That says something about how high a priority he and the party place on getting such approval. Many have tried before. No one has succeeded. But now it's the leader's turn.

Åkesson does not like to travel – not even to Stockholm, from his home in the south of Sweden – but he really needs an Israeli policy shift to be able to carry out the last phase of SD's normalization.

Not all racism is good racism, after all.

Inciting Muslims in the most elaborate, crude ways is sanctioned. But anti-semitism is something else, anti-semitism is the last grain of sand that lies there, rubbing between SD and both conservative and liberal colleagues and the upper echelons of business life.

Åkesson, like all populists, is alert to emerging opportunities. Like identifying that Hamas, the subsequent war and also the consequences for Swedish debate, have created a unique opening.

Israel can possibly consider forgetting SD's history, documented right-wing extremism. Israel's own rightward turn is another argument for making an attempt. Benjamin Netanyahu has no problem forging close cooperation with Viktor Orbán, even though he likes to portray Jews as power-hungry and subversive. In addition, Netanyahu uses a language that Åkesson feels comfortable with and welcomed by. Civilization stands against barbarism. Jewish and Christian values stand against the darkness of Islamism.

In the end, Åkesson has to – even with a rabid government in Israel – be able to show that SD used to be one thing and now is quite another. A partner. A bulwark against pogroms, against any tendency to threaten Jewish life. An antithesis to anti-semitism.

Is Åkesson open about what happened and is happening in SD?

I really don't think so.

And if, on the contrary, he admits violations, one might suspect that he is using his usual argument that zero tolerance prevails and that the tree is healthy regardless of how many rotten apples it produces.

So, here to inform Israel of the actual state of affairs.

SD is a complex party in terms of its view on Israel. And on Jews. Leading representatives have committed themselves to Israel, genuinely and lastingly. At the same time, you have a deep-seated culture that constantly generates more anti-semitism.

Linked to media ownership.

Linked to the myth of manipulated refugee flows.

Linked to profiled debaters and researchers and journalists who are perceived to defy SD's worldview.

Israel is not naive. SD is described by the newspaper Haaretz as a "far-right Swedish party with neo-Nazi roots", a correct nomenclature. But still, Israel must know the following in order to be able to face SD's revisionist campaign on a factual basis.

Here is a basic compilation that Dagens ETC previously reported on various occasions.

• In 2014, Björn Söder, then party secretary, told daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter that Jews can live in Sweden, but that they can never be accepted into Sweden's community, provided they refuse to leave their "Jewish identity". He gained the party's trust to become second vice president.

• In 2016, a film was revealed – from 2012 – in which Oscar Sjöstedt tells how his German colleagues at an Icelandic slaughterhouse used to do Nazi salutes, kick sheep carcasses and call them Jews. A ”funny” anecdote in the company of other Sweden Democrats (including Mattias Karlsson, now entrusted with running the party's think tank Oikos). ”Die Juden!” Laughter follows. Sjöstedt was then economic policy spokesperson for his party. He still is.

• In 2016, member of parliament (riksdagen) Anna Hagwall motioned to abolish the press support system to reduce Bonnier's dominance as a media company – despite the fact that Bonnier's newspapers were not awarded a single Swedish Krona at the time. Hagwall imagined, in stark contrast to reality, that "most small newspapers are directly or indirectly controlled by Bonnier", and that the task of politicians is therefore to ensure that "no family, ethnic group or company" can have such a prominent role .Behind the words, of course, was anti-semitism, barely even hidden, a lie that has traveled through history, with the belief that Jewish interests form a sphere of economic, political and media power that corrupts the public debate. Hagwall was only asked to leave her seat after the motion caused negative publicity.

• In 2016, Expo reported that the Sweden Democrats' party leadership condemns anti-semitism but at the same time turns a blind eye when such is expressed. And that happens. A lot. Sweden Democrats who share the white supremacy product "Death to ZOG!", who claim that Jews have the "invisible power", who deny the Holocaust, who promise to fight "crooked Jewish men", who call a criminology professor the "Jewish pig", who share video clips where "Zionist racists" are incited. And so on, and so on.

• In 2017, Dagens ETC revealed that 14 of the Sweden Democrats' politicians have connections to Nordfront (propaganda center for the Nordic Resistance Movement). All the other major parties had four politicians on that list, in total.

• In 2018, more revelations came about SD's politicians who applaud Hitler, mock Anne Frank ("coolest Jew in the shower room") and write about the "Jewish torment".

• In 2019, Björn Söder said that it is George Soros who "pulls the strings" in European politics. An anti-semitic notion that is exactly the one used by Viktor Orbán's Hungarian government.

• In 2021, Mattias Karlsson warned in the SVT program Min sanning that "cultural Marxism" is eating away at Sweden. A concept that in recent decades has been embraced by the European and American far-right, as an updated variant of the Nazis' cultural Bolshevism, thus with a heavy anti-semitic legacy.

• In 2022, Rebecka Fallenkvist, then presenter of SD's media initiative Riks and newly elected in the Stockholm region, posted a picture on Instagram where she is holding Anne Frank's diary. With the text: "50 pages in and so far Anne Frank has only struck me as immoral. Horniness itself.” Today, she works centrally within the SD apparatus.

• In 2023, Dagens ETC wantes to know why Henrik Corneliussen – elected on behalf of the SD in the Svedala municipal council since 2014, where he also sits on the election committee and the election board – ordered material from Nazi shop Midgård. "According to my definition, it is completely normal and has been normal in many countries for many years." That was his answer to the direct question if he identifies himself as a National Socialist.

As a Swede, as editor-in-chief of a newspaper that examines the SD and its representatives, I strongly recommend that Israel's politicians and citizens take all this into account and ask themselves three questions:

A reliable party?

A movement to ally with?

A guarantor of safe Jewish life in Sweden?