Swedish journalist Mats Skogkär has an intelligent piece on Foreign Policy about what he regards as the deeper significance of the Aftonbladet scandal. “To Israelis, Sweden seems destined to misunderstand their predicament,” he writes. “Tucked between Finland, Norway, and Denmark, Sweden has the friendliest neighbors in the world. Israel has the world’s most hostile and resentful. There is a Swedish no-doubt-about-it conviction that differences, however deep and old, always can be settled in negotiations.”

Skogkär infers strongly that the Swedish government has a tin ear when it comes to antisemitism and a rather self-righteous approach towards Israel’s security concerns (”Swedish inclinations are very much Europe’s inclinations,” he observes.) In combination, he continues, these have fueled Israel’s determination to keep the Aftonbladet scandal in the public eye. Desirous of what Skogkär calls “inaction” on the Palestinian track and “action” on the Iranian one, the Israeli government will use any means at its disposal to gain the upper hand over Sweden.

The basic premise here is sound, insofar as politicians in all countries would not be doing their jobs properly if they didn’t try to garner as much advantage as possible out of any given situation. That said, Skogkär is rather too hasty in extrapolating from Aftonbladet to Iran.

Israelis are not so naive as to believe that guilt over the Holocaust will be the driving factor when it comes to EU policy in the Middle East. The anger expressed over the Aftonbladet piece by a range of Israeli officials is less about the moral consequences of the Holocaust and more about the fact that in a European democracy, in our own time, an apparently responsible newspaper can relay the most preposterous, outrageous lies about the army of the Jewish state and get away with it.

This why the issue of antisemitism - and its persistence in European political culture - is so pertinent. Antisemitism has never relied on empirical verification for its claims. Actually, the reverse is true: as my AJC colleague Ed Rettig elegantly argues, “Since the enemy is so diabolically clever that he can hide his evil intentions, not finding evidence actually ‘proves’ that his intentions are indeed diabolical. Antisemitic beliefs and suspicions are thus reinforced by the absence of evidence.”

And here again is a demonstration of double standards. This time, it’s not that Israel is being judged according to higher standards. It’s that the most elementary evidentiary standards required in other cases are discarded when it comes to Israel. In that sense, what is perhaps most breathtaking is that some of Israel’s most bitter critics have felt themselves forced to say what Sweden’s Carl Bildt still refuses to say: that the Aftonbladet story was, in essence, a pack of lies.

Skogkär is also wrong to imply that it’s just the Israelis who are keeping the scandal alive. Bildt’s tone seems to become more uncompromising with each day that passes. Moreover, the anger is not just Israeli. Here in the US, the leaders of the Helsinki Commission, Sen. Benjamin Cardin of Maryland and Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, are calling on EU Foreign Ministers to denounce the Aftonbladet piece.

“We at the U.S. Helsinki Commission are dedicated to upholding human rights, particularly freedom of the press,” Cardin said. “But with freedom of the press comes responsibility. And when major press outlets fail to meet their responsibility, and instead raise the specter of racism or antisemitism, then public officials are duty bound to speak out and condemn such blatant falsehoods.”

Exactly. And if one thinks that the Israeli government is now exploiting this row for political advantage, then one must concede that had Sweden made the correct judgment call on this one in the first place, Prime Minister Netanyahu and his colleagues would not be in a position to do so.