We knew that Swedish leftism, like much of Europe today, resents Israeli policy against the Palestinians, but few of us would expect a drama scene of this proportion:

A Swedish newspaper provoked outrage in Israel and drew condemnation from Sweden's ambassador on Wednesday after it ran a story on transplant organ theft, a report an Israeli official branded anti-Semitic "hate porn."

The tabloid repeated Palestinian accusations dating to the early 1990s that Israeli troops took organs from men who died in custody. The article began by noting a case in New Jersey where an American Jew has been charged over trafficking in kidneys.

"This article has clear elements of medieval blood libels against Jews," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said. Accusing the paper of encouraging hate crimes, he said: "This is intolerable."

While the article is provocative, it is highly suspect, because it doesn't really offer actual evidence for its main claim that Israeli troops supply hospitals with organs from dead Palestinians, nor does it in any way link to "blood libel" or explicit anti-Semitism. It merely suggests in a clumsy fashion that Jewish kidney trafficking in America has something to do with what's going on between Israeli and Palestinian troops. The Swedish newspaper in question, Aftonbladet, is of course a Social Democratic paper belonging to the center-left of the ideological scale.

The truth is that Israel is on the defensive. It's been attacked by European media during the height of the Gaza conflict, and it remains the suspect ally of the evil American empire. No one likes Israel, except America, and Israel can feel that resentment lingering in the air. So one Swedish journalist writes this article and Israel attacks, because deep down inside it feels like a bleeding animal about to collapse.

Israel's fears are real. It's a nation consisting of a people who are soon to be outbred by Muslim Arabs or nuked by a random fundamentalist regime. Whether this is good or bad news, we can discuss, but it's not a distant reality. The problem is that the way you perceive yourself will change how others perceive you. When Israel feels weak, it appears weak, and thus becomes weak. America is falling into the same trap. Post-WWII victimization, an important part of the collective Jewish psychology, is a natural evolutionary reaction to historical reality, but it cannot save a nation or a people from danger. The "hate porn" attack against Swedish freedom of speech should be seen in this light, and rejected for the same reason.