Israel’s relations with Sweden, problematic for some time, took a downward turn last week when something Swedish foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, said was interpreted by the Israeli government to mean that Israel was carrying out extrajudicial executions on Palestinians in the latest “Knife Intifada” by Palestinians against random Israelis.
The Swedish prime minister said that Wallstrom’s comments had been misunderstood. “The Minister for Foreign Affairs did not, as alleged, say that extrajudicial executions occur in Israel,” Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven and Wallstrom said in a statement.
Let’s look back and see what Foreign Minister Wallstrom actually said. Addressing Swedish lawmakers on Friday, Wallstrom denounced the almost daily Palestinian knife, gun, or car-ramming attacks, but urged Israel to avoid excessive force. According to the official English translation of her statement provided by the Swedish Foreign Ministry,
And likewise, the response must not be of the kind — and this is what I say in other situations where the response is such that it results in extrajudicial executions or is disproportionate in that the number of people killed on that side exceeds the original number of deaths many times over.