We Sweden

The 2nd half of the Shlomo Sand debacle passed without incident at Stallet – in fact at the end of the panel discussion, it was announced that there would be no questions or comments from the floor.

 They were lucky, because I had arrived, fully prepared to talk –  “But I’ll know my songs well before I start singin’ – and I knew exactly what I was going to say. I noticed a couple of security agents – could spot them from a mile away – one of them in a dark suit and suitably necktied was sitting on guard, sitting by the  door to the front of the stage and he kept glancing in my direction.  I glanced back. I wanted to walk over to him and assure him that  I am not a terrorist and that the fire  or fireworks that I was thinking about, would be entirely  verbal  - not even hostile – but verbal and clothed in human decency, some history and logic ….. However that did not come to pass. No questions or comments from the floor, thank you and goodnight, the compere said , and that  was that.

I didn’t like Shlomo Sand at all. Shlomo, named after King Solomon the wise. But what an enormous difference between the two.

 Hamelech, has nothing to do with Ham – Hamelech means king as in Shlomo Hamelech

This Shlomo , vain, a little arrogant, simplistic, yet pompous and full of himself, he should not expect a fellow intelligent being to believe in all the spurious things he said that night – and  the codswallop that he has  been spewing elsewhere. As usual he was asked “Why did you write the book?” As usual, well at least this time,  he gave the same answer that he had given the night before. He must have got used to the question, and to spouting his ritual answer. One of the many controversial things that he said was that “Israel cannot be changed from inside.”

What the hell he means by that, he will have to elaborate, before it’s too late.

 The old hypocrite also expressed his fear – that the Arab majority in the Galilee could revolt against Israeli authority. N. B: The Galilee is just south of the Israel- Lebanon border.

 This leaves the rest of us concerned not only about them operating as a fifth column but also about the sanctity and status of  the Tombs of the Patriarchs, the Cave of Machpelah 

 And about our grandmother Rachel’s tomb  

Otherwise, the panel comprised a quite youthful handful -  the aforementioned Shlomo Sand, Ulf Carmesund, Stefan Mendel Enk and Dror Feiler.

 I was in a pretty good mood when I arrived at Stallet. Met Sheldon Litt with whom I chatted a bit – about old times, old friends. Introduced him to  my new acquaintance, the lawyer from Estonia – and left them to their own devices – was treated to some strawberry pie  by another Jewish friend who said that he hadn’t seem me at Yom Kippur – at out little orthodox  synagogue – told him that I had been somewhere else. He was joined by Feiler. I saw Sand hanging around the table, greeted neither. Why should I? Sat next to my new friend from Indonesia.

Dror Feiler & his ponytail turned out to be a quite likeable person, that is  if you subtract his historical connection with the  Freedom Flotilla and earlier on his work of art depicting Snow White sailing on a sea of blood –  after all he’s  paid his  dues, done his military service in the Israeli army, for which he should be commended. He’s now eligible to sing the line that goes

 “I’ve been in the army

 I’ve worked on a  farm

 And all I’ve got to show

 Is the muscle in my arm.”

 Stefan Mendel Enk I found very likeable, although I was a little irritated by his saying that Israel does not have much bearing/ is not crucial  to  his sense of Jewish identity. He would have said a little more about that, if given enough time, I’m sure.

Anyway, his statement got me thinking about Barbara Spectre’s talk in Jerusalem,  to be found at the bottom of this link, on the subject of:

  “The Importance of the Land of Israel for a Jew” by Barbara Spectre. (pdf-file) Address delivered to the Swedish Theological Institute, Jerusalem:

 http://www.paideia-eu.org/bulletin.htm

 And also very likeable -  reason-able,  down to earth &  impressive, was Ulf Carmesund who apparently has been doing some work at  the Theological Institute in Jerusalem  - in which case he  must have come under the influence of Göran Larsson  there.

 I left the premises (Stallet) in the company of the guy who was going to interview Shlomo Sand the following day, for their magazine, Voltaire, which is available

here, at Voltaire.se 

Before parting company somewhere near the  Östermalmstorg Station, I asked him why no questions or comments had been welcomed from the floor, where had the democratic principle of freedom of speech taken wings and flown to?
He said that they had received intelligence that some trouble makers were going to turn up to cause some havoc…..

I’m now on my way to the Bromma Cemetery to say hello to my dearly beloved sister-in-law , my wife’s older sister Åsa Kilbom ( Emeritus Profesor of Medicine) who passed away exactly five years ago…..

On the agenda:

http://www.paideia-eu.org/index.php?link=3

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I’m just back home from Shlomo Sand & Co launching the Swedish translation of his controversial book at the Scandic Malmen Hotel. Published by Voltaire Publishing. Who else?   Borei pri Ha Gafen – I enjoyed two glasses of blessed wine, made an almost perfect transcript of the question and answer session with Stig Hansen.

SS was less impressive on BBC Hardtalk, a few months ago.

The Galut. SS asks what Galut? : There was no Galut. No Galut?  Money yum yum. His book is therefore  understandably a best seller, especially where they want to hear his  kind of far fetched  fairy tales dressed up as an investiagtion into history.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0007_0_07029.html

Anyway, I enjoyed the pleasant company of an interesting lawyer from Estonia and a nice Catholic man of faith, from Indonesia, and Omer, from Tel Aviv,

I’ll take up the whole matter in my blog. For now, suffice it to say that most of the gallery  that SS is playing up to did not attend today’s presentation. Nice venue, the wine was good too, but the event was poorly attended, richly boycotted

Tomorrow. Shlomo Sand should expect some fire from the floor after his stage discussion with Ulf Carmesund, Stefan Mendel Enk and Dror Feiler, the Israeli enfant terrible of the Freedom Flotilla, prior to which his claim to fame rests on his exhibition “Snow White and The Madness of Truth” which was nicely assaulted by Israel’s former Ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel.

Truth will stand on its own legs. Currently in Sweden to purvey his ideas on an unsuspecting public, Sand has been properly defined and critiqued here:

http://www.jewlicious.com/2009/11/shlomo-sand-ridiculed-by-historian-simon-schama/

http://www.israpundit.com/archives/26254

http://www.israpundit.com/archives/22973

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Re: what you said HERE :

http://www.thelocal.se/29752/20101021/

Brother / Sister asian 369,

You are most probably right:

“Swedish leaders see unity on Afghanistan” BUT Swedish Nation DO NOT see unity on Afghanistan.”

They haven’t asked us – not yet.

That’s democracy for you: we choose our leaders (our bishops too) so that we can follow THEM, wherever they may lead us – to Valhalla or even to the other place.

 Brother/ Sister asian123,

Moving into the territory of incontrovertible fact:

My family name Hamelberg is German, not Swedish. I have equal parts of German and English in my immediate ancestry.

My mother, who is buried in Hendon Cemetery in London, true, did visit us in Stockholm, approximately 24 years ago.

 Permit me to address what I think are the implications in your question. I intuit that you ask because as an Asian (possibly from the Caste System which also exists in parts of Africa,) you are probably worried ha ha ha – or trying to figure out an answer to the question “Who is a Swede?”  – and if  you are from the relevant part of Asia, or even  from ( another aspiring Englishman) Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul’s Trinidad and Tobago, your deeper concern could well be, “Are they ( the Swedes)  all Brahmins?” or “How do they fit in or into the Caste System’s hierarchy?”

http://groups.google.com/group/usaafricadialogue/browse_thread/thread/a97f2fee91c909ea

 My advice to you is: Don’t worry! My Swedish better half throughout this life, is partly of Walloon extraction and her father, proud of his roots, wrote a book about it: Vallonerna  (The Walloons)

 More about them:

 http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1R2ADFA_svSE393&q=The+Walloons

 If you were born in Calcutta, I wouldn’t worry too much about that if I were you, just as Eric Blair though born in India – unlike the great Gandhiji, will forevermore remain British .

 In yesterday’s BBC interview, Sir Salman Rushdie had interesting things to say about the fact that he was born in Bombay. Check it out.

 One last thing about being Swedish, the rest of today, I’ll be digging deep into Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson’s “The Everyday Torah” , since according to Rabbi Irving Greenberg’s introduction, he teaches among other things, that ”equality is not to be equated with identicality”.

 Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks  much more than Asian born Baron Bhikhu Parekh , has given many positive insights into the kinds of questions that are revolving in the minds of Sverige Demokrater and all those who oppose them, questions such as  after the failure of multiculturalism, what do we do next?  He takes up some of these matters in his inimitable style, in the following books:

 “Dignity of Difference” – How to avoid the clash of civilisations “(2002)

 “To Heal a Fractured World – The Ethics of Responsibility “(2005)

“The Home We Build Together – Recreating Society” (2007)

“Future Tense: Jews, Judaism, and Israel in the Twenty-first Century” (2009)

 If you’re not in too much of a hurry, you could listen to him talk about the dignity of difference, here 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrQ75meskWI 

Hopefully we will get back  to the question of saving lives in Afghanistan -  the Malmö shootings and the possibility of  life in dignity

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I can’t help being personal.

There is a distinct possibility that some of those whose voices are most stridently anti-Sweden Democrats, are themselves racists, think they are better, superior, “ more educated” etc than others, would like to speak on behalf of their dearly beloved immigrants all, and would even like to speak up on behalf of Malcolm X , when Malcolm X himself is in the room. Or want me to think like them, share all their opinions and truths, or follow them, when I am me, infinitely less complicated or sophisticated, a part of somebody, some people, and not about to succumb to another herd instinct. Everybody’s heard of Martin Niemoller

Some, but not all have read “Wilhelm Reich’s “The Mass Psychology of Fascism”

As my friend Michael explained to me this morning, there are people of all colours and backgrounds in the Sverige Demokrater – and if anything they can be accused of being cultural chauvinists.

Yes, as a kid in London ( Fulham) I remember being asked what time it was – even though I did not have a watch on and when I said that I didn’t know, was told, “But isn’t a darkie supposed to be able to look at the sun and tell us what time it is?”

This happened exactly once then, by a repairman who was having fun, at my expense. But a young schoolboy unaware of race then, did not think “ racism” – although there were only two of our kind at our school in Fulham – in the whole school – and we were special targets for snowball attacks in our snowball wars, every winter : it was most exciting – all clean fun, and it taught us (Charlotte and I), strategic thinking, different exit strategies,  varying our exit from the school premises, as the snowball hooligans would be waiting for us with their snowballs.

I was never once asked the same kind of  what-time -is-it question in Amsterdam, around the same childhood times; but being in the bosom of a Dutch family, a loving family  was quite a different cuppa tea and then like my aunt Nelly’s mother I too could say, after her “ Ik ben een ondeugend meisje”

And then , once I was “borrowed” to play the part of one of the three wise men from the East, in a nativity play around Christmas – in the little church almost like a doll’s house , in the little street off 144 Sincliar Road , where we lived. The first time ( and also the second to last time) that I ever set foot in a church ina Inglan. Not that I had anything against English or Scottish churches. Nor do I have anything against mosques. In 1992 I spent the last ten days of Ramadan in Itikaf in one, in Uppsala. The previous year I spent the better part of four months inside mosques  and  lecture rooms in Alexandria and Cairo. In 1977, I spent three months in Shree Gurudev Ashram in Gansehpuri in India. I could go on about Tibetan Buddhism  etc etc and a few other isms …. with knowledge and understanding of others comes TOLERANCE.

No, I’m not about to be a raconteur of sexual histories,  I don’t do that ; there’s a Jewish Value called modesty which I have inculcated, since childhood. It’s a part of me.

In my opinion, the Sweden Democrats are not racists ( no matter what YOU say). Seeing the necessity and wanting to limit immigration does not have to be racist. However – and I hope that this does not happen – should they become racist, I will speak up with the intention of being heard. After all , I am an expert on racism and anti- Semitism, but for now, there is no use in crying “ wolf! Wolf!”

When after a long silence, the writer/ speaker will break that silence, his voice and his impact will be nothing less than revolutionary.

This morning’s Stockholm Metro reports the founding of the Rinkeby-based “Svartskalle-Demokrater” on the initiative of Tarek Al-Khatib. It’s supposedly started as a reaction to SverigeDemokrater, and allegedly already has 1,000 members. The report concludes with Roda Mohamed reacting to the Sweden Democrat’s leader’s belief that “Islam poses the greatest threat to Sweden since the second world war.”

Roda Mohamed is quoted as saying, “ I feel deeply hurt. I came here as a six -year old and my daughter was born here. I am as Swedish and as democratic as Jimmie Åkesson.”

Some people will dispute that  -  not that she is  not as democratic as Jimmie Åkesson, but that she is as Swedish as Jimmie Åkesson. In some countries it takes a few generations before a person can say “I am X-ish.” or “ I am British to the bootstraps!”, especially for someone not born in the country.

Who decides how Swedish a person is – or if a person is at all Swedish? I guess that part of the answer lies in how that  person feels – how his or her  heart beats or does not beat when he/she sings the Swedish National Anthem or cheers the Swedish national football team playing against any other country.

Reminds me of this picture that was widely distributed during the last American presidential campaign, calling into question Brother Barck Obama’s patriotism:

http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2007/10/osama_obama_wit.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU9iCANi02o

Last night on STV2, I watched the beginning of the exchange of ideas between Jimmie Åkesson and the new Minister of Integration, on the subject of immigration. They did not get very far, Åkesson as expected prioritizing the importance of taking care of the people who are already in the country ( it costs money), of limiting the immigration of family members and relatives of refugees/ immigrants. You know his song. I didn’t follow the follow-up.

http://www.google.se/#hl=sv&q=STV2+%C3%85kesson+vs+Integration+minister

As a consequence of the inevitable kinds of problems which result from inequality in the social and economic spheres, differences in education and work opportunities, cultural diiferences, difficulties in/ resistance to integrating into and being a part of or being subsumed in the dominant culture, we may with some dismay, read this kind of thing and start speculating about the inevitable sociological implications of failed policies in both the US and the UK that could also happen here in Sweden as clearly shown here

http://groups.google.com/group/usaafricadialogue/browse_thread/thread/32f4b2f1ac572549

Among the Local’s occasional commentator’s it would be interesting to hear what someone like the level-headed Bob Jacobson would have to say about the above piece of bad news.

( My lunch breaks’ over :  to be continued – later

ENDURANCE

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Is it a question / matter of putting the state of Israel above Jewish values – or – is the very sustenance and continued survival/existence of the Jewish state so imperative that Jewish values must be transgressed in the pursuit of Israel’s collective happines (of its people for its people) through a security – the basis of happiness – which is being denied Israel, by her enemies, even as the Palestinians experience what they feel is “collective punishment.”?

 The Jewish nature of the State – the Swedish nature of the state.

 You can substitute Sweden for Israel in all of the above although “Jewish Values” to my mind is more clearly – at least traditionally defined – Swedish Values – can somebody (Harald Ofstad’s gone, Torbjorn Tannsjo ?) please tell me exactly what they (Swedish Values)  are – they are great, to have produced such a great nation even if their sources are to be found in the ethics advised during the very dangerous times of Havamal – which  incidentally, I discovered this decade, during two successive summer excursions to Birka:

 http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en-GB&rlz=1R2ADFA_svSE393&q=Havamal

 Of course Sweden and the rest of the European Union also lay claim to the Judeo-Christian tradition – in the wake of the ever-emerging so slowly but surely, an “Islamo-Judaic- Christian tradition” taking birth today, in our collectivized Europe.

N.B. I didn’t say Eurabia or Eurabians.

True, Sweden’s Palestinians can be perceived as being her own militant crop of Muslims who live within the Swedish realm and who, like Hamas, want to impose Sharia Law – all over Israel and soon enough – just give them a chance – here in our Sweden too, in Stockholm and Malmö.

Another difference between Israel and Sweden is that Sweden – first of all Sweden does not have enemies or Islamic enemies. There have been no Sweden-Arab wars. (The unrepentant ingrate Lars Vilks is a persona non-grata in Saudi Arabia – he might be on the sub-agenda of the next Arab League Convention and better still a fatwa or two may be passed on his sorrowful head – he can then wag his tail and sing because that’s the only fame he’s going to get – that’s about all the attention the dog is going to get.

Unlike Israel, Sweden has no permanent enemies – militarized ones – and Carl de Bildt knows that Sweden faces no existential threat (such as the demographic nightmare of being overwhelmed by Muslims and al-Islam).

Nor does Sweden face the thorny problem called “ the Right of Return “ or an immigration problem with its self-propelling multicultural dynamic  being of such a magnitude within the Swedish microcosm that it cannot be regulated by the  authority invested in the Swedish state, without it being the UN’s and the OIC and the Muslim world’s and the whole world’s problem.

http://www.freeman.org/index.htm

Thinking of the level 3 Terrorist Alert, presently, or in time, this can also apply to Sweden:

“Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.”
– “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives,” by Zbigniew Brzezinski (1997), Council on Foreign Relations, National Security Advisor to President Carter and adviser to Presidents Reagan and Bush the First

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