Nathan Shachar: The silence of Swedish authorities in the face of anti-Semitism can be dangerous
Updated 2025-04-04 Published 2025-04-04
Haniyeh and Nasrallah, moral role models for Swedish students? Photo: Abdel Majid Bziouat/AFP
Jew hatred is being spread by people who teach at Swedish universities. Where are the reactions? Why are our rulers so paralyzed?
THE COLUMN. Nathan Shachar is DN's correspondent in Jerusalem, author and freelance columnist on the editorial page.
This is a text published on the editorial pages of Dagens Nyheter. The editorial board's political stance is independent liberal.
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Several academics at well-known Swedish universities are preaching violence and hatred of Jews on social media, reveals the news site Doku . The examples are shocking, even for those who have tasted the Middle East's bloody romance and fanaticism in every place.
One of those quoted, who is said to be a professor of Middle Eastern studies, shares a rant praising Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Iran's puppet and Lebanon's de facto dictator for a quarter of a century. He also claims that author Salman Rushdie, who was sentenced to death by the Iranian regime in 1989 and lost an eye in a knife attack in 2022, was targeted for harassing women, not for Islamist reasons. Olof Palme and Anna Lind were assassinated for criticizing Israel; Israel coined the "Ukraine proxy war" to lure Ukrainian women and force them into prostitution.
Another academic in Doku's report, an associate professor at a cultural institution, opposes the idea of peace in the Middle East: What is needed is war! Remaining Israelis can be sent to Sweden afterwards. Hamas is a liberation movement. It was Israel itself that killed 1,200 of its own citizens in October 2023 and the chairman of the Jewish Central Council, Aron Verständig, is in fact a murderer. (Verständig has filed a police report.)
These are just a few samples. So low is the level of knowledge of these scholars, so flimsy is their logic, and so vulgar is their language that one shudders at the thought that such figures would teach young people – and about the Middle East and culture at that.
I, who live far from Sweden, misunderstood the situation. I thought: "Now it will be interesting to see what the government, the prime minister, the minister of education, the political parties and the universities of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Uppsala will say." I took it for granted that they would react, and quite quickly.
Here is a summary of what all these people in power and in charge had to say about the matter: Nothing.
How is the Minister of Education or Minister of Culture conceived who does not comment on the abominable things that have been revealed?
The scandal is not that someone hates Jews. It is not forbidden. The day someone invents an app that registers and sounds an alarm as soon as someone dislikes a certain variety – we will not be able to use it. Prosecuting everyone who hates would throw society into chaos.
The scandal is not the teachers' repulsive opinions, but that those who are paid by us are propagating violence and spreading absurd conspiracy theories. That people who are entrusted with the most important thing, guiding young people, are in fact leading them down dangerous paths.
A former Uppsala professor says: "What they say is not protected by freedom of expression. Their appeals create a dangerous undergrowth in the universities of sectarianism and the worship of violence. There is every reason to intervene resolutely here."
Another Uppsala professor believes that the university's rules and bureaucracy have been "designed with civilized scientists in mind, not nutcases like these. If university scientists were to claim that the Earth is flat or that US satellites release toxins to make people dumber, it would not be possible for those responsible to bury their heads in the sand: such scientists would not be able to continue teaching subjects where they have lost touch with reality."
How is the Minister of Education or Minister of Culture found who does not comment on the abominable things Doku has revealed? If university professors, in 1960 or 1980, had spread lies about Jews and called the leaders of the Jewish community murderers, the government and the parties would have had no opportunity to ignore it.
Instead of immediately branding and taking action, our powerful people behave like passengers on the subway when their compartment is molested by a drunken brat: they make themselves small and get off at the next station. How do the Liberals, Per Ahlmark's party, behave so as not to react when crude anti-Jewish stereotypes are spread by university professors?
Now we seem to have gone from moral megalomania to moral paralysis.
The Swedish "moral superpower" has been mocked for flaunting its goodness while being intimate with "progressive" tyrants. Now we seem to have gone from moral megalomania to moral paralysis.
Increasingly, when flagrant human rights violations are committed or democracy is threatened in important countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is extremely reluctant to speak out. Anyone who acts as a doormat, at home and abroad, will be seen as a doormat, at home and abroad. This is how human nature works, this is how groups that seek power work.
Those who turn a blind eye will pay with interest later. If violent romantics are allowed to run rampant in universities, they will not only cause harm, they will advance their positions. It may be unpleasant to confront them, but it will be seven times more unpleasant the day you no longer have a choice.
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