Sweden's government said Friday that video clips circulating of a slip-up by Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, purportedly showing him saying Israel had a right to genocide, were a "distortion" and part of a "disinformation campaign".
The clips originate from a question and answer session Kristersson held in Gothenburg on Tuesday when he begins to talk about the Israel-Hamas conflict and appears to misspeak.
"Right now, there are circulating clips with inaccurate translations and distortion of what the Swedish Prime Minister said during an open meeting in Gothenburg," Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Civil Defence Minister, said in a post to X, formerly Twitter.
"The purpose is obvious: To damage Sweden's image abroad and contribute to further polarisation and division," Bohlin added.
At one point during the talk, Kristersson begins to talk about the Israel-Hamas conflict, but misspeaks as he attempts to say that Sweden and the EU are "united on that Israel has a right to defence, within the framework of international law".
However, instead of the word for "defence" (forsvar in Swedish), he first says "folk" before correcting himself.
Some in the crowd take this to mean that Kristersson was about to say "folkmord", or genocide, which also is similar to the word for international law -- folkratt.
"Does Israel have a right to genocide?" and "we heard it" members of the crowd can be heard shouting.
The whole session has been described as rowdy, with protesters and members of the crowd shouting and interrupting Kristersson during the talk.
Bohlin said the narrative was being reinforced by "actors involved in the disinformation campaign related to social services in Sweden."
Kristersson wrote in a post later on Facebook that the talk had been interrupted by "political saboteurs", seemingly there only to vent "their anger at the political position of Sweden and the EU on the conflict in the Middle East."
Sweden's foreign minister Tobias Billstrom said in another post to X that the country saw "hostile actors trying to falsely distort the words of our PM."
"Do not contribute to this. What he said is that Sweden and the EU stand firmly behind Israel's right to defend itself," Billstrom said.
In 2022, the country was targeted in a vast disinformation campaign claiming its social services were "kidnapping Muslim children" and placing them in Christian homes, leading Swedish authorities to publicly deny the allegations.
On Friday, a four-day truce began after nearly seven weeks of war that began when Hamas broke through Gaza's militarised border in an attack Israeli officials said killed about 1,200 people, with around 240 Israeli and foreign hostages taken.
Israel's retaliatory air, artillery and naval strikes alongside a ground offensive have killed about 15,000 people, according to the Hamas government in Gaza.
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