Thursday, March 28th | 18 Adar II 5784

Subscribe
January 22, 2015 6:49 pm
54

Yarmulke-Clad Swedish Gentile Reporter Attacked in Malmo (VIDEO)

× [contact-form-7 404 "Not Found"]

avatar by Dave Bender

The synagogue in Malmo, Sweden. Photo: WikiCommons.

A synagogue in Malmo, Sweden. Photo: WikiCommons.

Eighteen months after an intrepid gentile journalist strolled the streets of Malmo, Sweden wearing a yarmulke, in order to get a sense of how residents of the city view Jews, a new video suggests that the situation has only worsened, Israel’s NRG News reported Thursday.

In October, 2013, Patrick Reily, a journalist for The Local English-language newspaper, spent a day in the city of Malmö wearing the traditional kippah headcovering in order to see how passersby might react.

After an uncomfortable few hours walking the streets, and becoming the object of stares and insults, Reilly concluded: “As an Irish person abroad I’ve never felt remotely threatened, but wearing the kippah for a few hours was enough to instill feelings of fear. Even when I didn’t feel afraid I was made to feel different and unwelcome.”

This time it was Peter Lindgren’s turn to don a kippah and Star of David chain around his neck and head into town. The result: “He received direct threats as he walked through the city,” according to expressen.se.

Lindgren, walking with a hidden camera and microphone alongside, recorded every step. The report showed the reporter enduring verbal abuse by a man who called him a “Jewish s***” and told him to “leave.” Another person hit him and shouted “Satan Jew,” at him.

As they approached the the city’s neighborhoods with higher Muslim populations, the threats only increased. Some 20 percent of the 300,000 residents of Sweden’s third-largest city are Muslim, according to statistics.

“Then a whole gang came along to threaten the ‘Jewish’ reporter,” while occupants of neighboring homes shouted abuse at him. The broadcast caused a public storm in Sweden, with reactions by public figures, local Jewish organizations and international groups.

The clip, which was broadcast on Sweden’s national television, examined the degree of threats Malmo’s Jews face. The city is infamous for having the largest number of anti-Semitic incidents in the country, many of them perpetrated by members of the Muslim community.

According to the report, “many of [Malmo’s remaining Jews] are afraid to leave their homes; many want to leave the city and do not want their children to grow up there.”

There are only about 600 Jews remaining; many have left for Stockholm and other cities because they can’t take the hatred.

During the first six months of 2013, Malmo police reported 35 attacks on Jews – triple the previous year, according to an official who spoke with The Jerusalem Post.

In the wake of the recent terror attacks in Paris against the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly and the Hyper Cacher supermarket, Swedish-Jewish leader Lena Posner Körösi told The Local that her organization “received emails and letters from Islamists containing threats. The police and security services have raised the threat level accordingly.

“What we don’t know is whether these threats are from people linked to groups like al-Qaeda or ISIS or if they are copycats,” Körösi admitted, but told AFP that threats against Jews had “at least doubled” in Sweden.

The full report is here (Swedish only): http://youtu.be/9cFYmhQMks8

Watch a clip from the report:

Share this Story: Share On Facebook Share On Twitter

Let your voice be heard!

Join the Algemeiner

Algemeiner.com

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.