19-Nov-15: In Europe, they're closing synagogues

The Malmo synagogue in Sweden was "rocked by an explosion"
in the summer of 2010

For anyone with a Jewish sense of history (such a sensibility exists), Europe keeps producing a stream of events and insights that shake a person to the core. Like this report from the World Jewish Congress today:

Swedish synagogues shut down as terror alert is raised | Thu, 19 Nov 2015
Sweden's Jewish community shut down synagogues across the country as a precautionary measure against possible attacks by terrorist groups. The chairwoman of the Official Council of Jewish Communities in Sweden, Lena Posner-Körösi, said the security situation would be re-assessed on a daily basis.
On Wednesday, Swedish police said they were hunting for a man wanted for "planning a terrorist act". An arrest warrant had been issued for the suspect, the head of domestic intelligence and counter-terrorism, Anders Thornberg, told a press conference in Stockholm.

Sweden's National Center for Terrorist Threat Assessment yesterday raised its national terror threat status to "high", the second-highest level on a five-point scale. Denmark raised its threat status yesterday too but the WJC report says the Danish community has no current plans to close its synagogues.

How surprising is all this? Not so very.

• 20-Jun-14: Does Europe face the most serious terror threat ever?
• 12-Jun-13: As Islamist numbers grow, Europe's future is unlikely to ever again be what it was
• 13-Dec-12: Europe's ongoing moral collapse: the next chapter

30-Sep-12: More questions without answers in Sweden

Malmo March 27, 2009

We reported here on Friday ["28-Sep-12: Malmo's beleaguered Jews have more to worry about this morning"] about an attack - evidently a bombing - on the Jewish community center in Malmö, Sweden's third largest city. It's the latest incident in a long and troubling line of them.

The Local ("Sweden's news in English") published a wrap-up on Friday evening in which it analyzes the attack from multiple angles. It  quotes Fred Kahn, head of the Jewish community in Malmö, saying the Jews in Malmö remain under threat (but not by whom) "and have suffered as a result":

"We need to heighten our security, but we don't have the money for things like that..." However, Kahn remained at a loss as to why Jews in Malmö appear to be subject to more threats and violence than Jews elsewhere in the country. "More attacks are directed at Jews in Malmö. I haven't heard about it happening in other places in Sweden.."

Truly a mystery. What on earth could be a possible explanation? Heaven only knows. Note for the observant: the only religion referred to directly or indirectly in The Local's report is Judaism.

The same article reports on a statement made by Lena Posner-Körösi, head of Sweden's Judiska centralrådet or Official Council of Swedish Jewish Communities. She says (and we have not seen this reported elsewhere) that the local planning board has twice rejected applications by Malmö's Jewish community to install surveillance cameras on the street outside the building that was attacked:

"We've been rejected because they think it's a quiet street... Posner-Körösi said there was no doubt in her mind that the attack was motivated by anti-Semitism. "It's obvious when you consider everything that's happened in Malmö in recent years. It's unthinkable that it could be something else," she said...

Planning permission can be a tricky and dynamic thing in Sweden. Three days before the bombing of the Malmö community, a different Swedish planning committee approved a request from an Islamic group for permission to allow prayer calls at one of Sweden's numerous mosques. Here again is The Local:

The matter was put to a vote after Ismail Okur, chair of the Botkyrka Islamic Association (Islamiska föreningen i Botkyrka) filed a citizens' petition with the local council in January seeking permission to allow prayer calls at the mosque. He told Dagen that members of the association decided it was time they took steps to exercise their right to religious freedom in Sweden. "We've lived our whole lives in Sweden; we've paid taxes; we've been exemplary citizens; we've given a lot to Sweden," he said. "Now we want to get a little back. Now we want to have religious freedom."
While it remains unclear exactly when, if ever, prayer calls may be heard emanating from the mosque in Fittja, Okur of the Islamic Association welcomed the city planning committee's decision. "It's great! The prayer call for us is like ringing bells is for churches. It's important," he told Dagen. "There are more than 100,000 Muslims in Sweden. Shouldn't we also have our religious freedom?" Okur stressed, however, that the Islamic Association's initial request was to have a call to prayer once a week, rather than five times a day. "We have to start somewhere," he said.

Islam is the religion of about 5% of Sweden's population [source]. In Malmö, the numbers are more definitive, as we noted on Friday: about a fifth of Malmo’s 300,000 residents are Moslem immigrants, a large proportion of whom describe themselves as Palestinian, and most of whom, according to Wikipedia, are there illegally. Its percentage of Moslems is the highest in all of Scandinavia. Not that we're suggesting this has anything to do with attacks on the local Jewish community. We're too far away from events to be able to understand matters better than the locals (and The Local) do.

But we confess we're puzzled as to why - given a history of physical, life-threatening attacks on Jews and Jewish community property - the city fathers in Malmö think the security of the city's tiny Jewish community does not warrant something as harmless as security cameras. 

Three years ago, Malmö hosted the Davis Cup tennis match between Israel and Sweden. No fans were allowed into the stadium to watch the games for 'security' reasons. But as Reuters reported, some 6,000 protesters turned up outside the audience-less stadium and clashed with the 1,000 policemen on guard duty. Malmö was subsequently banned from hosting any further Davis Cup matches, and Israel defeated Sweden 3-2.

And by the way, Malmö is due to host the Eurovision Song Contest in 2013.

28-Sep-12: Malmo's beleaguered Jews have more to worry about this morning

Malmo's one and only synagogue [Image Source]

A report from Sweden in the past hour (it's now 9 am Friday here in Jerusalem) says there has been an explosion at the entrance to one of the Jewish community's buildings in Malmo.

A police spokesperson is careful: “There as been an explosion. Something has detonated – we are certain of that” but not much more by way of detail. Witnesses report that blasts were heard some blocks away.

Malmo's 1,500 person Jewish community is under siege. As it happens, the Jewish Chronicle in London published a worrying report yesterday, prior to this morning's bombing. The headline captures the sense well: "Fear stalks the streets of Malmo and council has no answer". Excerpts:

“You don’t wear a kippah in this city. That would be suicide,” said the head of Malmo’s voluntary security team guarding the gates of the city’s Jewish cemetery.
The security service was established in the wake of a peace demonstration by the Jewish community after the 2008-2009 Gaza war in which the crowd was firebombed and a Holocaust survivor assaulted.
The past 70 years have seen a dramatic reversal of fortunes for Jews in Sweden’s third-largest city.
In 1943, thousands of Jews were smuggled to Malmo out of Nazi-occupied Denmark on kayaks, ferries and fishing boats. Today, the city’s Jewish population of around 1,500 are regularly met with cries of “Heil Hitler” and “f**king Jews” as they walk the streets — and over the past ten years they have slowly but steadily been leaving for Stockholm, Israel and the US. “When young Jews leave Malmo now, they don’t come back,” said Fred Kahn, Chairman of the Board of Malmo’s Jewish community.
“The problems for us derive from the Muslims in the city,” said the security head, who did not wish to be named.
Roughly a fifth of Malmo’s population of 300,000 are Muslim immigrants, a large proportion of which are Palestinian. Many live hived off in Rosengard, a district blighted by gang wars and drug crime.
It is a sign of how bad things have got in Malmo that British businessman and philanthropist Martin Stern decided to help fund a visit to Malmo by Copenhagen’s Jewish community to show solidarity with the Jews on the other side of the Oresund Strait.
“Three years ago I spoke to Malmo’s Rabbi Kesselman and he told me the situation was dire,” said Mr Stern. “The situation is terribly dangerous and they have no money to do anything about it.”

A taste of what goes on inside the Rosengard nieghbourhood can be had from watching the Israeli television series "Allah Islam". We wrote about it this past week: "23-Sep-12: A new TV series that challenges how you think about Europe's Moslems". Some of its most disturbing interviews were conducted in Malmo, a city undergoing wrenching change of a kind that is becoming more common in other parts of Europe.

"Mayor Reepalu [some background here] is undoubtedly one of the problems facing Malmo’s Jews. He has said that if Jews want to avoid being attacked they should denounce Israel’s policies, and in March he told a Swedish magazine that the far-right Sweden Democrat party had “infiltrated the Jewish community in order to push its hatred of Muslims”.
Feelings about Reepalu are running high. Mr Niemann said: “Thank god he wasn’t mayor of Malmo in 1943 because had he been, we wouldn’t be here.”
Despite repeated requests for information, Malmo City Council refused to say whether or not it had a policy to tackle the situation and its head of integration, Jesper Theander, would not offer any comment.
For Rabbi Kesselman, and many others, official indifference is merely a symptom of the fact that the Muslims are now a key electoral constituency for the mayor. “This is about demographics, and the problem we have here will happen soon in other cities in Europe,” said Rabbi Kesselman.
Abandoned by the council, the community have taken matters — peacefully — into their own hands. Psychologist Yehoshua Kaufman came up with the idea of “kippah walks” for Jews to join together and stroll through the centre of the city wearing kippot, which has become a monthly event.
“It is much more dangerous to continue being afraid and hide away than confront your fear,” said Mr Kaufman. [More]

There's additional background at "Losing Malmo", a August 2011 essay by Andrew McCarthy over at the Family Security Matters blog.

No doubt that kippah walks are nice. But being genuinely safe and secure in your home town would be nicer.

23-Sep-12 [UPDATED]: A new TV series that challenges how you think about Europe's Moslems

Yehezkeli (not in the screen shot above), posing as a Palestinian film-maker,
has a frank interview with firebrand British Islamist preacher,
Anjem Choudary. The caption reads: "When his words 
are directed at a Palestinian audience, he feels very much freer".

There's an extraordinary four part television series unfolding here that deals in a unique and extremely effective way with the mutual interaction of European society and Islamic immigrants. 

This is a tense and highly loaded subject, one that can easily be ruined by an overdose of political commentary or pandering to prejudices. Only three of the four parts have so far gone to air, so it's unfair to judge the whole work yet. But for us, what we have seen so far constitutes a compelling instance of first-rate reality television. Unfortunately, it exists only in a made-for-Israel television version. So there are no English or other sub-titles, and the audience is assumed to have a basic grasp of an Israeli viewpoint. 

The series, "Allah Islam", is a collaboration between Israeli film director and journalist David Deri [he's interviewed at length in this Haaretz article from September 12, 2012], and Zvi Yehezkeli who is Israeli Channel 10's senior news reporter on Arab affairs. 

Yehezkeli speaks Arabic well, and the series follows him as he meets - from very close up - Moslems on their European home turf. His interview subjects appear to be at ease in his company, believing he is a fellow Moslem, a Palestinian film-maker, and providing him with access to their candid opinions in ways that it is hard to imagine European or American film-makers ever achieving. 

What emerges can be startling - even shocking - to those of us accustomed to smooth-talking community representatives explaining the disturbing aspects of what passes for everyday life in today's Europe.

Even for viewers lacking familiarity with the Hebrew language, the scenes of Yehezkeli doing street interviews in Malmo, Sweden, in Paris, in Brussels, in London and especially in Luton will be understandable enough. He goes into mosques, is invited into private homes, walks around with young Moslems who open up to him and to the viewers. Once the series is repackaged with subtitles in European languages, it's likely to have a significant impact on the public discourse about the effects on European life of the massive, and growing, immigration of Moslems and the wrenching changes this is causing in Europe's cities.

Those who want to see Islamophobia in these programs will find it. But for our taste, the film-makers have done a serious job of allowing the street and its people to speak for themselves without imposing their judgments or clear conclusions. To be direct about this - overall it delivers a very deeply disturbing picture: Yehezkeli finds no shortage of immigrant Moslems who heap scorn on the societies that have granted them shelter, unemployment payments, lives immeasurably more safe and comfortable than those they left behind.

There are religious leaders here, not suspecting the man with the microphone is an Israeli, who speak directly into the camera in support of terrorism and terrorists. Even some of the migrants for whom Yehezkeli has obvious feelings of sympathy confess without embarrassment to lying and subterfuge in order to get what they need from their European neighbours.

Two small vignettes to watch for:

• A young Belgian Moslem describes (Episode 3, 23m20s) with utter disdain the education he received at a Belgian Catholic school. To the appreciation of his buddies sitting in on the interview, he mentions some of the totally useless pieces of learning ("stupid things", he calls them) the system forced him to accept: washing hands after going to the toilet, for instance. He was born in Belgium. So were both of his parents. It was the grandparents who made the transition from Morocco to give their children a better shot at a good life. Three generations into the process of European acculturation and the grandson - disenfranchised, alienated in his native land - burns with zeal and indignation. He seeks to bring his parents back to the true religion.
• Another young Belgian Moslem describes (Episode 3, 22m15s) in good English how he and his friends seek to provoke anger among their non-Islamic neighbours by very publicly praying in the street or in front of the famous Belgian Atomium monument. Provocation, he calls it - over and again. They do this because of the effect, he tells the camera.

Below are links to the Hebrew-only versions (we don't know of any others at this point) of the first three programs in this excellent series. They might not remain online much longer, so we want to recommend to view them while you can. Each runs for about 45 minutes.

Episode 1: East and West

Episode 2: Women

Episode 3: Terror

UPDATE 23-Oct-12:
Episodes One and Two of the "Allah Islam" television series have now been given English-language subtitles. Our understanding is that the work of translating to English was done by enthusiastic volunteers, and not by the series' producers. They can be found online here:

• Episode 1 East and West
• Episode 2 Women

Seems we are likely to see English-subtitled Episodes 3 and 4 sometime soon. We will add the links here.