Tag Archive for: Social Democrats

PODCAST: On the Muslim Migrant Crisis in Sweden and Across Europe

Kent Ekeroth, a Jewish Deputy of the Sweden Democrats in the national parliament, the Riksdag, was a guest on the Sunday, January 31, 2016,Lisa Benson Show. Benson, Richard Cutting, Advisory Board Member and this writer participated in the discussion with Ekeroth.  The topics discussed during the segment covered various aspects of the current migrant crisis in Sweden and Europe caused by the flood of one million asylees and migrants in 2015 who penetrated the broken Schengen borderless system. LISTEN to the podcast.

New Year’s Eve, the sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany by 1,000 North African and Arab looking migrants was evidence of threats to native European women and their communities. We posted on the graphic violence perpetrated daily in Germany and the rising call for the resignation of German Chancellor n Angela Merkel. Then there was the disturbing Europol report that 10,000 migrant children have gone missing, presumed to victims of sex trafficking and slavery.

In Sweden, 200 men went on a rampage attacking Moroccan migrants at the central Stockholm rail station provoked by the murder of a 23 year old woman at a reception center. The Swedish Interior Minister ordered  the expulsion of 80,000 migrants, virtually half of the 160,000 that poured into the country in 2015. The 23 year old woman victim was killed trying to stop an altercation involving a 15 year old Somali migrant.  One of the more than 35,000 unaccompanied minors who entered Sweden, four fifth of them young men.

Kent Ekeroth, Sweden Democrat Jewish deputy

Kent Ekeroth, Sweden Democrats, MP, the Riksdag.

A Politico Magazine article on “Europe’s Man Problem”, noted this about migrant demographics in Sweden:

According to Swedish government statistics, as of the end of November, 71 percent of all applicants for asylum to Sweden in 2015 were male. More than 21 percent of all migrants to Sweden were classified as unaccompanied minors, representing more than half of all minor migrants to the country. For accompanied minors, the sex ratio was about 1.16 boys for every one girl. But for unaccompanied minors, the ratio was 11.3 boys for every one girl. In other words, the Swedish case confirms IOM’s statistic that more than 90 percent of unaccompanied minors are male.

Sweden’s current ruling left Social Democrats and the center right Alliance Party condoned the opening of mass Muslim immigration over several decades. Muslims in Sweden account for 700,000 of the country’s 9.8 million population.  Jews, in contrast account for less than 20,000 of Sweden’s population. Ekeroth mother is Jewish who emigrated from Poland. Ekeroth had served as an intern at the Swedish Embassy in Tel Aviv in 2006. He visited Israel in 2014 as part of a delegation of foreign Jewish parliamentarians.

Ekeroth’s debates with Margot Wallstrom, Foreign Minister of the ruling Social Democrats occurred over her accusations that Israel should be investigated for alleged “extrajudicial killings”. He considers Swedish Foreign Minister Wallstrom both “gullible and antagonistic.”

On January 19, 2016, Itamar Marcus, executive director of Palestine Media Watch (PMW) followed up Ekeroth’s actions with a presentation to members of the Alliance and other parties in the Riksdag. At the conclusion of the presentation, Marcus proposed a resolution be introduced   by concerned MPs to end Swedish funding of Palestinian Authority education and media programs demonizing Jews and hatred of Israelis.

Watch this PMW video of the Swedish Parliamentarians presentation on Palestinian incitement of violence and anti-Semitic hatred:

In 2014, Ekeroth and the Sweden Democrats brought a bill before the Riksdag attempting to overturn the budget for the hundreds of millions of kroner in Palestinian Authority funding that was opposed by the remaining seven parties.  Center right Liberal or Alliance parties and the current left Social Democrats, Ekeroth said, funded hundreds of millions of kroner for the Palestinian Authority that had engaged in incitement to violence and demonization of Israeli Jews. The Sweden Democrats introduced the bill in 2014 during the budget debates to stop all PA funding.

When we asked him following the Lisa Benson Show, what his reaction was to the resolution proposed by PMW during the January 19, 2016 presentation, he replied:

I held the debate with [Foreign Minister] Wallstrom. Then other parties met with PMW from the Alliance-parties. What’s funny though is that when they were in government and had the power they did nothing to stop the funding the PA.

On the position of the Sweden Democrats in the Riksdag, Ekeroth said that the party platform includes reduction of personal and business taxes, preservation of the existing welfare system, but zero tolerance for mass Muslim immigration and asylum.  He considers as legitimate refugees, not unlike his immigrant mother, those fleeing a conflict or persecution. Migrants, however, are those traveling to take advantage of benefits “provided by a naïve system” like that in Sweden and many EU countries. Once admitted, he said, the asylees can bring in others through family reunification or workforce immigration. During the period 2015 to early 2016, more than 200,000 so-called asylees and migrants entered Sweden. Regarding the smorgasbord of benefits available to migrants, Ekeroth noted that in 2005, the seven other parties in the Riksdag endorsed expansion of benefits to include free health, free schools and even assistance in starting a business.

When asked about the recent Interior Minister’s expulsion order, he doubts that the police can round up more than 4,000 a year. The rest may leave for other EU countries or go into hiding.

Regarding the attack by 200 Swedes against Moroccans at the Stockholm central railway station, he doesn’t condone violence. However, he said it was a reflection the police and state haven’t protected Swedish citizens from violence and petty crime. On the question of sexual assaults by migrants, he indicated they have been grossly over represented since 1975. He pointed towards Swedish crime statistics for 2015 that indicated over 41% of those convicted were non-citizens. Further, he said if you included the sizable Swedish Muslim population the proportion would be well over 50%.

When asked about how Swedish youth reacted to these developments, he suggested that while the Sweden Democrats are the second largest party in the Riksdag, they tend to be less politically involved. Sweden men are more sympathetic to the programs of the Swedish Democrats; while female voters aged 18 to 24 in surveys are not as inclined as they are more prone to social pressures. He credits that to the treatment of the Sweden Democrats by the media that by turns calls the party “far right wing,”  “racist,” “anti-Immigrant,” and dismisses the party as “stupid peasants”.  Ekeroth said the state TV and media are overwhelmingly pro-immigrants. Surveys in Sweden he cited showed that 75% of working journalists are left wingers.  He said that some alternate media has been created, including one developed by the Sweden Democrats. But overall the media situation is biased.

When the matter of Sweden’s small Jewish community arose, Ekeroth has tried to convince them that mass immigration was problematic.  He said their opinion reflected their support for Muslim mass immigration. In effect, he said, the Jewish community told him that “they don’t want to awaken the bear that sleeps.”

In light of the current migrant crisis, he said who would have thought 20 years ago that today the Eastern European countries of Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia would be the saviors of Europe. The dialogue continues with Kent Ekeroth. He returns to The Lisa Benson Show for a reprise on Sunday, February 7, 2016.

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EDITORS NOTE: This column with podcast originally appeared in the New English Review.

Sweden Deporting 80,000 Muslim Migrants

AFP reports that Sweden’s Interior Minister plans to eject tens of thousands of largely Muslim  asylees and migrants from conflicts throughout the Ummah that flooded the Nordic country in 2015, “Sweden plans to expel up to 80,000 asylum-seekers: says Interior minister:”

Swedish Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said Wednesday,”We are talking about 60,000 people but the number could climb to 80,000,” the minister was quoted as saying by Swedish media, adding that the government had asked the police and authorities in charge of migrants to organize their expulsion.

[…]

Ygeman said the expulsions, normally carried out using commercial flights, would have to be done using specially chartered aircraft, given the large numbers, staggered over several years.

Sweden, which is home to 9.8 million people, is one of the European Union countries that has taken in the largest number of refugees in relation to its population. Sweden accepted more than 160,000 asylum seekers last year.

But the number of migrant arrivals has dropped dramatically since Sweden enacted systematic photo ID checks on travellers on January 4.

Swedish officials on Tuesday called for greater security at overcrowded asylum centres a day after the fatal stabbing of an employee at a refugee centre for unaccompanied youths.

The alleged attacker was a young male residing at a centre for youngsters aged 14 to 17 in Molndal near Gothenburg on Sweden’s west coast.

The employee was 22-year-old Alexandra Mezher, according to Swedish media reports, whose family was originally from Lebanon. A motive for the attack was not immediately clear.

Her death has led to questions about overcrowded conditions inside some centres, with too few adults and employees to take care of children, many traumatised by war.

Kent Ekeroth inför EU-valet 2014

Kent Ekeroth, Jewish deputy in Sweden Democrats Party.

Sweden’s Social Democratic government has finally confronted the realities of why it has foolishly let in 160,000 asylum seekers who represent a clear and present danger to this country of less than 10 million with a sizable Muslim minority of 700,000.. We have a special guest on this Sunday, January 31, 2015,  Lisa Benson Show, Kent Ekeroth, a Jewish pro-Israel deputy in the opposition Sweden Democrats. For an expression of his  views about support for Israel, see this Times of Israel Interview  with Ekeroth in October 2014, “In pro-Palestine Sweden, far-right Jewish lawmaker embraces Israel.”  You may have seen our NER/Iconoclast posts with videos of Ekeroth’s debate with Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom about the latter’s accusations against Israel for “extra judicial killings”.

See:“Israel PM Netanyahu Slams Swedish Foreign Minister Wallstrom over Extrajudicial Killings Accusations.” Ekeroth should have lots to say about what prompted the Social Democrats to expel 80,000 Asylees and more about Sweden and other countries like German and Austria in the broken Schengen border less system who welcomed this horde of Muslim refugees and migrants with no ability to vett them.

Our other returning guest is Counter terrorism expert, Dr. Sebastian Gorka who will comment on problems of vetting Muslim refugee resettlement in both  Europe and the US. Listen in Sunday at 3:00 p.m. EST to The Lisa Benson Show and find out what the media is not telling you.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Sweden’s Jews Threatened by Muslim Antisemitism

Earlier today, I exchanged an email with a French Jewish resident here in  Florida seeking assistance to gain permanent resident status in the US, given his retirement  here. Under US immigration law he and his wife can only remain in the US for a maximum of 180 days annually and must return to France to obtain fresh tourist visas.  He is an accomplished professional and like many of France’s 600,000 Jews disturbed about the threats coreligionists face from Muslim second and third generation émigrés. He and his family came as émigrés from North Africa to escape Islamic hatred only to be threatened again in his home community in France. Both our colleague Nidra Poller and French commentator, Michel Gurfinkiel have written  graphically about  the predicament of French Jews  threatened by  Islamic and other forms of Antisemitism. That was crystallized by three French and one Tunisian Jew killed on January 9, 2015 in the Antisemitic attack by Jihadist Amedy Coulibaly at the Hyper Cacher Kosher supermarket in Paris.

There are continuing assaults against Jews daily in major cities throughout France. The dilemma faced by French is reflected in the increasing numbers making aliyah to Israel and  others who have opted to seek sanctuary here in the U.S. many of whom have taken  up residency in Florida. There are a number of French Jewish synagogues that have sprouted in Florida to take care of the spiritual and community needs of francophone brethren. The necessity of applying for formal resident status in the U.S. was reflected at the conclusion of an email exchange,  “I was aware many years ago about the coming change in France and the blindness of French politicians.”

That blindness also  faces Jews in Malmo, Sweden denied their rights of free expression ,opposing politicians in Sweden’s third largest  city who tolerate virulent Islamic Antisemitism  from  the large émigré community.  That is the subject of a Gatestone Institute article by Ingrid Carlqvist and Lars Hedegaard, the co-editors of Dispatch InternationalSweden Imports Jew-hatred. The authors wrote:

If anyone had thought that the slaughter of four Jews in a Paris supermarket — for the reason that they were Jews — would have caused the Swedish mainstream press and the government to explain who is behind Europe’s growing anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence, he would be sadly mistaken. With the exception of one television program, the connection between anti-Semitism, Islam and Muslim mass immigration remains a mental no-go area in Sweden.

[…]

Swedes now tend to view all immigrants as victims of totalitarianism and refuse to acknowledge that not all immigrants think like Swedes. They cannot comprehend that people would flee unless they were hated and threatened.

Swedes have a minimal knowledge of the Jew-hatred that is part and parcel of Islam, and the authorities and politicians refuse to acknowledge that Jews are now fleeing the southern city of Malmö due to its steadily growing Muslim population. Quite simply, most Swedes have never realized that one minority group may expose another minority group to violence and intimidation.

There are other reasons Malmö’s politicians turn a blind eye to Jew-hatred. Malmö is Sweden’s third-largest city and probably has the greatest proportion of Muslims. (It is hard to give exact figures because Swedish law forbids registration based on religion.) It is normally assumed that approximately one-third of Malmö’s 300,000 inhabitants have a foreign background and that their number is steadily increasing. Currently, most refugees come from Syria and Somalia, and most are Muslims.

The reason for hatred foisted on Malmo’s Jews  is the Socialist-Muslim alliance:

Malmö has nearly always been governed by Social Democrats — a party that has every reason to keep on the good side of Muslims. In municipal elections, the Social Democrats can normally count on 30% of the general vote, and on 70% of the Muslim vote.

This circumstance was undoubtedly the most important reason the city’s former Social Democratic Mayor, Ilmar Reepalu, refused to do anything about rampant Jew-hatred. He surely must have been aware that the perpetrators of anti-Semitic excesses were his own voters.

For many years, Malmö’s Jews have reported a growing number of hate crimes against their synagogue and themselves, but nobody has taken their complaints seriously. Eventually, a journalist by the name of Andreas Lovén from the local newspaper Skånska Dagbladet wrote in a series of articles that Jew-hatred was causing more and more Jews to move to other Swedish cities or to Israel.

For the first time, it was openly said who was behind the anti-Semitism — the city’s Muslim population. Many Jews told the paper that they dared not let their children grow up in Malmö — the town where, on January 25, 2009, a Muslim mob was allowed to pelt a peaceful Jewish demonstration in support of Israel with bottles, eggs and smoke bombs (see video).

Instead of breaking up the anti-Israel demonstration, which took place without a police permission and which seriously threatened the Jews and friends of Israel assembled at Malmö’s Great Square (Stortorget), the police chose to revoke the Jews’ right to assemble.

This decision was harshly criticized by Parliament’s judicial ombudsman, who wrote: “To permit counter-demonstrators to more or less systematically prevent their opponents from voicing their opinions at public gatherings is unacceptable in a democracy.”

Obama’s Envoy on Global Anti-Semitism  weighs in:

The situation got so bad [in Malmo] that in April 2012, President Barack Obama sent his special envoy and head of the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Hannah Rosenthal, to Malmö to read the riot act to Mayor Ilmar Reepalu. She pointed out that the problem is not only the many hate attacks on Jews but also the fact that the mayor has exacerbated the situation by statements such as: “Jews have themselves to blame as long as they don’t distance themselves from Israel’s abuse of Palestinians.”

Last month, Swedish television aired a program on Jew-hatred in Malmö, which clearly documented that the hate emanates from the city’s Muslim population. The reporter had donned a Jewish skullcap and a Star of David and went around town to see what happened. He was immediately met with verbal abuse and was spat on.

A later program dealt with the claim of anti-Muslim hatred in Sweden. A female reporter walked the streets of Södertälje with a veil. Most of the town’s immigrants are Christian Syrians and Assyrians, with Muslims in a clear minority, and she was not accosted a single time.

Sweden’s Jewish organizations have other priorities- combating Islamophobia and attacking one of the authors of the Gatestone Institute article:

Regrettably, Sweden’s biggest Jewish organizations are as blind as the media when it comes to Nazism with its Jew-hatred, supremacist ideology and hunger for world domination. The SKMA (Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism), equates Jew-hatred with hatred of Muslims, and attacks everyone who will speak out about the true genesis of “Swedish” anti-Semitism. The SKMA refuses to talk about Muslim Jew-hatred, and gladly walks side by side with imams to protest against “growing xenophobia”.

In December 2013, the SKMA criticized the Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism, an Israeli organization, for having “ articles dealing with anti-Semitism in Sweden spread Islamophobic messages” and thus “given legitimacy to the Swedish Muslim-hater Ingrid Carlqvist.” SKMA accuses Carlqvist of equating Muslims with Nazis, which is a lie. What Carlqvist has written many times is that Islam, that is the ideology, can be compared with Nazism with its Jew-hatred, supremacist ideology and hunger for world domination.

The authors concluded:

The question is how Swedish Jews will fare in an increasingly Islamic Sweden, when not even their own organizations will point out where the Jew-hatred comes from, but would rather attack Swedes who speak the truth about why Sweden went from a safe haven for Jews to a country Jews are fleeing. As long as the SKMA refuses to acknowledge that the vast majority of the Swedish Jew-hatred comes from Muslim immigrants, how can one expect ordinary Swedes to understand what kind of threat the Islamization of Sweden is to all of us who live here?

The first to go down the road of extermination are the Saturday People; then come the Sunday People.

Whether France, Sweden, the UK or elsewhere in the EU, Antisemitism is rampant as reflected in various studies and surveys. It is bolstered by the hatred of Muslim émigrés whose children now flock to the black banner of the Islamic State intent on killing all infidels.  Especially Jewish infidels as did Amedy Coulibaly at the Paris kosher market on January 9th.  Hence, like the French sojourner who wrote me, politicians in France and Sweden are blinded by the votes of the Muslim émigrés in their midst denying Jews rights of free speech and safety.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of a boycott Israel Protest Rally in Malmo, Sweden in 2012.