The Swedish Arts Council is distributing a new book that compares Israel to apartheid South Africa, according to sources in the American Jewish press. The book was penned by retired diplomat, Ingmar Karlsson.

A Swedish government body assigned $8,985 towards the publishing and distributing of the book "The bride is beautiful but she is married to another man – Zionism – an ideology at the end of the road?” The decision was made last month and the story broke in the Jewish press Friday.

The book conjectures with such rhetoric as “The fundamental difference between South African and Zionist colonialism is the former wanted land and people while the latter only wanted land.” And “Hebrew has a special status, with no consideration” for the Arabic language “the area’s original language.”

A committee selected the book out of 1,600 applications for its “high quality in terms of content, from both a technical and editorial viewpoint” and “the reliability of the facts,” a third party source in America learned.

The book contains a quote attributed to Theodor Herzl which the Stockholm-based Swedish Israel Information Center claims is a forgery: “It is essential that the sufferings of Jews become worse. This will assist in the realization of our plans. I have an excellent idea. I shall induce anti-Semites to liquidate Jewish wealth.”

(Arutz Sheva’s North American Desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)