A resident of Malmö spat at the Israeli television reporters.
Photo: N12
The Israeli TV reporters interview people on Möllevångstorget in Malmö.
Photo: N12
The Gaza war is reflected on the streets of Malmö when an Israeli television team visits the city to report on Eurovision. A confrontation between a man and the Israelis has gone viral on social media since one of the reporters posted the clip.
In the short clip, the man approaches the reporters and, according to the reporter, has spat at them. They ask why he spits and the answer is:
– Because you are shit. Palestine forever.
Approaching again
The man approaches again and a reporter says:
– Don’t touch me, don’t touch me!
The scene is part of a more than 20 minute long report as Israel’s Channel 12, the leading Israeli television channel, showed in its central news broadcast on Tuesday evening. It is the first part of two in the series “Good evening, Malmö”, a name that refers to the greeting phrase when each country’s jury announces its result in the ESC final.
Reporters Elad Simchayoff, the channel’s European correspondent, and Ohad Hemo, reporter in the Palestinian territories, walk around Malmö. They interview people in residential areas and in market squares in Malmö, where there is a dominant element of people with a Middle Eastern background.
They act openly as Israelis and on some occasions it leads to almost physical confrontation – and police intervention – but mostly to tough conversations.
“We want to slaughter Israel”
– We want to slaughter everything that is Israeli with a knife, says an interviewee.
Another man says, when told that the reporters are from Israel:
– Israel? There is no such thing.
Ohad Hemo, who has many years of experience from the West Bank and Gaza, says in the program that what he hears in Malmö is more extreme than what he hears among Palestinians in the West Bank.
– There are harsher words here than in the West Bank. There, many people still talk about borders and agreements. Everyone here is talking about Israel disappearing, he says and continues:
– The Gaza war is present everywhere here. There are lots of Palestinian flags and symbols. We could be in Gaza or Ramallah, in Cairo or Damascus.
Be warned about Eurovision
The next feature in the series will address the situation of the small vulnerable Jewish group in the city.
The journalists speak to guards outside a mosque, who do not know they are from Israel, and warn them not to visit the city during the ESC festival – because there will be riots and “bombs”.
Obama’s envoy
For many years, Malmö has been the most famous – or rather infamous – Swedish city in Israel. There, as in many other parts of the world, the anti-Israel public opinion has received attention. For example, the expressions of joy in Malmö and other cities after the Hamas massacres in Israeli border villages on October 7, which became the prelude to the Gaza war.
It also attracted great international attention when US President Barack Obama’s special envoy against anti-Semitism was sent to Malmö in 2012 and directed sharp criticism at the then municipal councilor Ilmar Reepalu’s (S) statement about Jews. Three years later, a new envoy came from Obama on the same matter.
Arne Lapidus in Tel Aviv.
READ MORE: The threats against Eurovision in Malmö – SVT takes actionREAD MORE: Medina cancels participation during EurovisionREAD MORE: Demonstrating to the hostages: “A half-year of hell”
2024-04-10 09:55:45
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