Pro-Hitler slogans, Nazi imagery deface Massachusetts Jewish cemetery

Police are investigating anti-Semitic messages and Nazi imagery scrawled on dozens of gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in Massachusetts. Fall River police say the vandalism at Hebrew Cemetery occurred over the weekend. Sgt. J.T. Hoar says police became aware of the graffiti Sunday after receiving a report of a suspicious vehicle that had been parked in the cemetery for two days. The vehicle was gone by the time officers arrived.

Anti-Jewish posters in Warsaw

The Herald News reports that at least 30 gravestones were tagged with swastikas and phrases including “heil Hitler” and “Hitler was right” in black marker. One stone was tagged with “Oy vey! This is MAGA country,” an apparent reference to President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

No arrests have been announced.

The incident is the latest in a chain of similar events that have taken place in the past year around the world, in particular in Europe, with swastikas and hate graffiti appearing on Jewish institutions and property in Poland, Greece, Spain, France and other countries.

In Madrid, two vandalism incidents that included Nazi graffiti took place in the passing year: one outside the home of emissaries from the World Zionist Organization, and a second in front of the house of a senior local Jewish activist and chairman of a Jewish organization fighting local boycotts of Israel.

  

In Manchester, in the north of England, headstones at Urmston Jewish Cemetery were vandalized in early February.

The anti-Jewish sentiment has also reached Poland, when large posters were placed on several residential buildings in Warsaw mid February. Signs read: "These buildings will soon be returned to the Jews, to meet their demands."

Nazi symbols daubed outside the home of Jewish activist Angel Mas

In the Greek capital Athens, anti-Semitic graffiti was sprayed in the yard of a Jewish school in the passing year. The graffiti said, among other things: "Jews are whores."

In France, which is home to the largest Jewish community in the world after Israel and the US, has seen an increasing number of such anti-Semitic attacks. Recent incidents include swastikas sprayed on mailboxes image of late French Jewish politician Simone Veil, who was a Holocaust survivor, a minister in the French government and president of the European Parliament.

In Paris, the word Juden (German for Jew) was daubed on the window of a bagel shop.

In another incident, the French-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut was attacked with anti-Semitic slogans when he came across a yellow vest demonstration in central Paris. Days later, at least 80 graves were desecrated in a Jewish cemetery near Strasbourg, in the eastern part of the country.

In addition, unknown assailants vandalized the Paris memorial to Ilan Halimi, a young French Jew who was tortured and murdered in a 2006 anti-Semitic attack that shocked France.

Also in February, anti-Semitic graffiti was painted on the facades of houses and street furniture in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. A municipal official said that there had been dozen cases of anti-Semitic graffiti sprayed on several streets in the southern part of the French capital.

In the wake of the wave of anti-Semitic incidents in France, tens of thousands took to the streets of Paris and other locations in the country in protest mid February.

Protest against anti-Semitism in Paris (Photo: AFP)

The Paris demonstration was attended by Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and former presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. Before the rally, Philippe warned that anti-Semitism was "deeply rooted in French society."

In the U.S., other recent anti-Semitic vandalism acts included swastikas graffitied on a Jewish professor's office in Columbia University in New York City; “Heil Hitler,” graffiti in a Park in NYC; and a Southern California synagogue vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti.

US Jewry experienced its worst ever anti-Semitic attack in October, 2018, when a gunman stormed a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during Shabbat services and shot worshipers, killing 11 and wounding six others.

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Kosher food, Dubai style

Israel's warming relationship with the Gulf states is intensifying – and for the first time, a kosher catering company has been established in Dubai. Kosher food is also expected to soon be a feature on Gulf airlines, and that is not all - a kosher restaurant is also planned for the United Arab Emirates.

 

The kosher catering company, Kosher Arabia, will serve all the Gulf states. It was founded by Ross Kriel, a Johannesburg-born lawyer who heads the Orthodox Jewish community in Dubai.

 

The kosher food section at a February 2019 intefaith conference in Abu Dhabi

At present, the company serves only dairy food, fish and vegetables. For now, it has no kashrut supervisor and it is doubtful that one will ever emerge, but the company passed the kosher test last month when Pope Francis visited the UAE.

The pope attended, among other things, an interfaith dialogue conference in the capital Abu Dhabi, where a kosher dining area was set up for the Jewish attendees.

Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmed Al Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, embrace during a meeting in the UAE (Photo: Reuters)

Also present at the event was US Orthodox Rabbi Marc Schneier, who heads the Jewish-Muslim Interfaith Understanding Foundation and serves as a Jewish affairs advisor to the rulers of the Persian Gulf.

"It was so exciting to stand in line for kosher food in Abu Dhabi at a conference convened by Muslim leaders," says Schneier. "I ate fish and vegetables and a dessert." According to the rabbi, the catering company was established partly to serve Jewish business people and tourists who visit the Gulf.

He is currently discussing the next step with senior Gulf officials - opening a kosher restaurant in Dubai.

Rabbi Schneier with Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa

"Many Jews visit the Gulf states, and they need kosher food. If there were such a thing here, more Jews would come there and everyone would benefit – the Jews from the kosher food, and the locals are from an increase in tourism.

Schneier said talks are also underway for Kosher Arabia to supply food to the Gulf airlines for the benefit of Jewish passengers.

"These are the steps that symbolize rapprochement," he said.

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Norway AG: 'F*cking Jews' is legitimate criticism of Israel

Norway's attorney general ruled Tuesday that a Norwegian Muslim rapper who said "f*cking Jews" during a concert was not engaging in anti-Semitic hate speech, but rather legitimate criticism of Israel.

 

The initial incident took place in June 2018, when rapper Kaveh Kholardi, who is of Iranian origin, was performing on stage at a municipal festival in Oslo. He asked the audience if there were any Muslims in the crowd. When some people responded, Kaveh wished them a happy Eid. He went on to ask if there were any Jews, and when no one reacted, he said "Fucking Jews."  He then said, "Just joking."

Kaveh Kholardi

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the organizers of the family-friendly event, which was supposed to celebrate diversity, complained to the rapper. Kholardi had five days before the incident written on Twitter that “f*cking Jews are so corrupt.”

Kholardi later claimed that the comment at the concert had been taken out of context and was a joke. He was, the rapper wrote on Facebook, "neither a racist nor anti-Semite.” 

Local Jewish leader Ervin Kohn complained about the comment to police, calling it hate speech and incitement, but was told that it "falls within the freedom of speech of performance artists to make provocative and satirical statements." 

This finding was supported by State Prosecutor Trude Antonsen, who found that while derogatory and offensive, the remark did not constitute a criminal act.  

Kohn then appealed to Attorney General Tor Aksel Busch, who on Tuesday dismissed his appeal on the grounds that the "f*cking Jews" remark “seems to be targeting Jews, it can however also be said to express dissatisfaction with the policies of the State of Israel.”

Norwegian pro-Israel group MIFF called Busch’s decision “alarming” because he “finds ambiguity where there is none,” JTA reported.   

Israel's deputy ambassador to Norway, Dan Poraz, called the ruling "bizarre."

"The attorney general rejected an appeal against his decision to close the case against the Norwegian rapper who yelled 'F*cking Jews' on the grounds that it could be interpreted as criticism of Israel," he said. "I have lived in Norwary for the last four years and have no doubt that most Norwegians were disgusted by this anti-Semitic comment."

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Welcome home!

Some 30,000 new immigrants arrived in Israel from all over the world over the last year with the assistance of the Jewish Agency. They came from Europe, North America, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Asia and Australia - to build their home in Israel.

The decision by new immigrants to take part in our shared story has an impact on all aspects of Israeli society, as they contribute to research, science, medicine, economics, security, art, culture and sport.

A special project by Yedioth Ahronoth, Ynet and the Jewish Agency invites you to join us as we meet immigrants new and old, who have chosen to share their lives and experiences with us.

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The Pomerantz-Ben Abu family, Jerusalem

Countries of origin: France and Russia

 

Shosha and Yankel

 

Shosha Pomerantz, 26, completed her bachelor's degree in sports and dance in Moscow, followed by a master's degree in art and painting. She decided to do a professional internship in Israel as part of the Masa project, which is jointly run by the government and the Jewish Agency. After her internship, she began studying Hebrew at an ulpan, where she met Dr. Yankel Ben Abu, a French dentist.

They went on their first date on Valentine's Day 2017, married a year later and two weeks ago their eldest son, Eli, was born. The young family recently moved from Herzliya to Jerusalem. Yankel works as a dentist in a private clinic, and Shosha, who is on maternity leave, works as a designer of wedding invitations.

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The Kabasov family, Ashkelon

Country of origin: Belarus

 

The Kabasov family

 

Olga and Sergei Kabasov, aged 36 and 42 respectively, immigrated to Israel with their children Ilya, 10, and Nikita, 6, in April 2018. They live in the Beit Canada absorption center in Ashkelon. Sergei, who ran a pharmacy in Belarus, works as a truck driver to support the family. Olga was accepted to a course run by the Jewish Agency, the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption and the Tel-Ran company, in which immigrants undergo a professional conversion program. She hopes that at the end of her studies they will both find better employment.

Their son, Ilya, is involved in the sport of wrestling, which he began at an early age in Belarus, where he won medals. Upon their arrival, they encountered a very Israeli phenomenon: rockets from Gaza. "In the early days, after the barrages, it was hard for us to fall asleep at night," they admit.

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Nicolas Lampert, Tel Aviv

Country of origin: Uruguay

 

Nicolas Lampert

 

"When I walk around with a kippah in Israel, I feel at home," Lampert says. "My whole life I was connected to Jewish life and to Israel, and when I finished high school, I came for a gap year and other programs in Israel." After the year in Israel he returned to Uruguay. "I had a promising career in the family business in Montevideo, but I realized that this (Israel) is our home and I never gave up my dream of immigrating."

He fulfilled his dream when he moved to Israel alone in March 2018. He spent the first few months at the Jewish Agency absorption center, Ulpan Etzion, in Jerusalem, where he met his wife, who immigrated from England. He currently lives in Tel Aviv and is expected to join the IDF in a few weeks.

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Anna Gamzinova, Jerusalem

Country of origin: Ukraine

 

Anna Gamzinova

"My family was always forced to hide its Jewishness," says Anna, 23. "During the communist period, my grandmother was not even allowed to use her Jewish surname, but I knew from a young age to which nation I belonged. One day I went into the Jewish Agency building in Kiev and asked to come to Israel." Anna arrived for a 10-day visit as part of Birthright, and then returned for several months as part of the MASA project. "The moment I arrived in Israel, I knew that I had come home," she says. "I do not have relatives in Israel, but after I arrived I was invited to a barbecue in Jerusalem, where I met my partner, Yossi. It was love at first sight."

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The Brown Family, Ra'anana

Country of origin: South Africa

 

The Brown family

 

"We wanted to guarantee our children a Jewish future," says Barry Brown, 45, who immigrated to Israel I 2017 with his wife Claudine, 44, son Daniel, 16, and daughters Shira, 13, and Ora, 11. Barry started his acting and singing career as a child. He has appeared all over the world and built a magnificent career as a cantor in Cape Town.

When the family immigrated to Israel, he began renovating the house they had purchased in Ra'anana. After building a clinic for his beautician wife, Barry continued to work on house renovations, but did not give up his dream of performing. He is studying cantorial studies in Petah Tikvah, an event producer and in 2018 he competed to be Israel's entrant to the Eurovision Song Contest.

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Atankot Sitautau, Sha'ar HaNegev

Origin: Ethiopia

Atankot Sitautau

Atankot, 29, is a newly arrived immigrant. He arrived from Ethiopia on February 4 with his grandfather, uncles, and 34-year-old brother. They are part of the first 80 immigrants who arrived as part of Operation Yehudit. Sitautau was orphaned when he was a little boy, and his grandfather raised him and his brother.

"For 15 years we have been waiting to immigrate to Israel and reunite with my uncles, my mother's brothers, and now the dream has come true," says Atankot, who in recent years served as a cantor for the Jewish community waiting in Gondar to move to Israel. The family is currently in the Jewish Agency absorption center in the Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Council.

Atankot would be happy to meet with Israeli family, but preferably with an Amharic speaker who could help with the conversation.

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Yona Weissid Schneider, Nahariya

Country of origin: Brazil

 

Yona Weissid Schneider

 

Yona, 54, until recently a resident of Sao Paulo, immigrated to Israel following her son and daughter, who immigrated years before. She is spending her first months in Israel at the Tapuz absorption center in Nahariya, which assists immigrants from all over South America at the start of their lives in Israel. Yona's son, an architect by profession, immigrated five years ago. He was followed by his sister, who is now a soldier in the IDF. Her third son remains in Brazil.

In her native country, Yona ran an apartment building with 600 housing units. Now, while she finishes her Hebrew studies and finds employment in Israel, she is teaching her fellow residents at the absorption center how to make her secret (and excellent!) recipes.

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The Galsurkar siblings, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv

Country of origin: India

 

Ze'ev and Grace Galsurkar

 

Ze'ev (23) and Grace (26) Galsurkar immigrated last year from India. He lives in Jerusalem and eats kosher food, and she lives in Tel Aviv and is not observant. Grace came first, lived in an absorption center and studied Hebrew at an ulpan. Since she has a master's degree in commerce and accounting, she moved to Tel Aviv at the end of the studio and is employed in her professional field. Ze'ev remains in Jerusalem.

"The Jewish community in Mumbai is very warm and united," says Ze'ev. "I will never forget the rabbi of our community, Gavriel Holtzberg, who was murdered along with his wife in the (2008) terror attack at Chabad House a few days after I celebrated my Bar Mitzvah."

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Eric Surgeon, Jerusalem

Country of origin: England

 

Eric Surgeon

 

Eric, 91, is a very new immigrant, arriving in Israel on February 14, several months after his two daughters and six grandchildren. He is a British citizen of Iraqi origin who lived in India until the age of 17. He moved to England when his talent at playing viola landed him a full scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Eric enjoyed a wonderful musical career in England - and among other things he took part in recordings by The Beatles and Eric Clapton, but his specialty is classical music. He is a widower and is happy to meet new Israeli friends.

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The Tarasov-Bagley family, Jerusalem

Country of origin: Ukraine

 

The Tarasov-Buagley family

 

Anna Tarasov, 23, and Stanislaw Bagley, 25, met online and married in Ukraine. Anna was working as a television presenter and Stanislaw was a medical student. Before he met Anna, Stanislaw visited Israel as part of Birthright and knew he would return to live here because "people are willing to help each other." Anna had never visited Israel. In 2017 they both came as part of the Masa project and lived in the Jewish Agency absorption center in Be'er Sheva, which takes in doctors from around the world. A year later they decided to immigrate. Stanislaw is doing an internship at Hadassah Hospital and Anna is starting a preparatory program for her academic studies.

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Holocaust survivor to meet California teens amid outrage over Nazi salute photos

An Auschwitz survivor and stepsister of Holocaust diarist Anne Frank will meet on Thursday with some California high school students seen in viral online photos giving Nazi salutes over a swastika made of red cups used in a drinking game.

  The anti-Semitic comments and images posted mainly on Snapchat, which included an image with the title "master race" - a reference to the Nazi belief in ethnic purity - drew national outrage. Holocaust survivor and peace activist Eva Schloss, 89, hoped that the students involved have the potential to become advocates of tolerance and understanding, organizers of the meeting said in a statement. "It's imperative that today's young people come face to face with the consequences of unchecked hatred," said Rabbi Reuven Mintz, director of the Chabad Center for Jewish Life in Newport Beach, California.

Swastikas and Nazi slautes at California teens' drinking game

The off-campus party was held at a home on Saturday night in Costa Mesa, California, which multiple media accounts said was attended by more than a dozen students from several high schools in upscale neighborhoods in Orange County.

The images included students with arms raised in a Nazi salute and about a dozen students crowded around the cups arranged in the shape of a swastika, media accounts said. Some students have since written letters of apology, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Eva Schloss (YouTube screenshot)

Schloss is the stepsister of Frank, whose diary about her experiences hiding from the Nazis and time in a death camp, became world famous. Frank died at age 15 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany in 1945, after being transferred from Auschwitz, Poland. Schloss was captured by the Nazis in 1944 in Amsterdam and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where her brother and father died, according to her biography posted on her website, evaschloss.com. Schloss and her mother were later liberated by the Russian Army, and her mother later married Frank's father, Otto, who died in 1980. The private meeting between Schloss and some students involved in the incident is scheduled to take place at Newport Harbor High School on Thursday, organizers said. Rabbi Mintz worked closely with school officials to help facilitate the discussion. "Our hope is that meeting someone who witnessed, firsthand, the atrocities committed under the same swastika and salute will help guide these students towards a life of tolerance and acceptance," he said. The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks acts of racism, reported that anti-Semitic incidents rose nearly 60 percent in the U.S. in 2017 from 2016.

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Polish Jewish leaders object as government mulls exhumations at Jedwabne pogrom site

WARSAW, Poland -- The Polish government is reconsidering whether to exhume human remains at a World War II-era site where Jews were burned alive by Polish neighbors, though the country's chief rabbi says the work would violate Judaism's prohibition on disinterment under most circumstances. Authorities will weigh "various circumstances" in deciding if exhumations should go forward in the town of Jedwabne, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told private broadcaster Polsat News. During the German Nazi occupation of Poland, Poles killed at least 340 Jews on July 10, 1941. Most of the victims were locked inside a barn that was set on fire.

A visitor lays a stone at a memorial of the victims of the Jedwabne massacre (Photo: AP)

  Some Poles want the massacre site excavated to uncover possible evidence that Germans ordered Polish villagers to do the killings. The work was started in 2001 and stopped by the justice minister after several days due to Jewish objections. Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich said exhuming the place where the barn stood "would desecrate the memory of those who were buried there." "It makes moral sense that we should follow the religious traditions of those who were buried there," Schudrich told The Associated Press. "Jewish law hasn't changed in 2,000 years, and what we said in 2001 remains the same now." The Jedwabne pogrom was one of several massacres carried out by Poles during the German occupation. Many historians see it as evidence that anti-Semitism existed in a significant part of the Polish population. Many Polish nationalists think it is unfair to blame Poles and that Germany bears the ultimate responsibility given the methods of terror and violence Nazis used in occupied Poland. Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany for more than five years during World War II. Nearly 6 million Polish citizens died, some 3 million Jews and almost as many non-Jews.

A Holocaust survivor displays the tattoo goiven him to him by the Nazis, at the entrance to Auschwitz death camp in Poland (Photo: AFP) (Photo: AFP)

That the question of exhuming remains has resurfaced reflects the pressure on Poland's ruling party from far-right groups that call historical evidence of Poles doing the killings to be a "Jewish lie." A right-wing TV broadcaster sparked the discussion anew by asking an official about it recently. The ruling Law and Justice party is led by the twin brother of the justice minister who stopped the earlier exhumation, Lech Kaczynski. He was killed along with 95 others in 2010 when the Polish air force plane they were on crashed in Russia. The surviving brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has taken the party on a more nationalistic course in recent years. Once the government decides whether to proceed with an excavation, prosecutors will have the final, Morawiecki told Polsat News in an interview on Tuesday.

"For us, the most important thing is for historical truth to be emphasized, and the historical truth about the fate of Poles during the time of World War II is extremely sad for us," the prime minister said. "But it also testifies to what a splendid, great nation we are and who bears the sole guilt for the Holocaust."

Protests at the entrance to Auschwitz against Polish efforts to reject any culpability for the Holocaust (Photo: AFP) (Photo: AFP)

Poland has been quick to denounce anyone accused of linking the country to the well-documented history of anti-Semitism and violence against Jews that took place there during and after the wartime Nazi occupation. Israeli officials see Poland's controversial legislation as an attempt to suppress such discussion, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced criticism from historians in Israel for not opposing the law, which critics say distorts history.

Many Poles refuse to accept research showing thousands of their countrymen participated in the Holocaust in addition to thousands of others who risked their lives to help the Jews, insisting that all atrocities on its soil were committed by the German occupiers.

Tensions between Israel and Poland rose last year after Poland's nationalist government introduced new legislation that would have made the use of phrases such as "Polish death camps" punishable by up to three years in prison. After pressure from the United States and an outcry in Israel, Poland watered down the legislation, scrapping the prison sentences.

A fresh diplomatic row over the issue broke out between Israel and Poland last month, when some Israeli media reported remarks by Netanyahu in which he appeared to accuse the Polish nation of involvement in the Holocaust.

Netanyahu's office said he had been misquoted in his response to a reporter's question during a visit to Warsaw about Polish legislation related to Holocaust remembrance, and that he had not cast any blanket blame. But the spat reignited days later whe the interim foreign minister Yisrael Katz said that "many Poles" had collaborated with the Nazis in World War II and shared responsibility for the Holocaust. He also referenced a quote from the late former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, who said that Poles "suckled anti-Semitism with their mothers' milk."

As a result, Poland withdrew from a formal gathering of the central European Visegrad Group of countries, with Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki denouncing Katz's comments as "racist" and "absolutely unacceptable." The summit was then cancelled.

Reuters contributed to this report

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Sweden teaching the Holocaust to young refugees

They grew up in Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia and can place Israel on a map, but many young refugees in Sweden have never heard of the Holocaust.

 

Their first contact with Jewish history in Europe is often in the classroom and sometimes from the teachers themselves.

"One of my teachers was harassed by other students. He's Jewish and they made fun of him all the time," says Nergis Resne, a 19-year-old born in Sweden to Turkish-Macedonian parents.

Kippah Walk, Malmo Sweden

She has since joined the group Young People Against Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia founded by Siavosh Derakthi in Malmö, Sweden's third-biggest city where one in three inhabitants was born abroad. Organizations and a foundation started by Stieg Larsson, the late author of the best-selling Millennium crime trilogy, are taking on the challenge of helping students and teachers fight against anti-Semitism. Despite online threats against him, Derakthi, 27, organizes seminars in schools, group talks and study visits to former concentration camps to raise young people's awareness of the horrors of the mass killing of Jews during World War Two and the need for peaceful co-existence. "Some of them come from dictatorships, from warzones brimming with anti-Semitic, homophobic and misogynistic beliefs," explains Derakthi, originally from Iran, who in 2013 won the first Raoul Wallenberg Prize in honor of the Swedish diplomat who save thousands of Jews in the war. Educators say their job is made more difficult by the vast amount of prejudice, fake news and conspiracy theories circulating on social networks.

Living History Forum Museum

"The most popular is without a doubt YouTube, where the radical far-right propaganda and the propaganda from radical Islam occasionally overlap," says Jonathan Leman, a researcher at the Larsson-founded Expo foundation. Expo put together a booklet after 90 of the 100 teachers it surveyed in 2016 said their students believed conspiracy theories including that the Holocaust either never happened or did not happen in the way it's told in history books.

A stone's throw from Expo, in Stockholm's Old Town, Ingrid Lomfors welcomes thousands of students each year to the Living History Forum museum. Here the aim is to foster understanding by appealing to people's compassion and touching their hearts, rather than giving lessons in morality.

"Last year I had a wonderful exchange with three young Muslim girls about Anne Frank," the Jewish girl in Amsterdam who wrote a diary before she died in a concentration camp, says Lomfors. "They knew nothing about Anne Frank. They walked through the exhibit, and then at the end two of them told me they identified with her, because of the isolation, the constant threats, the persecution, not knowing if they'd be alive the next day." In Malmö, Imam Salahuddin Bakarat and Rabbi Moshe-David HaCohen have together founded the Amanah project aimed at building bridges between their two communities through festivals, workshops and lectures. The challenge is rendered even more difficult by urban segregation, with large numbers of immigrant youths concentrated in the same neighborhoods and schools.

Molotov cocktails thrown at synagogue in Gothenburg in 2017

According to the most recent report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention in 2016, three percent of crimes of religious, ethnic, political or sexual nature had an anti-Semitic character, in a country of 10 million people that is home to 15,000 to 20,000 Jews.

In one such case, young migrants from Syria and the Palestinian territories were convicted for throwing Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in Gothenburg in December 2017. No one was injured in the attack. In 2016, anti-Muslim crimes were more than twice as common as anti-Semitic ones, at seven percent. Mosques and migrant housing centers were the targets of numerous attacks. Police have not seen any significant rise in the number of anti-Semitic crimes reported since 2014, even though Sweden has taken in 400,000 migrants since then, more than any other European country per capita. Sweden does not include ethnicity in its crime statistics. Last year 35 police reports of anti-Semitic crimes were filed in Malmö, a number seen as stable but in all likelihood below the actual number, suggests Malmö police official Zandra Brodd. Meanwhile three out of four Swedes believe anti-Semitism has grown in the past five years – the highest proportion in the European Union – according to a Eurobarometer study published by the European Commission in December. "Many Jews choose to keep a low profile in public. They may for example hide a Star of David pendant inside their shirt or take off their kippah as soon as they leave the synagogue," says a spokesman for Malmö's Jewish community, Fredrik Sieradzki. In January, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven pledged to allocate more funding so more youths can visit Holocaust memorial sites in Europe, and Sweden will host an international genocide conference in 2020.

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