Clinton Gave Interview To Racist Paper

Ex-president chastised for giving exclusive to 'anti-Semitic' daily
fromWorldNetDaily.com

Former President Bill Clinton chose a newspaper with a clear anti-Semitic and anti-American profile to publish a recent column in Sweden, according to a WorldNetDaily reader in the Scandinavian nation. Clinton's message, that the U.S. should "lead, not dominate" the world as the 21st century emerges was submitted for publication in at least 20 countries, but his choice of Sweden's Aftonbladet as that country's exclusive publisher of the column must have been "a mistake because of the carelessness of your advisers," Dmitri Vasserman wrote to the former president. The Swedish tabloid – Scandinavia's largest newspaper – published the column Jan. 1, under the title, "I'm disappointed in you, Bush." In his letter to Clinton, Vasserman said he could not imagine Clinton would have anything to do with Aftonbladett if he knew something about them in advance. Vasserman said, the "publication of your article has done a great damage; it showed that Aftonbladet is still an appropriate paper for democratic non-racist politicians." He added, "I hope you will find an appropriate way to correct this mistake." WND spoke with an intern at Clinton's New York office on Monday who said he would try to get a response, but no one from the former president's staff called back.

'The Crucified Arafat'
In a Jan. 20 Aftonbladett column titled "Stop buying Israeli goods!" writer Lena Askling said, "Apartheid against Palestinians is escalating, and the Israeli violence increases in unimaginable proportions." An Easter 2002 opinion piece titled "The Crucified Arafat," was written by Aftonbladet’s political editor-in-chief, Lutheran theologian Helle Klein, said Vasserman, who noted the tradition of characterizing Jews as Christ killers. Columnist Gunnar Fredriksson said in an April 8 piece that Russian Jews "are considered often as racists. They hated dark-skinned Chechens and other people from Caucasus; now they hate Palestinians and the Muslims." Fredriksson said the few Russians who do have contact with Palestinians belong to criminal gangs. Politically, he said, the Russian Jews in Israel cooperate with the ultra-orthodox groups and immigrants from Morocco, Tunisia and Ethiopia. "These groups have almost nothing in common but the hatred of Palestinians," he wrote. Columnist Jan Guillou said April 16 that the "difference between Israel and the apartheid state of South Africa is that Israel executes more people and is keeping more people in jails and militant ghetto zones." Gillou criticized another newspaper for asserting that Palestinian youth and children are being brainwashed by their leaders to hate the Jews and the Jewish state. The Aftonbladett columnist complained that while South Africans' resistance against apartheid was understood as a rational response, Palestinians are accused of being anti-Semites for their resistance against Israel. Olle Svenning noted in his column on Sunday that "a couple of new biographies on George Bush have recently been published." "One relates how the president found salvation: He'd had a hard night with the bottle and woke up the following morning feeling far worse for wear," he wrote. "He looked at his reflection in the mirror and discovered that his face was speckled with vomit. That's when he fell to his knees and found God." "Which is all well and good," Svenning commented, "if only he'd made a bit of progress beyond the Old Testament, with its constant focus on revenge, war and violence." Last year, the Aftonbladet was found guilty by a Swedish court of "agitating against an ethnic group" for operating an online forum in which readers posted death threats against Jews. The paper argued that the comments were not deleted from the moderated site at the time because of technical problems, but nevertheless was held responsible by the court.