Monday, March 21, 2011

Reepalu’s Blowback to SWC:

The Local has run extended quotes of Malmö Mayor Ilmar Reepalu’s remarks in response to the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s concerns and policy suggestions regarding hate crime in Malmö. 
Note that, as we reported earlier, SWC met not only with the Jewish community to hear their concerns, but also with the Muslim and Roma (Gypsy) communities, who also suffer from hate crime. But Reepalu continues in characteristic fashion to make baseless snarly remarks about snobby Jews and Israel:
"I have said that it is always dangerous when one group considers itself worth more than another group of people. When people say that we have a right to take your land because we have some form of thousand-year promise from God that this is our land, then it creates conflicts," Reepalu said to Sydsvenskan.
But of course, according to Reepalu, nasty remarks about Jews and Israel don’t make him an anti-Semite!
"Then they say that I am anti-Semitic when I put this across. I am flabbergasted that they are then able to tie all this together," he said.
In his self-defense, Reepalu claims that he is hard at work trying to fix things in Malmö:
"To be honest with you I think we are working as seriously as we can with these issues, and we will do so regardless of what they say, think and feel," Reepalu told the newspaper.
As readers can see, he has done exactly what the SWC noted—heating things up by bringing Israel into the equation, and blaming the Jews for hate crimes perpetrated against them. Then he has the gall to claim he is moving forward, after he blamed everyone else for his inability to reduce hate crime in Malmö. 

By: Chanah Shapira 

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