Antisemites should be deported from Sweden, refused citizenship, says MEP

People who incite violence against Jews must be prosecuted or deported from Sweden without pardon, Swedish politician and MEP Alice Teodorescu Måwe argued.

Writing in a blog post on her Substack this weekend, Teodorescu said that any Swedish citizen who threatens Jews should face prosecution, and if they lack Swedish citizenship, they should be made to leave the country.

“With the right to live one’s life in peace and freedom, with all the rights that come with living in Sweden, obligations and responsibilities also follow,” she continued.

Teodorescu also advocated for Sweden to adopt a ruling similar to the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, where citizens must recognize Israel’s right to exist before becoming citizens.

An individual wanting to become Swedish must “embrace the Judeo-Christian values that Swedish democracy rests on,” she wrote, particularly values of equality, tolerance, and secularism.

Citizenship is a privilege

She added that anyone who acquires Swedish citizenship but later acts in contravention of the commitment to these values should have it revoked.

“Swedish citizenship is a privilege, something to be grateful for,” Teodorescu wrote.

Making a comparison to Kristallnacht, when the Nazis destroyed Jewish businesses and houses while German citizens looked on, Teodorescu said that Sweden is similarly allowing today’s Jews to be targeted.

Last week, Swedish journalist Sofie Löwenmark reported on a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Gothenburg in which a large crowd chanted “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya yahud,” which means “Khaybar, Khaybar, Oh Jews! “The army of Muhammad will return!”

This refers to the Battle of Khaybar, during which a Muslim army besieged an area with a prominent Jewish community in 628 CE. The rallying cry, coined during the First Intifada, has often been chanted at anti-Israel rallies.

The protesters allegedly also shouted praise for former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by the IDF in Rafah earlier this month.

“What we are seeing cannot be allowed to continue,” Teodorescu stated. “More and more ordinary people – Jews and non-Jews – are frightened into silence by the dominating behavior of the left-wing Nazis, who are taking over an ever-larger part of the street scene.”

“None of this belongs in Western democracies. We must not, in the name of tolerance, tolerate those who hate us being allowed to ravage and threaten us in our own country,” she declared.

Teodorescu said that although Israel’s war is physically far from Sweden, it is present in “Swedish living rooms” due to “people whose geographical domicile is Sweden but who mentally remain in the Middle East.

“They do not consider themselves Swedes with Sweden’s best interests at heart,” she wrote.

While the pro-Palestinian movement claims to be about a “free Palestine,” it is above all about fighting against a sovereign Israel and the Western values that prevail there, as in Sweden, she said.

For Teodorescu, it is the moral right of the Swedish people to protect and fight for the few Jews who remain in Sweden.

“It is a moral duty, not least given how the Jews were treated in Europe and by Sweden during the Second World War,” she added.

She referred to Israel as a multicultural democracy “surrounded by theocratic, Islamist dictatorships which, despite its small geographical size, is fighting a great war against terror and barbarism.”

“This fight, as I have repeatedly written, is also ours. Because it won’t stop with the Jews this time either,” she concluded.

Antisemitism in Sweden

Antisemitism has massively increased in Sweden in recent years, especially in the aftermath of October 7.

This is partly due to Sweden’s significant Muslim population, which comprises about 8% of the country’s total population.

In an op-ed last month in The Jerusalem Post, one writer, whose grandfather and uncle each served as chairmen of the Stockholm Jewish community, said that due to antisemitism, Swedish Jews must travel to Copenhagen in Denmark if they wish to make aliyah.

He also noted that threats to his life have prevented the Israeli ambassador to Sweden from staying at the embassy since October 7, forcing him to hold his meetings in secret locations in Stockholm. Earlier this month, a gunman fired at the embassy.

Earlier this year, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention released a report stating that antisemitic hate crimes in the country were five times higher after October 7 than in the same period the year before.

The report stated that 110 complaints were registered by police between October 7 and December 31.