Sweden’s Obsession with Israel

Yesterday veteran blogger Ilya Meyer wrote an excellent piece about Sweden’s disproportionately excessive reporting on Israel. According to Meyer, Sweden currently has something of an obsession for bashing Israel in the Swedish public media.
Meyer draws attention to the fact that in no other country is there such frequent and negative reporting on Israel as there is in Sweden. He writes:

In an average month of 30 days, there are never more than 3 days without some negative reporting on Israel in the publicly-funded state TV (SVT). Check out the news function on teletext and on a minimum of 27 days out of 30, there will be a story about Israel. Not about Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Somalia, Bangladesh. The standing joke in Sweden is that one can always tell when there is a new employee at the taxpayer-funded SVT, because that is the day there is no anti-Israel item on teletext. New recruits never make the same mistake twice, if they wish to keep their jobs.

One example of the irrational Israel-bashing in the Swedish media has already been cited in this blog. Helle Klein, the political author of the left-leaning Social Democrat daily Aftonbladet—which is notorious for Israel-hating screeds—spends the vast majority of her time publishing anti-Israel stories in her Aftonbladet blog. During the month of June this year, 28 out of 44 posts concerned Israel and most of them were encouraging Sweden and Aftonbladet’s readers to boycott Israel.

As mentioned last week the same thing can of course be said for Swedish state-funded radio SR which can’t seem to refrain from continuing and contributing to the anti-Israeli trend in Sweden.

Sweden’s negative obsessive reporting on Israel has justified the persecution of Jews in the larger cities in the country. Jews have been asked to take a stance against Israel in order to “ensure” their own security. This is a sad development for a country which claims to be a “multi-cultural society”. In reality, the state has an Orwellian version of multi-culturalism—Sweden’s obsessive and biased media reporting reveals that some cultures are more equal than others.