Israel Matzav

Swedish Chancellor of Justice to determine charges of racial agitation

The Swedish Chancellor of Justice has been asked to determine whether the Social Democratic party's daily tabloid Aftonbladet is guilty of racial agitation in light of its unsubstantiated blood libel that charges IDF soldiers with having murdered 'Palestinians' and stolen and sold their organs.

"Is that true? I am perplexed," Åsa Linderborg, Aftonbladet's culture editor, said after being informed by the The Local of the report on Tuesday.

"I think it is a shame that whenever solidarity is shown for the Palestinians and criticism is directed again Israel, someone cries anti-Semitism."

"One has to have the right to ask questions," Linderborg replied when asked if she or the newspaper regretted publishing the article.

Nils Funcke, one of Sweden's leading experts on legislation pertaining to freedom of speech, said he expected the Chancellor of Justice to reject the case.

"The article can hardly be construed as racial agitation. There is no ethnic group targeted; the article focuses on the Israeli army, and Israel is not made up solely of Jews," Funcke told The Local.

Even had the article concentrated on a single ethnic group, Funcke did not believe it would be considered "agitation" under the law.

"It was more a description of events and certainly did not agitate against a particular group."

Funcke added that charges set forth by Israeli politicians to the effect that Aftonbladet's article followed in a long tradition of "blood libels" against Jews would not hold up under legal scrutiny.

Funcke is being disingenuous in the extreme. No one thinks of the IDF as being anything other than a Jewish army. Most of the Arab population doesn't even serve in it. When one adds to this the association with the rabbi in New York who has been charged with organ trafficking, it is clear to everyone what ethnic group is being targeted here.

And how is describing events that never occurred that are sure to rile people up (if the description is believed) not considered agitation?

As to Ms. Linderborg, if I were to meet her in person, I would love to ask her how long she has been tasering men who speak to her in bars and see how she would prove that the charges are false.

Sweden has a warped sense of what 'freedom of speech' means. It doesn't give you the right to slander others or to say things without having to take responsibility for their direct consequences. As Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out 150 years ago, no right, not even freedom of speech, can be absolute.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:16 PM