Mohamed Omar, a 34-year-old Swedish poet and commentator, has announced the foundation of a new political party whose main aim is to combat Zionism. Omar said he was prepared to welcome people from all political strands in Sweden into his new party as long as they subscribe to the its core principles.
"Everyone is welcome, even neo-Nazis, but no one is going to be able to push us in a certain direction. We're not going to focus on Islamic questions, but only on anti-Zionism in order to reach out to as many as possible," Omar told the Swedish radio program ‘Kaliber’. His website features interviews with known Holocaust deniers and others who hold anti-Semitic views.
Omar once edited one of Sweden's most respected Islamic publications, the magazine ‘Minaret’. Israeli incursions into the Gaza strip in the second half of 2008 played a key role in his radicalization. Since then he repeatedly said that he now supports Hamas and Hezbollah and declared himself to be “a radical Muslim – and I say that with pride." His self-declared role model is the late leader of the Islamic revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Khomenei, and on his website he calls himself a “Swedish Islamist”.
Soon thereafter he began arguing that Zionism was to blame for a number of Sweden's problems, including the disturbances which plagued a neighborhood of the city of Malmö, the third-largest in Sweden. "Besides, the big threat today is the Zionists. Today, there are Zionists collecting money for the Israeli murder machine which used the money to burn children," Omar said last year on Swedish television.
A number of former allies have distanced themselves from Omar following his radicalization, including the current editor of Minaret, Abd al Haqq Kielan. "He's basically become a full blown extremist, seasoned with a bit if Islamic spice, but he doesn't represent Islam in any way," Kielan told ‘Kaliber’.
Omar’s plan to form an anti-Zionist party is modeled on French comedian Dieudonné, whose group unsuccessfully contested the European Parliament elections in June 2009.
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