Sweden tells Israel it can’t address ‘organ theft’ article and gives them a lesson in Democracy
On Monday, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Europe for what is expected to be a tough round of bilateral talks with European leaders, Mr. Reinfeldt called for a ”toning down” of the debate surrounding an article by Aftonbladet, Sweden’s largest circulation tabloid newspaper.
Last week, the newspaper created an uproar among many in Israel, most notably the country’s foreign minister Avigor Lieberman, when it published an article suggesting the Israeli military had been involved in stealing the organs of Palestinians men in the early 1990s. Mr. Lieberman and others accused Sweden of antisemitism and compared the article to the medieval “blood libel” that accused Jews of bathing in the blood of Christian children. They demanded the Swedish government denounce the story, which hinged entirely on unnamed sources. But Reinfeldt, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, said that the Swedish constitution prohibits his government from interfering in the country’s media or passing judgment on media reports. “I don’t think that democratic nations should demand one another to break their constitutional laws,” he told Swedish public television.
”When I follow the debate in Israel I feel a need to explain what type of society Sweden is, and that we do not have a uniform view of Jews or Muslims or of individual countries. We have a free and open debate - people think differently and that is permitted. Jews, Christians, atheists and Muslims live side by side in this country in mutual respect. That is something we value.”
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