S has called Jamal El-Haj to a meeting with the group management. This after he was caught in a picture with a designated leader from the terror-labeled Hamas.
On Facebook, he writes that he participated as a Swedish-Palestinian, not a Social Democrat, and that he therefore lived up to the party’s advice. But being there was a given.
“For the majority of the Palestinian people in the diaspora, the commitment of every single Palestinian, whether political or non-profit, is an important marker for our existence and the popular liberation struggle. Therefore, it was a matter of course for me to participate in the annual conference in my beloved hometown of Malmö”.
SVT Nyheter Skåne has sought Jamal El-Haj for a comment, but he has not returned.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs critical
Foreign Minister Tobias Billström (M) takes a serious view of what happened.
– The Social Democrats should really think about what kind of signals this is sending, he says to Expressen.
Designated Hamas leader
The Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Green Party planned to participate in the conference. But the parties withdrew when it was discovered that the chairman of the event, Amin Abu Rashid, had been singled out as the leader of Hamas, labeled a terrorist organization by the EU.
“Now in retrospect, various Swedish media have drawn attention to this conference and it is claimed that the organizers of the conference have connections to the terrorist organization Hamas. The attempts to thereby also connect me to Hamas because of my participation, in what I experienced was one big public celebration, I consider to be a guilty-by-association,” writes Jamal El-Haj.