Jamal El-Haj is a Social Democratic member of Parliament for Malmö, Sweden’s third-biggest city. In 2018, he called Israel an “apartheid state.” Rather than censure him, Magdalena Andersson, the Social Democratic prime minister, appointed El-Haj to the foreign affairs committee. Before we laugh too hard at the wacky Scandi socialists, remember that House Democrats did much the same with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in January 2023.
In May, as the Republicans were preparing to expel Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Sweden’s Social Democrats suspended Jamal El-Haj from Parliament for taking part in the “Palestinians in Europe” conference at Malmö. The conference organizer, a Dutch Palestinian named Amin Abu Rashid, has such damningly close links with Hamas that members of Sweden’s Green and Left parties dropped out of the conference.
