(JTA) — A guest tweeter on Sweden’s official Twitter account raised hackles over some comments she made about Jews.
Sonja Abrahamsson, 27, who identifies herself as an unemployed single mother from a small Swedish town, immediately apologized for the tweets, saying she did not mean for her questions to be offensive.
"I’m sorry if some of you find the question offensive, thats was not my purpose," she tweeted Tuesday on @Sweden immediately after the remarks that drew criticisim from fellow tweeters. "I just don’t get why some people hate Jews so much."
Every week a Swedish citizen is chosen to be in charge of the official state account, which its curators call "the world’s most democratic Twitter account."
Abrahamsson, who said that there are no Jews where she lives, first made a crass comment about how to identify a male as Jewish. She then tweeted, "In nazi German they even had to sew stars on their sleeves. If they didn’t, they could never now who was a jew and who was not a jew."
She continued, "Once I asked a co-worker what a jew is. He was ‘part jew,’ whatever that means. He’s like ‘uuuuh … jews are.. uh.. well educated..?"
Abrahamsson, who also had made remarks some deemed inappropriate about other groups of people. apparently will be allowed to finish out her week as guest tweeter.
“It’s very important for us to let everyone take a unique viewpoint,” Tommy Sollen, social media manager at VisitSweden, told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. “Every one of our curators is there with a different perspective.”
Abrahamsson is the country’s 24th guest tweeter.
Stephen Colbert, host of the satirical news show "The Colbert Report," has initiated Operation Artificial Swedener to urge the Swedish Tourism Department to name him a guest tweeter on the @Sweden account.
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