there's a price for your actions. Otherwise, why is it courage? Raoul Wallenberg saved tens of thousands of Jews in Budapest 1944. The price – death in a KGB prison. Nelson Mandela fought for equality in apartheid South-Africa. The price – 27 years in prison. Miss Gunilla promotes Hamas narratives. The price – a reasonable salary from the Municipality of Stockholm funded by Swedish tax payers. There is, of course, a real price too, but it's not paid by the teachers. It's paid by children who feel unsafe and unwelcome when they encounter pro-Palestinian activism where there supposed to feel protected and appreciated.

In the union meeting, however, the teachers claimed that it's not about being pro-Palestinian, it's about values. "we have the Children's Rights Convention in our curriculum, human rights, children's rights", one of the said, "children are being slaughtered, burned to death in tents, and we cannot even make a statement". This claim is worth addressing since human rights are, and should be, part of the school plan. But since the world is a complicated place, school programs stick to values, history and social sciences and generally avoid ongoing, political conflicts. If schools would deal with this war, they'd have to deal with others. There are active genocides, civil wars and massacres going on in dozens of countries and still, Swedish schools don't dedicate their resources to Tigrayans, Darfurians, Curds, Uyghurs and Rohingya people and they certainly didn't discuss the victims of the October 7^th massacre in Israel. Should Gaza be an exception just because it's a fashionable topic in Swedish activist circles? Even if the Palestinians were defenseless victims of a one-sided genocide and even if drawing watermelons could somehow save them, the result of turning Swedish schools into a political Hyde-Park will be even less time left for mathematics, Swedish, arts and science. Do Swedish students really excel in these subjects so much that they can allow themselves this righteous indulgence?

But even if they did, focusing on Gaza would be problematic. The current war in Israel and Gaza has victims on both sides. Israeli children as well as Palestinians were killed, Israeli teen-agers were raped and kidnapped, Israeli students also lost their homes and became orphans and their schools are being bombed and destroyed too. Swedish activists who publicly "support Gaza", don't see this as an equally important issue. The teacher's union leadership even explained that solidarity help funds only go to UNRWA because Israel "can take care of itself". This comes from believing in a specific narrative: Israel is a colonialist state based on ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians who are now victims of a genocide.

There are, however, competing narratives. For example: the Jewish national movement (aka Zionism) and the Palestinian national movement both have justified claims on the same territory and they're involved in a bloody conflict which can only be solved by compromise. And here's another: Iran is using its Palestinian and Lebanese proxies in order to annihilate Jews while it's engaging in an influence campaign in Europe which is designed to acquire western allies (such as Swedish teachers) who'll support its antisemitic genocidal aggression. The battle between these narratives is important, it's what politics are all about, and it should take place in many places, but not in schools, and aiming at 4-year-olds is a particularly cheap shot.

And finally, there's antisemitism. A Malmö school report (2021), a Stockholm school report (2022) and a government report (2024) all clearly show that Jewish students and Jewish teachers in Swedish schools are victims of antisemitism and that one of the reasons for this is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is present in classrooms and schoolyards. Does anybody seriously believe that even more of it will help addressing antisemitism? Of course not. But fighting antisemitism isn't as fashionable as it used to be, and it's not only about schools anymore.

It's happening everywhere. Political activists preach against indifference and demand that teachers, nurses, midwives, and social-workers "stand up for Palestine". That's all very well, but here's another option; perhaps teachers can stand up for their students, midwives can stand up for future mothers and nurses for their patients. Political activists can arrange demonstrations, write op-eds and promote the "global intifada" in their spare time, just like people with similar hobbies burn the Quran or shave their heads and march for "white power" after work and not during office hours. At the end of the union meeting, one of the teachers said: "I'm a child of the revolution. I came to Sweden from Iran and the revolution there started from the teachers". Sweden's teachers can exercise their freedom of speech because they live in a democracy, but considering the results of the revolution in Iran, perhaps it's best if they do it as far away from children as possible.