An Iranian-born MP in Sweden has spoken out in support of Israel after controversial comments by the country’s Foreign Minister.
Moderate Party MP Hanif Bali, who has received anti-Semitic hate mail and a death threats for his outspoken support of Israel, attended a meeting this week where a small group of MPs met to challenge Margot Wallström’s call last week for an investigation into what she termed Israel’s “extrajudicial executions” of Palestinians.
Bali, who was born in Iran, said Wallström is only a small part of a general trend in the Swedish political discourse surrounding Israel. Stockholm gives aid to the Palestinian Authority without investigating how the money is being put to use, he charged, while at the same time leading a one-sided critique of the Jewish state.
“This is not only about what Margot Wallström has said. It is about a long-term problem we have in Sweden, which is that we have given aid to the Palestinian Authority, which has gone towards spreading hate messages. That is a problem that is larger than Margot Wallström,” he said.
He also saw hypocrisy in Wallström’s probe of Israel’s killing of terrorists. In October, Swedish police shot and killed a 21-year-old assailant who stabbed students at a school in southwest Sweden, killing two.
“During that attack, the police went in directly and eliminated the threat in order to protect people. But when a country that Margot Wallström doesn’t like does this, she calls it ‘extrajudicial executions,’ and this is a double standard,” Bali said.
The Times of Israel reports that while attendance was low when the lawmakers met in Stockholm on Tuesday evening — only eight MPs attended the ad hoc gathering organized by Swedish MP Mikael Oscarsson and Israel advocacy groups — it is remarkable in a country in which political rhetoric is by and large hostile to Israel.
Christians United for Israel UK
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