In response to: ‘Anti-Semitic attitudes in Sweden’
by Susanna Abramowicz, YnetNews, 22/3/2006.

Abramowicz’s article is one of many on the Internet reporting the findings of a survey carried out by the Forum for Living History, a group set up by the Swedish government apparently to raise awareness regarding the genocidal acts of the Nazis against Jews. The group also has some general anti-racist rhetoric, but no real attempt is made to hide the fact that it is essentially a pro-Jewish group. (We would be grateful to any Swedish readers if they could provide us with more information on this group.)

Abramowicz goes further than most journalists covering this survey, in that she quotes more data from it. We are, however, interested not in her journalism but in the survey itself, and would be happy to receive a copy of the survey results.

The first thing to strike the critical reader is the absurdly flawed nature of the survey. It purports to measure ‘anti-Semitism’, but in reality it is a hodgepodge of a few questions actually gauging such racism, and many others that are unrelated. A whole series of facts and opinions about modern international politics are labelled as ‘anti-Semitic’.

For example, there is a question relating entirely to the politics of a certain nation state, asking whether this country’s politics were ‘based on Old Testament vengefulness (an eye for an eye).’ Such an observation had doubtless never occurred to the respondents, but when it was suggested to them by this question, 26% thought it sounded about right. Now, the relevance of Judeo-Christian scripture is a complicated and subjective question that is not best answered by a survey. I know I could write a good-sized academic essay arguing either yes or no to this question. I could do the same if asked the question of whether the plot of the film Kill Bill is based on the concept of an eye for an eye. I do not know which essay (yes or no, Kill Bill or Israel ) would be the most persuasive. What I do know is that none of the four possible essays would prove me to be an ‘anti-Semite’.

It would appear that three quarters of respondents thought the question to a bit silly, and so said ‘no’. One quarter deemed there to be enough evidence of vengefulness in the sorry history of conflict in Palestine to justify saying ‘yes’. Either answer seems perfectly legitimate to me. Remember that the survey writers are saying that anybody answering ‘yes’ is in some way in the same category as Hitler. This question alone indicates to me a strong pro-Israel bias and therefore a flaw in the researchers’ methodology.

Another question asked whether ‘Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is reminiscent of the Nazi treatment of Jews’. Since Israel expelled Palestinians from their lands and their homes, committing war crimes (e.g. Fourth Geneva Convention, part III, section I) that were made part of international law specifically in response to the acts of the Nazis, one might easily find such treatment to be reminiscent of Nazi treatment. One might easily find British-Australian treatment of Australian aborigines (e.g. theft of babies) to be reminiscent of Nazi treatment. One might find European-American treatment of Native Americans (e.g. massacres) to be reminiscent of Nazi treatment. We can argue about the level of reminiscence, and therefore come out with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to each of these questions, but the answer in itself would obviously fail to prove racism of any sort. Remember that we are only dealing with the subjective question of reminiscence, not the objective question ‘Is Israel’s treatment just like the Nazis’ treatment?’, to which the correct answer would be ‘no’, with ‘yes’ being an exaggeration.

Again, only 26% of respondents rose to the bait and admitted that Israel’s treatment was ‘completely’ or ‘partly’ reminiscent.

Only a tiny proportion, three per cent, agreed that ‘Israel has no right to exist’, revealing ignorance of international politics. In reality, no country has any particular right to exist. International law prohibits countries’ existence being snuffed out in certain ways (e.g. by invasion), but not in others (e.g. being dissolved by referendum). Israel has a strong alliance with the world’s greatest military power (the U.S.A.) and itself possesses ample weapons of mass destruction. Even without the protection of international law, it is known that Israel is no Kuwait, at risk of annexation by its neighbours.

Given this, it is clear that the only risk to Israel as an entity is democracy. That is to say, there are those who would like to see all of Israel-Palestine become one country, and all refugees allowed home. In order for the international community to allow such a country to exist, it would have to have the trappings of democracy, including universal suffrage. The fact that the population would be mainly Arab means that laws would be passed to change the name from ‘Israel’ to ‘Palestine’, and to dismantle special privileges for Jews. This would mean Israel would no longer exist as such. This is a nightmare scenario for Zionists, and they therefore fervently demand a special ‘right to exist’ for Israel, a right which does not apply to any other country beyond the standard protections against aggression.

We imagine that most respondents assumed that such a ‘right to exist’ referred to a right not to be massacred or destroyed in contravention of international law. The 97% who said ‘yes’ were probably asserting a fundamental commitment to the rule of law. Had the question been phrased differently, a much larger percentage would have objected to special rights being given to Israel.

In any case, it is impossible to know whether the 3% that were against conferring a ‘right to exist’ on Israel were motivated by ‘anti-Semitism’, or simply by a good understanding of international law.

Another question was ‘Israeli policies engender hatred against Jews’. The 86% who disagreed with this have a very poor understanding of the situation in the Middle East . They might have said ‘no’ because they didn’t know anyone who hated Jews (I certainly don’t). Alternatively, they may have had other reasons for hatred stuck in their minds (e.g. the history of money-lending in mediaeval Europe). In any case, they were wrong to discount the very real effect of Israeli actions on people’s attitudes towards Jews. Indeed, it is curious that people who closely identify Israel with Jewish people (so closely that they go so far as to construct a survey that labels people as Jew-haters if they are critical of Israel) fail to admit that the actions of Israel could possibly be seen to reflect upon Jews as a whole. Either they deny the obvious fact that the self-proclaimed Jewish State affects the way some people see Jews (would they deny that the actions of the Soviet Union influenced the way some people see Communists?), or they simply deny that Israel has ever committed a major reprehensible act.

In any case, the reality is that the Arab world is almost unanimously hostile towards Israel (just watch any Bin Laden video), and there is inevitably a substantial minority of people who over-generalise and thus develop prejudices against Jewish people. After all, if you saw your house bulldozed under a flag bearing the Star of David, mightn’t you hate not just that flag but that star too?

Finally, we get to a question actually about Jews, and not Israel . Seventeen per cent partly or completely agreed that ‘Jews think they are the only ones who have suffered’. Those who agreed only partly would no doubt have agreed completely with a toned-down statement such as ‘Some Jewish people give undue weight to their Holocaust, thus failing to fully recognise that people such as Blacks and native people have suffered too.’

One only has to argue with a Zionist to discover that there are indeed some people who talk as though Jews are the only ones to have suffered. In fact, even the survey itself demonstrates that some people are unduly concerned with Jewish people to the detriment of others. Witness the fact that the entire survey and all the reporting of it is concerned with announcing disturbing levels of ‘anti-Semitism’ in Sweden, despite the fact that even the survey itself finds that there is more racism against Arabs than against Jews!

Again, the 17% who at least partially agreed with a quite reasonable statement are labelled as Jew-hating racists by the researchers.

Fourteen per cent of respondents agreed that the Jews ‘have been exploiting the Nazi genocide on Jews (the Holocaust) for financial and political purposes.’ The percentage is doubtless so low because it sounds like the question is about all Jews, and any such statement about every single member of a race is almost certainly going to be racist. If it said ‘certain Jewish people’, there probably would have been more people answering ‘yes’. So, what is the right answer? Just read anything by Norman Finkelstein, the Jewish historian who is incensed by the fact that a few of his fellow Jews are scamming a lot of money out of the Holocaust.

We now get to a category of questions that are supposed to measure belief in various conspiracy theories. 26%, 18% and 17% respectively agreed partly or completely that Jews ‘have great influence over the world economy’, ‘have great influence on the media’ and ‘are directing US foreign policy’. These are the only questions so far that might actually have some connection with being racist towards Jewish people. Such racists really do tend to come up with wacky theories about Jews controlling everything.

Even so, however, these three questions are still not true evidence of ‘anti-Semitism’. For one thing, if one interprets the statements in a certain way, they can even be said to be true. There is indeed a disproportionate number of Jewish people in positions of power such as the U.S. government. And support for Israel is a major part of U.S. foreign policy. Whether this counts as ‘great influence’ is something to be debated. What is certain that answering ‘yes’ to one of these questions is not scientific evidence of ‘anti-Semitism’.

Now we get to questions that authentically measure anti-Jewish sentiment. Finally! A tiny 2% of Swedes support discriminatory measures towards Jewish people, which is definitely bigotry. A slightly larger number (2.9%) believe that there are too many Jews in Sweden , which is fairly clear bigotry. Note that 24.1% feel the same way about Muslims, which puts things in perspective.

The researchers claim that 39% of Muslim respondents ‘displayed systematic anti-Semitic attitudes’, compared to just 5% in the general Swedish population. If we support this on face value, it supports the view that Israel ’s policies engender anti-Jewish hatred, since Muslims are the ones mainly affected by such policies. However, we cannot take this at face value. The researchers admit that only 2% want discrimination against Jews, so the 5% figure is nonsense and leads the rational observer to doubt the 39% figure too. One supposes that a higher proportion of Muslims answered ‘yes’ to questions like the one about vengefulness. Not surprising, since Muslims are more likely to be aware of things like the vengeful Israeli policy of collective punishment (which breaks international law). We conclude from this that Muslim respondents tended to be better informed on the Middle East than the average Swede.

One interesting finding is that graduates tended to get the ‘right’ answer (i.e. the one that the researchers don’t count as ‘anti-Semitic’) more than simpler folk — apparently 70% versus 48%. It is not reported whether this refers to the questions actually about anti-Jewish discrimination or the ones about Israeli policy. In either case, I would expect the people with university education to do ‘well’. On one hand, this is because intelligent, educated people are likely to both reject actual racist ideas. On the other, I would expect the same people to be capable of reading between the lines and seeing that each one of the questions, whilst disguised as queries on various aspects of international politics, were really each just asking ‘Are you an anti-Semitic, racist scumbag?’. Less educated people, blissfully unaware of such dishonest nonsense, are more likely to take the questions at face value.

All in all, anyone connected with Sweden should ask themselves why on earth their government has set up a group whose aims seem to be support for a vile régime in a faraway land and the exaggeration of threats to Jewish people to the detriment of attention to the real problems of Arabs, Blacks and others facing actual discrimination in the real world.

Postscript: Far more interesting than the tiny amount of anti-Jewish sentiment in Sweden is the huge amount of anti-Arab racism in Israel. A poll of Jewish Israelis has recently revealed that 41% are in favour of apartheid, with things such as separate entertainment facilities for Jews and Arabs. Half would refuse to let an Arab in their home, and 40% want to get rid of Arabs from Israel. 18% are so racist that they even admit to feeling hatred well up when they hear Arabic spoken.

Post-postscript: IMEMC news has published a great critique of the survey.