Fake Bomb Targets Sweden Chabad House
Swedish police discovered what they described as a well-made fake bomb at the Chabad House in the southern city of Gothenburg.
The mock bomb was found last week on Saturday, according to a report posted that day on the police’s website. Police came to inspect the premises following a report of a suspicious-looking man who left an unidentified object there.
“Police bomb technicians shot at box that appeared to be a well-made dummy,” the report read. “Police wrote a report on serious unlawful threats.” The report spoke of a Jewish-owned establishment without mentioning specifically the Chabad House, which was nonetheless identified as the target by the Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism.
Chabad envoys and other individuals who are recognizable as Jews have suffered repeated assaults in Malmo and Gothenburg. The local communities attribute most such acts to extremists from the southern Swedish cities’ sizable Muslim communities.
Earlier this month, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention said it has recorded 6,270 hate crimes last year nationally — an all-time high that came as a result of a 14-percent increase over 2013.
Four percent of the hate crimes documented, or 270 incidents, were anti-Semitic, according to the report, which was published Tuesday.
Sweden’s Jewish population of 20,000 accounts for 0.2 percent of the country’s population of 9.59 million people.
In absolute terms, the 2014 tally on anti-Semitic attacks constitutes a 29 percent increase over the 193 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in 2013. But the proportion of anti-Semitic attacks in the tally of all hate crimes grew last year over 2013 only by half a percentage point, from 3.5 percent.
Hate crimes against Christians increased from 321 in 2013 (5.8 percent of the total of 5,508 hate crimes recorded that year) to 489 incidents last year, or 7.7 percent of the 2014 total.
Anti-Muslim crimes were also on the rise, from 327 incidents in 2013 to 492 last year.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
