US envoy: Torah burning okayed by Sweden will ‘create environment of fear’

US antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt has said that burning a Torah in Stockholm on Saturday “will create an environment of fear,” as Jewish groups and others expressed outrage over Sweden’s approval of the demonstration by activists.

Lipstadt told The Times of Israel the US is “deeply concerned” and “condemns” the planned Torah burning.

“While the United States supports freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly as elements of democracy as well as supporting the right to freedom of religion or belief for all, such acts will create an environment of fear,” the US envoy continued. “This will impact the ability of Jews and members of other religious minority groups from freely exercising their right to freedom of religion or belief in Sweden.”

The rally Saturday will see activists burn a Jewish Torah and Christian Bible.

In Sweden, home to some 15,000-20,000 Jews, the Council of Swedish Jewish Communities deplored the police decision, drawing a direct line to the gathering from Europe’s long history of deadly anti-Jewish hatred.

“Our tragic European history links the burning of Jewish books with pogroms, expulsions, inquisitions and the Holocaust,” it wrote. The Swedish Jewish Youth Association also condemned what it said was a “hateful and despicable act.”

“There are better ways to express freedom of speech than by desecrating sacred texts,” it tweeted.

Local police on Friday said they had approved an application from an individual in his 30s to hold a rally outside Israel’s Embassy in Stockholm on July 15, where a Jewish Torah and Christian Bible will be burned.

The man who filed the request for Saturday’s protest said he wanted to burn the Torah and the Bible outside the Israeli embassy in response to a Quran burning outside a Stockholm mosque last month by an Iraqi immigrant. He called it “a symbolic gathering for the sake of freedom of speech.”

Three people are slated to participate in the demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy at 1 p.m. on Saturday, according to the police decision obtained by The Associated Press.

Jewish groups in Europe, the US, Israel and elsewhere called on Sweden to back off the planned gathering, many of them noting the Continent’s history of intolerance toward Jews, including burning Jewish religious texts.

“It is clear that the act of burning a bible in front of [the] Israeli embassy [is] anything but peaceful,” the European Jewish Association said in a joint statement with the European Coalition for Israel, a Christian Zionist group. “It is instead provocative, grossly inappropriate and designed solely to offend.”

The European Jewish Congress also issued a statement strongly condemning the act.

“Provocative, racist, antisemitic and sickening acts such as these have no place in any civilized society,” EJC president Ariel Muzicant said.

“Stamping on the deepest religious and cultural sensibilities of people is the clearest expression possible to send a message that minorities are unwelcome and unrespected,” Muzicant added. “These actions, based on contorted and specious free speech arguments, are a disgrace to Sweden and any democratic government worthy of the name should prevent it.”

Doron Almog, head of the Jewish Agency for Israel, a semi-governmental organization, was holding meetings with Jewish leaders in Sweden Friday to navigate the situation, the Kan public broadcaster reported.

World Zionist Organization head Yaakov Hagoel said in a statement that granting the permit was “not freedom of expression but Antisemitism.”

In the United States, the Anti-Defamation League condemned book burnings as a “repulsive act that instills fear & incites hate.” It noted that Swedish Muslims were supporting Jews, just as Jews spoke out against the torching of a Quran in Stockholm last month.

In January, Stockholm police denied an application by a man to burn a Torah outside the Israeli embassy, which he had sought to do in response to police protecting a far-right activist who had held repeated Quran burnings outside Mosques. Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and ambassador Ziv Nevo Kulman said they had been involved in nixing the burning, a move largely backed by the Muslim community according to reports.

Nathan Diament, who heads the Orthodox Union’s Advocacy Center, tweeted that the OU condemned “in the strongest terms permitting the public burning of a #Torah in Sweden. Such a despicable act was perpetrated for centuries by antisemites as they persecuted Jews.”

The World Jewish Congress warned allowing the sacred works to be burned “ostracizes and hurts the Swedish Jewish community as well all those who value pluralism and multiculturalism.”

Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations penned a letter to Sweden’s ambassador to the US expressing its dismay over the decision and urging Stockholm “to take all necessary and legal steps to halt this vile demonstration of hate, as well as to redouble Sweden’s efforts to counter antisemitism and educate its citizens about the Jewish experience throughout history.”

“Additionally, the burning of holy Jewish texts outside of the Israeli embassy creates a perverse link between the Jewish community of Sweden and the State of Israel, which may lead people to hold Swedish Jews directly responsible for the actions of the Israeli government and invite antisemitic attacks,” the Jewish umbrella body argued in its letter.

Israeli officials spoke out against the planned arsons earlier Friday, calling on Swedish authorities to reverse the police decision.

Cohen called the decision “a hate crime, a provocation causing grave harm to the Jewish people and Jewish tradition.”

“I call on the authorities in Sweden to prevent this shameful act,” he said.

Two weeks ago, the Swedish police allowed a Quran burning in front of a mosque in Stockholm to go ahead, citing freedom of speech after a court overturned a ban on Quran burning.

Sweden’s government condemned the Quran burning, calling it an “Islamophobic” act after a call for collective measures to avoid future Quran burnings was issued by the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

The 57-member body met at its Jeddah headquarters to respond to the incident, in which an Iraqi citizen living in Sweden, Salwan Momika, 37, stomped on the Islamic holy book, filled some pages with bacon and set several others alight.

“The burning of the Quran, or any other holy text, is an offensive and disrespectful act and a clear provocation. Expressions of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance have no place in Sweden or in Europe,” the Swedish foreign ministry said.

At the same time, the ministry added that Sweden has a “constitutionally protected right to freedom of assembly, expression and demonstration.”

Authorities later said they had opened an investigation over “agitation against an ethnic group,” noting that Momika had burnt pages from the Islamic holy book very close to Stockholm’s largest mosque.

The Associated Press and AFP contributed to this report.