When You Cave To Pressure , You Do Not Discourage, You Encourage Those Who Hate You. Shuttering Radio Station And School Are Just The Beginning Of The End In Denmark.

Denmark’s Jewish Radio Station Shuts Down

On the advice of the country’s security officials, Radio Shalom goes off the air

By Yair Rosenberg|February 17, 2015 1:42 PM|Comments: 0

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A man holds a placard with the hashtags 'I am Danish, I am Jewish, I am Freedom' next to a woman holding a Danish flag outside the Danish Embassy in Paris on February 16, 2015. (JACQUES DEMARTHON/AFP/Getty Images)

Last night, for the first time in its history, Denmark’s sole Jewish broadcast station Radio Shalom did not air. Its programming, a mix of Jewish news, culture and music, was shut down by its proprietor on the advice of the country’s security services. “PET says it’s too dangerous,” station head Abraham Kopenhagen told the Danish paper DR Nyheder. “We do not feel that it is too dangerous, but we respect the information we are given.”

The station was offered police protection if it chose to continue broadcasting, but Kopenhagen did not want to work under such conditions. “We must do as instructed, but we will not have police standing outside the door,” he said. “We would rather close down until it is quiet again. I do not know how long that will take.”

Radio Shalom is not the only Jewish institution to shutter its doors in the wake of theshooting at Copenhagen’s synagogue that left one dead and several others wounded. Copenhagen’s Caroline School, one of the oldest Jewish schools in the world, has closed down as well. It’s a sad but predictable outcome for the increasingly besieged institution. In August, it forbade its students from wearing Jewish religious symbols in the hopes of deterring anti-Semitic attacks, only to have the school vandalized two weeks later by bigots, who smashed windows and sprayed graffiti reading “no peace to you Zionist pigs.”