Israeli Eurovision delegation threatened in Sweden

Hundreds of Jews and non-Jews are planning to walk together through the streets of Malmö, host of this year’s Eurovision song contest, on Saturday, while wearing kippahs, as a sign of their opposition to anti-Semitism. Malmö, where Israeli singer Moran Mazor performed on Thursday, but didn’t make it to the Saturday final, has been seeing increasing signs of anti-Semitism and xenophobia over the last years.

Malmö’s outgoing mayor, Ilamr Reepalu, has been accused of encouraging anti-Semitism with statements he made, including drawing an analogy between anti-Semitism and Zionism and suggesting Jews distance themselves from Zionism to stay safe.

Last year, assailants set off an explosive device outside the city’s Jewish Community Center and vandalized the building. No one has been indicted for the incident, which police said was not classified as a hate crime.

Most recently, on Wednesday, the chairman of the Malmö municipality’s Culture Committee, Daniel Sestrajcic, said Israel should be excluded from the Eurovision, a major international event with delegations from 39 countries. “Israel can return when Palestine is free,” he shouted at a demonstration commemorating the Palestinian “catastrophe,” or Nakba —  the Palestinian name for the creation of the State of Israel.

This statement came on the heels of an earlier threat to the Israeli delegation in Malmö, when three of its members  were threatened on the street. Alon Amir told Sveriges Radio on Tuesday that he and the other two Israelis were accosted by a group of young men. Amir told the men he was from Cyprus “because I knew where it was heading.” he told Sveriges Radio. “They said: ‘Where are the Israelis staying, we want to bomb the place,’” Amir said. “It wasn’t a joke.”

Several dozen anti-Semitic incidents occur annually in Malmö, a city with about 1,000 Jews, where approximately 30 percent of the population comes from Muslim countries. The Swedish court system did not convict anyone of hate crimes in Malmö in 2010 and 2011 despite registering 480 complaints.