Hats off to Benny Dagan, Israel’s ambassador to Sweden. In response to a question from a Swedish journalist yesterday as to why Israel will not investigate claims made in the Aftonbladet newspaper that the Israeli military kills Palestinian children to harvest their bodily organs, he nailed the beast at the heart of this story in style:

“Why don’t we investigate why the Mossad and the Jews were behind the bombing of the twin towers?” he was quoted as saying by the Jerusalem Post. “Why won’t we investigate why Jews are spreading AIDS in the Arab countries? Why won’t we investigate why Jews killed Christian children and took their blood and organs to bake matzot on Pessah?”

Meanwhile, Jan Helin, the editor of Aftonbladet, was quoted by Ynet (the English language version of the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot) as saying today: “I’m not a Nazi. I’m not anti-Semitic.” Under the circumstances, the second point presents us with something of a head scratcher. As far as the first is concerned, I for one believe him. He is probably where Sweden has always been on the question: neutral.

But leaving that aside, the saga just gets more and more bizarre.

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One suspects that there would have been a different reaction if this had been about racism against blacks. But Sweden has now made it clear that it will not condemn the country’s best selling newspaper for running a two-page spread earlier this week which alleged that Israeli soldiers kidnap Palestinian children to cut out their bodily organs for sale.

This website contacted the Swedish foreign ministry in Sweden asking for clarification. A ministry spokesman, Anders Jorle, said that the Swedish government had “no position on the allegations” and quoted from the blog of foreign minister Carl Bildt where he said that “freedom of expression and press freedom are very strong in our constitution by tradition.”

The story, which ran in the Aftonbladet newspaper, also sought to link the wholly unsubstantiated allegations with the recent arrest in the United States of an American Jew on suspicion of planning to trade a human kidney on the black market. A modernised form of the ancient blood libel against the Jewish people was thus compounded with the inference of collective guilt.

It is strange to say the least that Sweden should invoke freedom of expression as a reason for its silence. If free speech is given such a premium why does the foreign ministry not exercise its own right to free expression by stating a position?

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I have frequently argued that it is not really possible to reach a proper understanding of Europe’s problem with Israel (and its appeasement strategies in the Middle East) without addressing the civilisational weakness which underpins it. The freeing of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi on “compassionate” grounds by the Scottish Justice Secretary highlights the problem in bold relief.

Let us leave aside the question of whether oil and other business concerns had a hand in the decision. They probably did, but this cannot be proved. Let us also put to rest the dissembling about whether al-Megrahi was guilty as charged. That was irrelevant. The decision to release him was made on the basis that he was in fact guilty.

Now let’s get to the core of what happened. The Scottish authorities released the greatest mass murderer in the history of the United Kingdom to a vile Middle Eastern tyranny which then sought to make political capital out of his release via a massive hero’s welcome back home. What does this tell you about Britain (and by extension Europe) and the Middle East?

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So what happens when you put together an ageing British rock star, a Finnish director, and a spokesman for the United Nations to launch a short film about Israel’s security barrier, sorry, “Apartheid Wall”? Let’s begin with the money quote. As Pink Floyd front man Roger Waters had it this week (using the catch line from one of his most famous songs) in a story quoted all across Europe by French news agency Agence France Presse (AFP):

‘”It fills me with horror, the thought of living in a giant prison,” Waters says as he spray-paints “We don’t need no thought control” on the wall.’

Oh dear, oh dear. One of the problems with political fanaticism, of course, is that the people who participate in it quickly lose all sense of what they are saying and doing. But this — ‘We don’t need no thought control’? — is preposterous even by anti-Israeli standards. Time then for a bit of loopy logic from the United Nations just to guarantee this particular piece’s entry into the idiotic-story-of-the-year competition.

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What is a blood libel? In Europe, it usually took the form of an allegation that Jews slaughtered gentile children and used their blood in ritual sacrifice, sometimes involving cannibalism. Just as anti-Semitism in its broadest sense has now mutated into anti-Zionism so it is that the particularities of anti-Semitic discourse have themselves mutated. A disturbing, indeed shocking, example of the way in which the ancient blood libel has been reinvented for the modern world came in yesterday’s edition of Sweden’s top selling newspaper Aftonbladet.

Under the headline, “They plunder the organs of our sons” the newspaper screamed and frothed with allegations (all unsubstantiated and from Palestinians) that soldiers of the Israeli Defence Forces kidnap Palestinian children to cut out their bodily organs and sell them on the black market. The article, which ran as a two-page spread in the paper’s cultural section (!), also linked the allegations to a recent story from the United States in which several American rabbis were in a group indicted for conspiring to sell a human kidney for transplant. The blood libel was thus compounded with the inference of collective guilt.

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