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| Neuding: Seeing things as they are |
As we have written here recently, violent hate crimes in France are a reflection of both failed immigration policies and a failure to defend citizens against criminal and terror elements. In a blog post published today, Paulina Neuding of Neo extracts conclusions from both the Islamically-motivated Toulouse attacks and her interview with Malmö Mayor Ilmar Reepalu in which he paradoxically accused Malmö's threatened Jewish community of spreading anti-Muslim hatred.
Neuding points out the European fallacy of simplistically equating the contentions of Muslim and Jewish groups, misplaced desire to be "even-handed" even where no equivalency exists. Accordingly, Swedish authorities, whether on the municipal level (Reepalu)or the international level (Bildt) are unwilling to change their policy approach to immigration, integration, and control of dangerous elements. Neuding has a hard look at possible scenarios and solutions in her article, ominously titled "Dark Continent":
"...we are, unfortunately, increasingly well acquainted with this imported anti-Semitism, which is proving to be extremely difficult for European societies to confront. No one wants to blame or stigmatize another minority for anti-Semitic hate crimes, but Europe’s Jews are finding themselves in an increasingly difficult situation.
"Europeans often choose to avoid the problem by viewing it as a conflict between two groups, with responsibility falling equally on both sides. When I asked Malmö’s mayor, Ilmar Reepalu, about the threats against Malmö’s Jews, he claimed that the city’s Jewish community was being “infiltrated” by the Sweden Democrats – an anti-immigration party with roots in the Swedish neo-Nazi movement – with the implication that Malmö’s Jews were on an equal footing with the anti-Semites persecuting them.
"Reepalu had to retract his claim as soon as the interview was published. Yet he acted on the popular notion that anti-Semitic attacks by Arab youths in Europe are part of a cycle of reciprocal violence that yields a kind of moral equivalence."
"Europeans often choose to avoid the problem by viewing it as a conflict between two groups, with responsibility falling equally on both sides. When I asked Malmö’s mayor, Ilmar Reepalu, about the threats against Malmö’s Jews, he claimed that the city’s Jewish community was being “infiltrated” by the Sweden Democrats – an anti-immigration party with roots in the Swedish neo-Nazi movement – with the implication that Malmö’s Jews were on an equal footing with the anti-Semites persecuting them.
"Reepalu had to retract his claim as soon as the interview was published. Yet he acted on the popular notion that anti-Semitic attacks by Arab youths in Europe are part of a cycle of reciprocal violence that yields a kind of moral equivalence."
Full article here.
By Chanah Shapira
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