Caption under photo: Swedish Jews are experiencing problems in the form of harassment. The picture shows large synagogue in Stockholm. - David Sanger
By Bente Clausen
More and moer Jews chose to leave the southern Swedish city of Malmo and settle in Israel instead. It is not desire, but harassment drives the outflow. In 2009 there were 79 reported hate crimes against Jews in Scania. That is double the previous year. And it's Arab youth, which accounts for most of the harassment.
Head of community policing in Malmö
Bengt Hersler expect in the future "several waves of anti-Semitic atacks," as he puts it:
-As soon as the conflict escalation in Israel, so it also stepped up in Malmö. It happened last year, both in connection with the war in Gaza and at a tennis match between Sweden and Israel, he says.
29 percent of Malmö's inhabitants were born ouside Sweden.
- It is a big problem that many hate crimes go unreported, or that the police get them put in the wrong pile. But all police officers have been trained, so now there should be assurance that when a jew killed because he is a jew, so it ends up in the statistics of hate crimes over the statistics on violence, says Bengt Hersler.
And from the Jewish assembly in Malmö states from spoksman Fredrik Sieradzki that the Assembly is aware of the movements out of the country, and that the reasons are almost always children.
-We have members whose children are forced to move school simply because they are Jews. They're mobbed out, says.
The Danish chief rabbi, Bent Lexner, now well the situation in southern Sweden, which includes the destruction of Jewish property and arson.
-The situation surely tells something about how difficult it is to integrate Muslim groups in Malmö, he says.
But he will not compare the situation of Jews in Denmark with the crackdown in Scania.
-There is at times more episodes than we have been accustomed to, but very noticeably, it has not changed. At least not initially, " he says.
Mosaic Troessamfunds President, Finn Schwarz, is not entirely agree.
-2009 has not been fun year, and we have to deal with , he says.
The southern Swedish trend is confirmed by an Israeli government inquiry on anti-Semitism, published up to the Auschwitz-day today. It says that Britain and France also experienced a doubling of hadkriminaliteten from 2008-2009.