signs of peace and tolerance?

Ann wrote:

Sweden has long been considered a liberal, tolerant, neutral nation, which makes the following story all the more alarming. I think this is illustrative of what has happened in western Europe since the demographics have changed.

Israeli athletes have long been used to being the victims of political demonstrations overseas. One of the most recent events concerned Shahar Pe'er, an internationally-seeded tennis player. She was scheduled to play a match in New Zealand during the time when Israel invaded Gaza in January. Her hotel was mobbed and her route to the match and the match itself was lined with violent protestors. A couple of weeks later her visa (issued and approved months before) to the meet in Qatar was revoked. Only after the international tennis federation fined them and threatened to withdraw their sponsorship of the event were the male doubles players allowed in. During the same week she was in New Zealand, an Israeli basketball team playing in Turkey was attacked on the playing court by hundreds of spectators who stormed the barriers. The Israeli team had to be hurried off the court by police and were locked in the changing room until it was safe enough to get them out of the building. The European Basketball League then fined the Israeli team and listed them as having forfeiting the game because they didn't finish playing!

The same male doubles team were scheduled to play a Davis Cup match in the city of Malmo, Sweden this morning. Because the police and organizers were worried about possible protests, they decided to schedule the match in a closed arena without an audience. To my knowledge, this has never happened at an international match before. Protests were so bad yesterday that they were even thinking of moving the venue to another venue for safety reasons.

The match began about an hour ago. Over a thousand additional policemen were brought in from the south of the country (in addition to the police already there) in order to handle the expected riots. And riots there were. Hundreds of protestors attacked the police with rocks and eggs, and tried to storm the building where the tennis match was taking place. My question is, who were the violent barbarians, the Israeli tennis players or the people with rocks in their hands and murder in their minds?

By the way, Swedish government statistics say that the population of Malmo, Sweden's third largest city, is now well over 30% Moslem. A coincidence?

"About 40 percent of Malmo's population is foreign-born or has at least one foreign-born parent. The bulk of foreign-born people come from the former Yugoslavia, Iran, Iraq and the Horn of Africa. Among school-age children, 50 percent have at least one foreign-born parent, and analysts project that the number will soon reach 60 percent. " (Washington Post) My note: The majority of people in these countries are Moslem.

And as a closing note, since the Israeli military pulled out of Gaza (too early) a month ago the poor people of Gaza have fired nearly 200 rockets and mortars into Israel. The rockets are new and improved with a longer range and the potential to cause more damage. Several of them have landed in schools and kindergartens. Yesterday morning there were already 7 Grads fired before nine in the morning. Ann, Israel

Two interesting articles:
1) violence at the tennis match:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090307/ap_on_re_eu/eu_sweden_israel_protests
2) Malmo's (and Sweden's) changing population: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52672-2004Oct21.html