This Ongoing War..
13 April '13..
The town of Jönköping is Sweden's ninth-largest. Locals call it the Jerusalem of Sweden because of its many churches. Swedish Match Industries, a major company with a historical impact on global markets got started there, so it's small surprise to find this intro on the company's website:
The ability to make fire has always been vital to human life. Yet it was not until the 19th century that the cheap safety match was invented [and] became known around the world for its high quality and safety.
Burning things is evidently on the minds of today's Jönköping townsfolk. A small business called Socialist Book Cafe, or Bokcafét i Jönköping in the local language (Svavelsticksgränd 7, Jönköping, Sweden, phone +46 36 12 56 70), operates on the premises of a cultural center owned and operated by the Jönköping municipality. It sells things besides coffee. Things that are connected with its long tradition of fire. Israel-focused things, like the t-shirt below.
This is not your grandfather's Sweden. Old-time values of tolerance and open-mindedness are under serious challenge in today's Sweden.
Swedish mayor who opposes anti-Israel vitriol attacked | April 12, 2013 | (JTA) A Swedish mayor working to stop anti-Israel propaganda from being sold at a municipal cultural center was assaulted. Mats Green, mayor of Jonkoping, was lightly wounded in an attack April 7 outside his home when two men struck him and kicked him, the news site nyheter24 reported. Green, a politician from the center-right Moderate Party, said he could not identify his attackers. But local police suspect the background to the attack is Green’s efforts to prevent the sale of T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Burn, Israel, burn” at the Socialist Book Cafe, a shop operating inside a city-owned cultural center. The shirts sell for about $40. For three years, Green has argued that the shop undermines the city’s values and should move out. The matter will be brought to a vote by the city council on April 26. “It seems there is a majority for ending the cafe’s activity under city auspices, so right now the debate is escalating,” Green said. “It is important that such calls, to destroy a country and its people, not appear on municipal grounds. I don’t want our city to be associated with anti-Semitism in the same way that has happened in other cities in Sweden.” The Socialist Book Cafe did not reply to requests for comment.
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