ISRAEL/SWEDEN: Israelis protest against articles about organ theft, Swedish editor defends publication.

Record ID: 396907

  • Title: ISRAEL/SWEDEN: Israelis protest against articles about organ theft, Swedish editor defends publication.
  • Date: 25th August 2009
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) AFTONBLADET EDITOR IN CHIEF JAN HELLIN SAYING: "They're totally overreacting, absolutely."
  • Embargoed: 9th September 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA6RC5TLO0J5QY3RD8L1IVYS1LI
  • Story Text: Hundreds of Israelis protest outside the Swedish embassy in anger over organ theft articles. In Sweden, the editor of the newspaper accused of recalling historic hatred of Jews in Europe says Israel is overreacting.
    Scores of Israelis staged a protest on Monday (August 24) outside the Swedish embassy in the coastal city of Tel Aviv, in anger over a Swedish newspaper article alleging organ theft.
    The protest came a day after Israel placed curbs on Swedish journalists as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Sweden's government to condemn a report that Israeli officials say recalled historic hatred of Jews in Europe.
    Sweden has said press freedom means it cannot intervene in a dispute over the tabloid Aftonbladet's reprinting last Monday of long-standing Palestinian allegations that the Israeli army may have taken organs for transplants from men who died in custody.
    Israel's foreign minister compared it to the Dreyfus Affair -- the trial of a Jewish officer in the French army a century ago, which drew attention to anti-Semitism across the continent and inspired Zionists to promote Jewish emigration to Palestine.
    The official quoting him said the premier, who will be in Europe this week visiting London and Berlin, echoed colleagues in comparing the article to medieval "blood libels", which alleged Jews used the blood of Christian babies in religious rites.
    "We came here to protest against the blood libel, and it's a blood libel that resembles to the ones that have been going on from the Medieval centuries against the Jewish people, incitements, horrible incitements such as the one that was going on this week in the Swedish newspaper. We basically, we do not want to prevent such freedom of speech but we want them to condemn such publication," said protester Lior Haimovitch.
    A spokesman for Israel's Interior Ministry said it was "freezing" the issue of entry visas to Swedish journalists, though those already working in the country would not be affected for now. The Government Press Office said it would take more time to review applications for accreditation from Swedes.
    The dispute has soured relations with the country that holds the rotating presidency of the European Union just as Israel is defending its treatment of the Palestinians against criticism in Europe of January's war in Gaza and settlement in the West Bank.
    Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said last week his country opposed anti-Semitism but would not muzzle the media.
    A ministry spokeswoman declined comment on a report that Sweden's ambassador to Israel was reprimanded for issuing a statement condemning the Aftonbladet article as "appalling". The statement was no longer on the embassy's Web site on Sunday.
    Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of a right-wing coalition party whose outspoken criticisms of Arabs have prompted accusations of racism, praised the ambassador and compared her to Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who acted on his own initiative to save Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust.
    He also compared the article to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", an anti-Semitic tract purporting to show a global Jewish conspiracy which was widely cited by Hitler among others.
    According to a report in the Israeli newspaper Maariv on Sunday, it was the Swedish foreign ministry who partly funded a 2001 book, from which the newspaper publication drew its accusations.
    "We know that the Swedish government paid and gave money to the people who put this lies in books eight years ago and I think that if the Swedish government has any moral values it should say the truth and should renounce these blood libels," demonstrator Erez Tadmor told Reuters in Tel Aviv.
    Israeli officials say Europeans often favour Palestinians at their expense and Netanyahu's government is trying to counter that. Lieberman has told Israeli diplomats to circulate a 1941 photograph of a Palestinian leader meeting Hitler as part of a campaign to stem opposition to Jewish West Bank settlements.
    In Stockholm, the editor of the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet said on Monday (August 24) the controversy surrounding the article was very sad.
    Jan Hellin said the Israeli government had used the article for its own domestic purposes and that the actual article and its content had been forgotten.
    "First of all I would like to say that it's very sad this controversy and what I think is happening now and what you see is that you have an extremist government in Israel, a populist government, which uses this basically for domestic reasons to whip up an opinion in Israel. This has several days left (behind) what was said and what was not said in the article in Aftonbladet," he said.
    Hellin said he had not expected such a reaction when the decision was made to publish the article based on a chapter in a book published in 2001.
    "I couldn't dream of anything like this and that's why I feel sad really. Normally as a publisher I like to spur attention and we like to spur debates but when you see the tremendous amount of emotions being raised in this, I feel very sad basically. This article is just an article, it's an opinion article that makes some points around some circumstances and raises some questions and that's basically all there is to it and you have this outburst from the Israeli government," he said.
    Hellin praised the response of Sweden's prime minister and foreign minister in defence of press freedom.
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