Johan Anblick / Unsplash (Stockholm skyline archive; crop).
Israel’s ambassador to Sweden condemned a “Jude Free Zone” sticker displayed beside an “Apartheid Free Zone” sticker at a Stockholm shoe store, saying the controversy showed how normalized antisemitism had become.
Ambassador Tammy Rahamimoff-Honig said in a public statement that there should be zero tolerance for antisemitism, regardless of whether the second sticker was intended to expose antisemitism in the first.
A photograph of the stickers appeared on street artist Dan Park’s account. Original Swedish reporting described the green-and-white “Apartheid Free Zone” sticker as part of a BDS boycott campaign. The adjoining sticker showed the word “Jude,” German for Jew, inside a Star of David above the words “Free Zone.”
Park said his intervention was intended to expose what he considered the discriminatory meaning of the existing boycott message, according to i24NEWS’s account of the incident. That account reported that the store owner removed both signs following the backlash.
Sacha Roytman, chief executive of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, condemned the display and compared its wording with the Nazi-era term “Judenfrei,” used for places emptied of Jews. He said hostility toward Israel was being used to justify targeting Jews.
The ambassador’s statement rejected the idea that the artist’s stated purpose excused the language. The dispute involved two different stickers; the available accounts do not establish that the store owner created or endorsed Park’s sticker.
JBizNews Desk | Stockholm
© JBizNews.com. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution is strictly prohibited.
