Expressen unpublishes editorial about Jewish girl

Published 15 July 2024 at 08.39

Media. Expressen has subsequently deleted an editorial spreading rumors about an Israeli girl in Gothenburg. This after the story turned out to be false, reports the media in P1.

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It was Christer Mattsson, director of the Segerstedt Institute, who spread the false story.

“No one sang for Ofir, 11 – she's Jewish, after all.”

So read the weepy headline of an unsigned editorial published in Expressen on July 1.

In the article it was told that Christer Mattsson, director of the Segerstedt Institute, had heard a story about an Israeli girl in Gothenburg who had a birthday. Mattsson drew the untrue story in great detail during a panel discussion in Almedalen.

– Her classmates stand up and start singing. Some others stand up and shout: She is Israeli! Sit down! Shut up! and the whole school stops singing. The whole school sits down. It says Ofir, Mattsson said according to Expressen.

Expressen asked how the adult world could “fail an eleven-year-old like that”.

“To sit quietly is to say that the gaphals are right, that a Jewish girl in Gothenburg can be blamed for what is happening in Gaza, that she is tainted by original sin and does not deserve to be celebrated on her birthday. What happened to Ofir is a shame for Sweden. But she is not alone in being victimized at school because of her Jewish heritage,” the newspaper continued.

However, the article has subsequently been removed from Expressen's website.

“Expressen has chosen to unpublish the article after new information has been added and it has not been possible to verify the course of events in detail,” the newspaper now writes.

One of the liberals who spread the article was the Christian Democrats' EU parliamentarian Alice Teodorescu, who has now deleted his furious post on X about the alleged incident.

Other newspapers have also removed editorials about the anecdote after the fact. Among other things, an article written by the Zionist Sofia Nerbrand at Kristianstadsbladet.

A source with good insight into what happened at the school tells the media that the story is incorrect and that relatives were never contacted by any of the editorial writers. Only after relatives repeatedly put pressure on the newspapers were the articles removed.

According to the media, the Jewish girl's relatives did not give permission to Christer Mattsson or the relevant newspapers to spread the girl's name. It turned out that Mattsson had never even been in contact with the girl's relatives, even though he claimed to the media that the child knew that he was telling the story.