Thursday, September 28, 2006
According to the story, foreign affairs played little role in the elections, but the results may have positive implications in any case: Barely hidden joy in Jerusalem over Swedish election
For years, said Zvi Mazel, a former Israeli ambassador to Stockholm, the Swedish Social Democratic government has promoted an unabashedly "pro-Arab, anti-Israeli" position.
Mazel said that the centerright parties, headed by 41-year-old prime minister designate Fredrik Reinfeld, who ousted Prime Minister Goran Persson, made supportive comments about Israel while in the opposition.
"We had good relations with them in the past, and hope it will continue," Mazel said.
Mazel - who in 2004 wrecked a display at the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm that glorified a suicide bomber - said that Sweden has for years been among the most critical countries in the EU towards Israel, along with Ireland and France.
He said that the new government was likely to bring Sweden's Middle East policy from the far left into the center in the EU, and that he believed the new government's public declarations about Israel and the Middle East would be far less critical.
Mazel's optimism was shared by Gunnar Hokmark, a Swedish member of the European parliament from one of the central-right Swedish parties. Hokmark, chairman of the Israel-Swedish Friendship League, said from Brussels that he thought the new government would "chart a more balanced policy," toward Israel...
While the change in government may be for the better, Sweden will still take much of it's direction from the European Union, which is certainly anti-Israeli. The European press, and especially the Swedish media, are also very left wing, and anti-Israeli. I would hold off on the dancing until we see if Sweden truly adopts a more balanced policy, or if it continues the European drift toward Dhimmitude.