Stockholm – A popular entertainment in Sweden caused a stir in the Scandinavian country after it published a map of the State of Israel with the inscription “State of Palestine” next to the flag of Palestine. Only Arab, mixed or ancient cities were indicated on the map – Jerusalem, Jaffa, Acre, Haifa, Nazareth, Ramallah, Gaza, Khan Yunis and others. Tel Aviv, for example, has no trace on the map.
As part of the semi-finals of the entertainment show on Swedish Channel 5, a quiz was published that dealt with the Swedish singer Laila Bagge Wahlgren (50), daughter of a Swedish mother and a Palestinian father. The show “Free for All” put up a slide of the singer next to a map of the State of Israel with “Palestine” written on it, with a Palestinian flag added. The question was: what is the country of birth of the father of the famous singer.
The Israeli embassy in Sweden hastened to publish another question and four possible answers, similar to the format of the popular entertainment: “What should Channel 5 and the producer of the program do when they show a map where there is no trace of Israel? A. Check the graphics. B. Invest more time in the investigation. C. Apologize. D. All the answers are correct.”
In response to the Israeli sting, the show’s producer responded to the tweet with an apology and wrote that the mistake would be corrected as soon as possible. “It was a mistake. We will fix it as soon as possible. Sorry,” tweeted the producer. The Swedish press also reported on the mistake of the entertainment and the Israeli response.
The Jewish Youth Organization in Sweden tweeted in response: “The map you published is wrong for several reasons – if it was supposed to symbolize the territory before 1948 it would mean Mandatory Palestine and Transjordan, and the flag is wrong. The map is wrong from both a historical and a contemporary point of view. It is clearly a modern map where Israel cities were erased and removed. According to the IHRA definition, anti-Semitism is to deny the Jews the right to self-determination and for Israel to cease to exist.”
Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, Ziv Nebo Coleman, said that the embassy “was amazed to see the map in the popular entertainment, in which the state of Israel was erased. We chose to challenge the producers of the entertainment with an interactive response that attracted the producer’s attention and resulted in sympathetic coverage in the Swedish press.”
