Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.(Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)
We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948) With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last.(Friends of Israel Initiative)
Showing posts with label Antisemitism in Norway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Antisemitism in Norway. Show all posts
I've stumbled across this video from earlier this year, on Jews in Norway, which I think deserves a look.
'TV 2 Norway investigate Norwegian anti-Semitism. The word “Jew” is a
common insult in many communities in Norway. What role does the
neo-Nazis’, muslim immigrations and the – BDS (boycott Israel) movement
play – if any? And: Can old prejudices be joked away?'
Norway is widely considered the most antisemitic country in Europe, and compounding that unenviable reputation are the views of Johan Galtung, an octogenarian sociologist who founded the international Peace Research Institute in Oslo.
This leftist is on record as characterising Islam by "two words: togetherness and sharing" and speculating that Freemasonry might have played a role in Anders Breivik's decision to commit mass murder:
"Not the Freemasons as an organization, but I’m thinking of the loyalty oaths. He probably has a number of solidarity, loyalty networks that are very obscure and very hidden. Being well versed in history, making his mistakes, but knowing more than many, many people in Norway do, he has links to Judeo-Christian history, to the Crusades."
He's also speculated that the Mossad might have been involved,and made other judeophobic assertions,including hints at overweening Jewish power in American academic life: "seventy percent of the professors at
the 20 most important American universities are Jewish".
"The Jews control U.S. media, and divert for the sake of Israel," he has alleged.
"Six Jewish companies control 96% of the media," he has written, adding that although Rupert Murdoch is not Jewish,many of Murdoch's employees are, and that "Many of
them are fanatically pro-Israel."
He has also recommended the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion (well decribed by one historian in an eponymous book title as a Warrant For Genocide) as a text. He wrote:
"I wonder how many people with such
strong opinions on the book have even read it. It is
impossible to do so today without thinking of Goldman Sachs."
Reports the Israeli leftwing newspaper Ha'aretz:
'Galtung’s repeated anti-Semitic remarks were exposed by the website of the Norwegian periodical, “Humanist.” (http://humanist.no) Some of the comments were made during a lecture at the University of Oslo last summer, and others were written by Galtung in response to an article critical of him that was published in the periodical.
Among other claims, Galtung stated that there is a possible link between Anders Behring Breivik, responsible for massacring dozens of children in Norway last summer, and Jewish and Israeli factions. The connection is supposedly based on the fact that the murderer has ties to the “Freemasons” organization, “which has Jewish origins,” according to Galtung. The supposed connection to Israel is through the Mossad – which Galtung believes might have given Breivik his orders.
In the same breath, Galtung mentioned a conspiracy theory, linking last summer’s massacre in Norway with the attack on the King David Hotel, carried out by the Etzel in 1946 – both attacks took place on July 22. He finished with this astonishing claim: “It will be interesting to read the [Norwegian] police report on Israel, during the trial." ....
Gad Yair, a sociology professor at Hebrew University, was the first to expose Galtung’s anti-Semitic remarks in Israel. Yair wrote about Galtung in his blog. (http://coolcite.com)....'
There's a new article in an apparently influential Norwegian academic journal that makes some bizarre claims about the linkages of the mass murderer Breivik. Here's the English-language abstract:
'The terrorist attacks in Norway on 22 July 2011 were first described as an al-Qaeda operation. When Anders Behring Breivik was arrested and we were able to look at his video and read his manifesto, it became clear that he was inspired by Jewish-Christian anti-jihadist writers, the very individuals that had pointed to al-Qaeda in the first place. Some critics argued that Breivik had been used by Israeli forces with an interest in changing Norway’s policy towards Palestine, as if Breivik had copied the Israeli bombing of the British headquarters in Jerusalem in 1946, on the very anniversary of that attack. However, inspiration and interests are not enough. One also has to look at Breivik’s contacts that supposedly financed him and initiated him into his crusading «Knights Templar» order. Breivik himself points to Serbian crusaders, while others points to an East-European military mafia. The two converge, however, into one network that is surprisingly close to Saudi and Chechen intelligence and to the very Islamists that Breivik detests, as though Breivik’s Knights Templar were the mirror image of al-Qaeda.'
It seems that antisemitism is so ingrained in the psyche of Norway's leftwing political elite, that they twist into propaganda against Israel a rape epidemic in their country by Muslim immigrants from benighted countries who believe that Norwegian women, going freely about their business and dressed how they like, are fair game. (No pun intended.)
Back in July, when this epidemic first came to light, it was reported that:
'Yehuda Bello, an Israeli blogger who is well-acquainted with Norwegian culture, noted the report and claimed that Norwegians are a culture that suffers from “extreme boredom” due to the presence of huge oil reserves, and are thus inordinately interested in multiculturalism and assorted “human rights” campaigns.
They are also traditionally anti-Semitic, he believes. As a result their politicians and press are focused on Israel’s actions in Shechem (Nablus) and Hevron and choose to ignore Muslim misdeeds – be they in Iran, Syria, or in Norway itself.
Despite this, he reports, the Muslim rape campaign has become so terrible that even Norwegians have begun to recognize the reality around them, and in recent months there have been protests where the slogan was “Muslims out!”'.
'who understands Norwegian and has Norwegian contacts, reports that from January to late October, 48 rapes were confirmed to have been carried out in Oslo alone, 45 of them by Muslims. In the first six months of 2011, 208 Norwegian women complained of rape and attempted rape in Oslo alone. In all of Norway, 929 rapes and attempted aggravated rapes were reported since the beginning of the year, he adds.
Bello notes that Norway is "the most advanced country in the world in granting rights to women." However, he adds, the "politically correct rot" prevents the rape wave by Muslims from being reported. "They are called 'non-western,' 'dark skinned,' 'Middle Eastern' et cetera.
After a police report in Oslo said that Muslims were raping Norwegian women out of a religious conviction that this was the proper thing to do, a stormy public debate erupted, reports Bello, and "the government ministers, most of them avowed anti-Semites, claimed that the report and its publication serve Israel and its policy of occupation."
Norway's justice minister defended the police report but also said that "Israel must be glad to hear about it."
Bello says women do not dare venture out of their homes after dark in many parts of Norway and that many have even dyed their hair black, out of the conviction that blond hair is more alluring to the rapists. Some carry tear gas, although this is against the law.'
See more here
Also http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2011/12/05/projecting-schadenfreude-and-cultural-aids-norway-tries-to-deal-with-a-wave-of-muslims-raping-norwegian-infidels/
American Bruce Bawer, who has lived in Norway for the past twelve years, has a no-holds-barred piece on antisemitism there (which he describes as "over the top") and the Norwegian elite's submission to Islamist influences, in his latest column in the online magazine Hudson New York.
Among his revelations:
'The quintessential expression of Norwegian anti-Semitism during my time in Norway was an op-ed written by Jostein Gaarder, author of the international bestseller Sophie's World. It appeared on August 11, 2006, in Aftenposten, Norway's newspaper of record. I will quote from it just to give you a flavor of the kind of thing that is considered respectable discourse in Norway. "The state of Israel in its current form is history," wrote Gaarder. "We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people....To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity....We acknowledge...Europe's deep responsibility for the fate of Jews....But the state of Israel...has massacred its own legitimacy....The State of Israel has seen its Soweto.... " Gaarder went on to describe little Jewish girls writing hateful words on bombs to be dropped on civilian populations in Lebanon and Palestine – as if it were Israel that teaches its children to hate and kill. He wrote: "We do not recognize a state founded on anti-humanistic principles and the ruins of an archaic national religion and warrior religion." You might have thought he was talking about Saudi Arabia or Iran, but no; he was talking about Israel. After reading Gaarder's op-ed, one of the leading members of Norway's tiny Jewish community, a writer named Mona Levin, said she had not read anything so disturbing since Mein Kampf. Many ordinary Norwegians agreed. Yet members of the cultural elite lined up to support Gaarder. As far as they were concerned he had struck a blow for truth and virtue.
What motivates this anti-Semitism? Several things. For one, the leading lights of Norway's cultural elite are overwhelmingly on the far left, and intensely hostile to the West, to capitalism, and therefore to the US and to Israel, which they see as America's puppet and vassal – a colonialist, imperialist outpost of Western capitalism in the heart of the Islamic world. Before the fall of the USSR, an extraordinary percentage of these Norwegian leftists were either Communists or very sympathetic to Communism. They have replaced their affinity to the Soviet Union with sympathy for the great totalitarian ideology of our time: Islamism. Thus they romanticize Palestinians and despise Israel.
Part of the motivation for this anti-Semitism is of course the influx into Norway in recent decades of masses of Muslims from Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere. Multiculturalism has taught Norway's cultural elite to take an uncritical, even obsequious, posture toward every aspect of Muslim culture and belief. When Muslim leaders rant against Israel and the Jews, the reflexive response of the multicultural elite is to join them in their rantings. This is called solidarity....
On Oslo's version of Fleet Street there is a bar, a journalists' hangout, called Stopp Pressen (Stop the Presses). For years, there hung in its window a photograph of a smiling, beatific Yasser Arafat. From the way he was portrayed, you would have thought he was Albert Schweizer. I walked by that picture almost every day for years. It was a good reminder of the sickness at the top ranks of Norwegian society....
The cultural elite has been forced to admit that there are problems with [Muslim] immigration, but its mantra is still that the only, or at least the main, problem with Islam in Europe is not Islam itself but anti-Islamic prejudice. Also, pretty much any Muslim who is not an active terrorist is by definition a moderate. A few years ago I actually began hearing people in Norway talk about "moderate Islamists" and now this is an entirely familiar label. It is a perfect example of what Daniel Patrick Moynihan called "defining deviancy down."
These so-called "moderate Islamists," moreover, are routinely welcomed into the elite.... Meanwhile people from the Muslim community who object to the tyranny of imams and want to enjoy the same freedoms everyone else does get little support from the very authorities who should be their champions....
Two years ago, supposedly in response to Israel's actions against Hamas, Muslims rioted in downtown Oslo, making a large area of the city look like Beirut or Sarajevo at their most violent moments in modern history. The violence was out of control, the damage extensive. Yet almost everyone got off scot-free. And the whole event was soon dropped down the memory hole. The media, the politicians, simply did not want to talk about it or address its implications for the future.
Early last year, in the same Oslo Square where Quisling and his henchman once held rallies, scores of radical Muslims gathered to hear a Nazi-like message of hate against Jews, gays, secular democracy, America, the West, Israel. The speeches were chilling. Yet many of the men who gave those speeches continue to be treated with respect by Norwegian authorities. One of them threatened a new 9/11 in Norway. A few weeks ago he flew to Saudi Arabia to resume his studies of the Koran. He was considered so radical and dangerous that Saudi Arabia actually arrested him at the airport and sent him back to Norway, where he is now once again moving around freely....
Many critics of Islam were so intimidated by this vicious new atmosphere [post-Breivik] that they stepped forward and expressed regret for things they had said and written. Meanwhile leading politicians and the Norwegian Crown Prince visited mosques to show their solidarity with imams. Never mind that those imams' opinions were no different than they had been the day before the massacre. Suddenly all that was to be forgotten. Solidarity with Islam, shunning of Islam critics: this was – and is – the order of the day. In the local elections on September 10, the Labor Party received a huge sympathy vote, and the Progress Party suffered a disastrous setback. People were quite simply scared to vote for the party that had been linked, however unfairly, to the mass murderer....'
No, not for children like this fledgling suicide bomber, whose grown-up equivalents have been rather effectively prevented from carrying out their evil intentions by Israel's separation barrier.
For five- to twelve-year-olds in his own country.
The book has apparently been shortlisted for some sort of award by the Arts Council of Norway.
Its author is a psychiatrist, and as such knows all about mending minds. Unfortunately, his book seems dedicated to bending minds, the minds of children, who in the representative extract below are taught that the IDF are fearsome ogres.
More grist to the mill of antisemitism in the country already infamous as the most antisemitic in Europe.
“Late one night we came to a small country named Palestine. It gets serious now, Dad says. No more kidding! We are driving towards the border, where we get to a full stop. In front of us is the tallest wall I have ever seen. Like a steep wall all the way to heaven. At the gate in the wall there are soldiers on guard, with helmets and guns. What is in your tank, they ask in English. Just water, daddy replies, just water. The soldiers say it is not permitted to bring water across the border. Daddy says he has done this many times before, so it’s OK. But by now it is not OK. Daddy argues with the fierce soldiers, I am so scared I crawl into my sleeping bag. But people need water, Daddy says. No, no water, the soldiers says. But they are thirsty! They need water for their animals and olive trees. No, no water the soldiers say, pointing at daddy with their guns.
Daddy picks up a large bottle of liquor. He asks the soldiers if they want to taste. Very good real Finnish liquor, Daddy says. The soldiers are as fierce as before. But they drink. They empty the bottle. Daddy and I sit in the car, waiting. We are playing Yatzy until it gets silent. Then I fall asleep, dreaming of juicy oranges. The juice flows down my chin. I wake up when Daddy starts the engine. Then we sneak across the border”.
During the mid-1920s a campaign against Shechita, begun in the 1890s, the decade in which Switzerland banned the practice, gathered momentum in Norway, Britain's Jewish Chronicle noting in its 15 June 1926 issue that the innumerable items of opinion on the subject carried by the Norwegian press reflected either 'a hyper-humanitarian point of vantage' or 'thinly camouflaged anti-Semitism'. (Indeed, one of the leaders of the campaign was the antisemitic police chief of Aker, Jonas Søhr, under whom Knut Rød, the Oslo police chief who in 1942 rounded up Norwegian Jews and deported them to their doom, first served.)
Outrageously, amid this hysteria, defence of Shechita by Jewish authorities failed to get printed. So in desperation Jewish organisations in and outside Norway turned for help to an iconic public figure and national hero, who proved more than willing to oblige.
Thus the fight to retain Shechita was taken up by the great Norwegian nationalist (he'd advocated Norway's independence from Sweden, achieved in 1905), explorer, zoologist and Nobel laureate Professor Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930), who in 1921 had accepted the post of League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
His letter to the relevant committee of the Storting (Norway's Parliament) is worth quoting in full:
"In the course of my work, for a number of years, against starvation in Russia, I have received very great support from various Jewish organisations. They have always been helpful to cooperate with and have shown great self-sacrifice. I therefeore consider it my duty to take up their cause, now, when I have received several appeals from Jewish organisations - both at home and abroad - on account of the agitation that has been raised against their method of slaughtering, Shechita, which certain people now seek to get prohibited by law. I therefore take the liberty of writing to the esteemed Agricultural Committee, which I understand is to deal with the matter.
I am even more constrained to do so, as I have been informed that in the press agitation that has been raised against Shechita, it has been impossible for Jewish circles to gain admittance to the columns of our newspapers for the defence of the Jewish attitude. [My emphasis]
I understand that the objections against Shechita are mainly being built upon the contention that this method of slaughtering is inhumane or is said to cause the animals unnecessary suffering. I am, however, unable to endorse this opinion. I have had a great deal of experience in taking the life of animals by severing the arteries of the neck in the same manner as occurs in Shechita, and I am convinced that in this way the animals almost immediately lose consciousness and are then no longer sensitive to pain. However, it is a fact that the motor nerve centres are not immediately crippled by the severing of the carotid arteries and it is therefore still possible for muscular movements to take place in the animals, which to the non-expert may convey the impression that they are still able to feel. This, however, is unthinkable, as consciousness has ceased. [My emphasis]
Furthermore, such prominent authorities as, for example, Professor A. Krogh and Professor O. Thomsen (Copenhagen), Dr. [Professor Sir Leonard] Hill, of London, and many others, have made statements on this matter, and it has thus been practically proved that when Shechita is carried out in a careful manner it does not cause the animals unnecessary suffering.
In addition to the above, I would beg to call attention to the fact that the slaughtering of animals in this manner is for the right-thinking Jew a matter of necessity, if he is to fulfil the Law of Moses. In other words, it belongs to the practice of his religion, and as in this country we stand for free religious observance for all, this would appear to me to be a reason for seriously considering whether an Act for the prohibition of Shechita can be consistent with our upholding such freedom. [My emphasis]
It seems to me that such prohibition by Law would militate against the principles that otherwise form the foundation of our conception of life." (Source: Jewish Chronicle, 2 June 1926)
But the great Nansen's words fell on prejudiced ears, such as that of the parliamentarian who declared 'If they don't like it, let them go live somewhere else," and in June 1929, by 88 votes to 21, the Storting accepted the Ministry of Agriculture's bill to outlaw Jewish ritual slaughter. The prohibition became law from 1 January 1930.
Norway's example was followed in 1933 by the Nazis, in one of their first pieces of legislation on taking power.
That same year a Jewish Chronicle columnist was travelling by road through a mountainous area of Norway renowned for awesome stark scenery when he spotted in the distance a vast herd of reindeer. Never having seen reindeer before, he walked towards what resembled a "moving forest" of antlers, and then realised that the poor creatures were unwittingly awaiting their turn to be butchered. For it proved to be the time of year when reindeer in their thousands were driven from the north of Norway to be turned into meat. Skins and carcases and offal littered what was otherwise a picturesque scene, and butchery proceeded apace.
Another tourist had also walked up from the road to get a better view of the great herd, and was also shocked by the gruesome spectacle, which had so shattered the illusion of unspoiled scenic beauty. Explaining that he was a medical man with specialist knowledge of animal physiology, this man remarked:
"It is like an abbatoir. My work takes me to slaughtering-houses, and I know only too well what scenes of horror they are. If ordinary, average people ever saw animals being killed for their meat, they would never touch meat foods."
Nevertheless, he continued, so long as human beings ate the flesh of animals, they had an obligation to slaughter animals as humanely as possible, and there was no doubt that Shechita was the the most humane method in existence, as well as commendably hygienic:
"By the Jewish method the animal loses consciousness in three to five seconds. That is one point. In the second place, the pain is reduced to a minimum because the slaughtering knife, according to Jewish practice, must be perfectly sharp. In the third place, by the Jewish method the carcase loses the largest possible amount of blood, and blood in a carcase has a deleterious effect on the flesh...
The only point of just criticism about the Jewish method of slaughter is that directed to the casting of the beast. Before the slaughterer can get to the animal's throat, it must be brought to lie on its side. Primitive methods of doing this by means of ropes have not proved satisfactory. But the casting pens now in use do get over this difficulty..."
Well-meaning but ignorant people, he noted, advocated stunning animals before slaughter. However:
"Stunning by means of a blow on the head is horribly cruel. Close observation has proved to me that one blow hardly ever achieves the wished-for result. The animal usually receives several blows. The idea that the blow shatters the brain is contrary to fact. Often several blows do not do this, since the animal's brain is closely encased in bone. But even if the brain is damaged, it does not follow that the animal becomes unconscious.
In any event stunning inflicts unspeakable suffering on the poor beast. Yet many people advocate stunning before slaughter. Bear in mind that in every case you have to slaughter the animal. Then, compare the pain inflicted by the Jewish method with the horror of stunning. Judged by any standards, the Jewish method stands easily first.
Then, consider some other methods of stunning the animal. One is to drive a sharp nail into the animal's forehead. Another is to stab it with a sharp dagger. They are all abominably cruel, and the people who advocate these methods rather than Shechita write themselves down as an unthinking mass."
Source: Jewish Chronicle (1 September 1933)
The ban on Shechita saw the Jews of Norway importing kashered meat from Sweden (which itself banned Shechita in 1937).
The Norwegians continue to ban Shechita, though have imposed no such ban on Halal.
Clearly, the "free religious observance for all" that Nansen saw as a defining characteristic of his country does not quite apply to all.
But, in that perverse way of theirs, the leftist Norwegian authorities' commitment to "free religious observance for [almost] all" ensures that, as Professor Phyllis Chesler has written, abused female Muslims cannot rely on the state agencies to protect them:
'Meanwhile, the steady penetration of Islamic gender and religious apartheid continues apace in the West, especially in Europe, including in Norway.
The left-leaning multi-culturalists and "progressives" in Norway have refused to help endangered Muslim girls and women in their midst; the Norwegian government has refused to limit forced marriages to illiterate home country cousins, nor have they effectively intervened in matters of domestic violence when the perpetrator was Muslim as was his victims.' http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/1022/norwegian-murderer
In Front Page magazine David Solway has written a perceptive and timely article entitled "Islamophilia and Judeophobia," examining the Western liberal establishment's "venereal attachment to Islam and its tandem resilement of Israel and Jews," its "schmoozing with terrorists," and its "demonization of Israel" which, as he puts it,
"is a sign not only of collective bad faith, international hypocrisy, millennial prejudice and pure malevolence, but quite simply of massive intellectual derangement. It is facilitated by a refusal to sift the historical facts from the welter of lies and disinformation that deliberately cloud the historical and political context, the dismissal of the provisions of international law and, once again, the abandonment of reason."
Having pointed to the manifestations of this phenomenon in Norway, he concludes:
'What we are really witnessing in Europe, the U.S., and its outriders in Canada and Australia—the synoptic West—is the doleful spectacle of a civilization in denial, a myopic civilization that in most of its cultural and political centers will not recognize it is under attack and that seems haplessly incapable of mounting meaningful resistance, let alone launching a counter-attack against an apocalyptically-inspired enemy to ensure its own preservation—what Paul Berman in Terror and Liberalism designates as “the self-absorbed delusions of the Eurocentric imagination” refusing to understand that “a liberal society must be, when challenged, a warlike society; or it will not endure.” The turn against Israel is merely another expression of the West’s complicity in its own demise, for Israel is not only the ancient home of the Jewish people to which it is legally and historically entitled, it is the fount of the West’s moral and cultural inheritance, and a tributary source of the West’s civilizing imperative.
One "liberal" of the type identified by Solway is former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland, Secretary-General of the Council of Europe. He features in my recent blogpost on the toxic amount of antisemitism in Norway, much of it driven by the political left. http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/07/sad-song-of-norway-its-antisemitic.html
Immediately after Breivik's atrocities, the pro-Palestinian Jagland (whose own nation cares little about Jews' rights amid the multicultural mix that it's become, and who decried a Jew's appointment as Obama's chief of staff) told a British newspaper, The Observer, Sunday stable-mate to the odious anti-Israel Guardian (itself a classic exemplar of left-liberal Islamophilia) that is incumbent on western political leaders to beware of stoking far-right, anti-Muslim sentiment. This is obviously a rebuke to David Cameron, who recently made an uncharacteristically tough speech regarding multiculturalism and the limits of tolerance: http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/02/requiem-for-islamic-wolves-in-sheeps.html
So presumably if Jagland (who wants to rebrand multiculturalism "diversity"), would have political leaders and all the rest of us turn a deaf ear to speeches such as this one, or at least a blind eye to who is doing the talking:
It's high time Jagland and his compatriots, especially the ruling leftist elite, took some advice themselves. They could do no better than to heed Alan Dershowitz, who knows partly from firsthand experience what a rancid antisemitic country theirs is:
"The time is long overdue for Norwegians to do some deep soul searching about their sordid history of complicity with all forms of bigotry ranging from the anti-Semitic Nazis to the anti-Semitic Hamas. There seems to be a common thread" http://www.hudson-ny.org/2310/terrorism-norway-israel
Inevitably, it's being claimed in some quarters, including Norwegian ones, that Breivik was in the pay of Mossad:
And almost as soon as Breivik's "Manifesto" became known, individuals whose writings he's mentioned were being blamed as if they'd somehow egged him on.
A post on a leftwing site in the United States typifies the depths to which a number of anti-conservatives will go to impugn their opponents and cajole them into silence. It begins:
'As a writer, it sure sucks when someone murders a bunch of people based on your ideas. (I mean, I assume that sucks. Weirdly, it's never happened to me.) So you can understand why right-wing anti-Islam bloggers are all being kind of defensive, these days.
Anders Breivik, the anti-Islam terrorist who killed 77 people in Norway on July 22, read a lot of American anti-Islam bloggers, many of whom he cited in his lengthy manifesto. Breivik's favorites included Robert Spencer, a self-proclaimed expert on Islam whose "Jihad Watch" blog was quoted and cited in Breivik's manifesto, and Spencer's ally and collaborator Pam Geller, whose "Atlas Shrugs" was similarly recommended by the killer.' http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/01/pamela_geller_norway
".... Even though the stakes in the present conflict over multiculturalism in the West are very high -- with the concepts of free speech, the rule of law, equality of women and freedom of religion all open to debate -- most conservatives have respected the rules of evidence and the avoidance of ad hominem abuse.
As one of the annotations to an edited video on the Vlad Tepes blog of a press conference by British Islamists notes, it's not certain that those featured will succeed in their stated aims, but it's not certain they'll fail, either.http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=36208
Oslo, 2006. Miriam Shomrat, Israel's Ambassador to Norway, was incensed. And with good reason.
In September that year, a month after Oslo's Jewish cemetery was vandalised, and just before Rosh Hashanah, three individuals in a passing car (later identified as two Islamists and an accomplice called Kristiansen), fired a volley of 13 shots at the synagogue. The building's facade was damaged, although luckily no one was hurt.
The attack came shortly after the government of Jens Stoltenberg (who of course has been very much in the public eye this past week, and has visited a mosque to show his solidarity with his country's Muslims) ruled that security cameras monitoring the approaches to the synagogue in Oslo must be removed.
Likening the attack on the synagogue to terrorism (a court verdict disagreed, by the way, finding merely that "serious vandalism" had occurred), Miriam Shomrat observed, before the perpetrators (who had, it would transpire, planned to bomb the Israeli and American embassies and to kidnap and decapitate her) were discovered:
"We don't know who's doing this, whether it's Norwegians or foreigners. But the fact that there's been an increase [in attacks] and that it's happening in Oslo must be taken very seriously by the political community."
Diplomatic or not, in a television interview she made some pointed remarks about the fact that not a single message of sympathy had been forthcoming from the country's Royal Family, and blamed a former prime minister, Kåre Willoch (wrongly identified in the following video as "Kurk Witnak") for contributing to the climate of antisemitism in Norway, and also criticised bestselling author Jostein Gaarder.
Willoch, a Conservative, and a fierce critic of Israeli policy towads the Palestinian Arabs, had in May 2006 invited Hamas official Atef Adwan to a private lucheon; Willoch would subsequently be accused of antisemitism by the Wall Street Journal for observing of President Obama's appointment of Rahm Emanuel: "It does not look too promising, he has chosen a chief of staff who is Jewish," a remark also condemned by Alan Dershowitz.
Gaarder, during Israel's operations against Hizbollah in southern Lebanon, had in an op-ed in the newspaper Aftenposten entitled "God's Chosen People" described Judaism as "an archaic national and warlike religion" and noted that Christianity promotes "compassion and forgiveness". He claimed that many Israelis rejoiced at the deaths of Lebanese children, just as the biblical Israelites celebrated the plagues a wrathful Deity inflicted upon Egypt.
"We laugh at this people's whims, and cry over its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only foolish and arrogant, it is a crime against humanity. We call it racism.... We laugh with embarrassment at those who still believe that the god of the flora, fauna and galaxies has chosen one particular people as his favorite, and given them amusing stone tablets, burning bushes and a license to kill....
We no longer recognize the State of Israel. We could not recognize the apartheid regime of South Africa, nor did we recognize the Afghani Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or the Serbs’ ethnic cleansing. We need to get used to the idea: The State of Israel, in its current form, is history.
Ambassador Shomrat's remarks were denounced the following day by Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, of whom we've also been seeing a lot in recent days.
Sniffed Støre, who has shown time and again that he is no friend to Israel:
"In the first place an ambassador from another country ought to know that the Royal Family can never respond to such remarks. And anyway she should also know that it is the government that expresses the view of the Norwegian authorities.
What she is doing is to make criticisms of something that must be interpreted as a lack of sympathy with what happened last week. I think this is an unsuitable remark for an ambassador from another country in Norway." http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3308339,00.html
Fast forward a few years. In a BBC News bulletin on Wednesday, an attractive and personable young woman who is a member of the Norwegian parliament was interviewed, obviously in order to drive home the message that Norway is the multicultural paradise that all good leftists say it is. Describing Norway as a "land of opportunity" she pointed out that she, the daughter of Muslim immigrants, had been elected to the legislature at the age of 28.
During the Second World War, Norway was the only one of the four Scandinavian countries which failed to protect its Jews from deportation. Of Norway's 1700 Jews, 736 were deported to their deaths (the others were hidden or managed to escape).
In contrast, the Jews of Denmark were famously rescued by being secretly conveyed by fishing boats to Sweden (which was neutral and unoccupied by the Nazis), while Finland, although an ally of Nazi Germany, pointedly refused to allow its Jews to be deported.
From 1942-45 wartime Norway was ruled by the Nazi stooge Vidkun Quisling, whose name is a synonym for treason, while below him were the usual gang of German and local antisemitic psychopaths. (If you have ten minutes to spare, have a look at this video, in the second half of which an expert is interviewed.)
After the war, although Quisling was hanged, Police Inspector Knut Rod, who had been responsible for rounding up the Jews, was acquitted in what one source has described as a "scandalous" trial, while Jewish survivors who managed to return to Norway found that their apartments and businesses had been taken over by "Aryan" Norwegians. Those Jews fortunate enough to get their property returned to them had to pay a steep "administration fee" for the privilege.
Although 66 years have passed since the end of the war, it appears that little has changed. Norway today is, in fact, one of the most antisemitic countries in Europe, and much of the impetus for this hostility to Jews and to Israel has come not only from Muslim sources but from the ruling Labor Party and its supporters.
An astute pro-Israel Norwegian blogger noted, two-and-a-half years ago:
'Mainstream media in Norway frequently uses cartoons depicting the state of Israel as the quintessential, vicious Jew. More often than not this caricature of a villainous Jew is depicted as violently oppressing a seemingly powerless neighbour. To the right you can see “the seven synonyms of death”, from the Norwegian daily Dagsavisen, on January 7th, 2004. Dagsavisen is still tied to the labor movement, but not as much as it used to. In this caricature we see a bearded, bignosed man writing down synonyms for death on a scroll. He is wearing a cap which looks sort of Jewish....
Last year, a prominent University of Oslo social anthropologist and popular chat show regular, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, wrote, in his book Søppel – avfall i en verden av bivirkninger (“Trash – Garbage in a world of side effects”), while paraphrasing another author:
"The Jews (were considered) unclean because they were both insiders and outsiders: They had contributed disproportionately to Europe’s fine arts and were culturally competent, but at the same time they were not quite insiders due to their religion, their networks and their propensity for endogamy (they mostly married other Jews). They excluded themselves, and were in turn excluded, or vice versa."
Apparently, the perception of Muslims as "the new Jews"and the Israelis as "the new Nazis" is found rather a lot in Norway.
Who can easily forget the far-left hatchet-faced Gaza-based Norwegian doctor, Mads Gilbert, doing a far-left hatchet job on Israel during Operation Cast Lead in 2009? http://www.israelwhat.com/tag/mads-gilbert/
The previous year, controversial performer Otto Jespersen offended Jews when he joked with impunity on national television:
"I would like to take the opportunity to remember all the billions of fleas and lice that lost their lives in German gas chambers, without having done anything wrong other than settling on persons of Jewish background."
And he ended a satirical monologue on antisemitism thus:
"Finally, I would like to wish all Norwegian Jews a Merry Christmas - no, what am I saying! You don't celebrate Christmas, do you!? It was you who crucified Jesus."
In 2010 Labor parliamentarian Anders Mathisen apparently queried the Holocaust, telling the newspaper Finnmarken that Jews “exaggerated their stories” and “there is no evidence the gas chambers and or mass graves existed”. He reportedly accused movies such as Schindler's List for bamboozling the public, and is said to have refused calls to resign. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4046049,00.html
Jens Stoltenberg's immediate predecessor as party leader, Thorbjørn Jagland, currently serving as Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, was utterly condemnatory of Israel and its defensive actions on board the Mavi Marmara last year, taking Turkey's part.
Socialist leader Kristin Halvorsen has spearheaded Norway's pervasive "Boikott Israel" campaign. Not long ago, she supported a call for military action against Israel if it attacked Hamas in Gaza. She's pictured here, when serving as minister of finance,at an anti-Israel rally where (in translation) a placard pronounced: "The greatest axis of evil: USA and Israel” and (it's not hard to guess by whom) "Death to the Jews!" was repeatedly shouted.
Halvorsen's twisted logic is that unless punitive action is taken against Israel for air strikes at Hamas positions, the credibility of international attempts to dislodge Gaddafi by force are morally undermined. Similarly, Vibeke Løkkeberg, director of the anti-Israel movie Tears Over Gaza, aired on state-owned television station NRK, compared Operation Cast Lead to "the massacres Gaddafi is conducting against Libyan insurgents".
Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who visited the ill-fated Utøya island youth camp the day before the massacre by Breivik, was cheered for his pro-Palestinian rhetoric, despite rejecting youth camp leader Eskil Pedersen's call for a unilateral boycott of Israel by Norway. (Both men are pictured here, side by side.)
Last year,the Norwegian government, which has banned Israel from tendering for Norwegian defence contracts, divested from two Israeli concerns operating in the West Bank, and its sovereign wealth fund divested from an Israeli company that worked on the security fence. The government recently upgraded Palestinian representation in Norway to full ambassadorial status despite the Fatah's accord with Hamas.
Sitting alongside Mahmoud Abbas, Støre told a press conference that " it is perfectly legitimate" for Abbas to seek recognition of an independent Palestinian state at the UN. Støre chairs a group of countries who financially support the Palestinian cause, and stressed that "all donors should make an extra effort to support the Palestinians this summer and autumn”. Ingrid Fiskaa, a Socialist who serves as official in the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, declared in 2008 that she occasioanlly wished that the UN would send “precision-guided missiles against selected Israeli targets”. For more on Støre, who's likely to succeed Jens Stoltenberg as Prime Minister in due course, and his woeful attitude towards Israel, see http://www.israelwhat.com/tag/jonas-gahr-st%C3%B8re/
In November 2010, 100 or so members and supporters of a political party called Rødt ("Red") held what police termed "an illegal demonstration" inside a shopping centre in Oslo. The BDSers involved displayed banners proclaiming "Occupation is not nice - Boycott Israel!" and "Shame on you!", and yelled "Boycott Israel" and "Free Palestine" as they surrounded a booth selling mineral products from the Dead Sea, interfered with the goods on display, and harassed the Israeli salesperson. They affixed stickers to the booth and handed out leaflets. The mall was closed for fifteen to twenty minutes while police struggled to restore order.
Last Sunday, BBC television news, always keen to deride legitimate concerns over mass Third World immigration into Europe and to deplore "Islamophobia" whatever the trigger or occasion, trotted out Thorbjorn Jagland to sing the praises of the Norwegian/European commitment to mass immigration and that supposed Utopia wrought by multiculturalism.
Alas, modern Norway is a society in which all minorities may flourish unimpeded (even those whose cultures are inherently misogynistic and treat women as chattels).
All minorities except one, it seems. (Incidentally, Shechita is banned in Norway, but Muslim ritual slaughter is allowed!)
American writer and literary critic Bruce Bawer has described antisemitism in Norway, where he lives, as being de rigeuer amongst much of "the cultural elite – the academics, intellectuals, writers, journalists, politicians, and technocrats".
He maintains:
"Part of the motivation for this anti-Semitism is the influx into Norway in recent decades of masses of Muslims from Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere. Multiculturalism has taught Norway’s cultural elite to take an uncritical, even obsequious, posture toward every aspect of Muslim culture and belief. When Muslim leaders rant against Israel and the Jews, the reflexive response of the multiculturalist elite is to join them in their rantings. This is called solidarity."
Norway, already ignominious for the amount of antisemitism rife, invites suspicions of a gratuitous offensive against one of the ancient rites of Judaism with the proposed legal amendment at the urging of the State Ombudsman for Children that the ritual circumcision of children below the age of fifteen be banned.
Since Muslim boys are circumcised around that age, if the amendment goes ahead with the proposed lower age limit they will not be so disadvantaged, but of course Jewish boys are normally received into the Covenant of Abraham on the eighth day of life, when a mohel removes the foreskin.
It's reported that in a letter to Norway's Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store and Justice Minister Knut Storberget, Anne Sender on behalf of Norwegian Jewry's chief representative organisation, the Mosaic Religious Community, has indicated her community's objection to the amendment, noting:
'This suggestion is going to go to Jewish media all over the world and support the idea that Norway is a "Jew-hating country.'
And we agree - this will in practice mean that "Jews don’t have access to the kingdom" again.'
Says Professor Trond Markestad, head of the Norwegian Medical Association's ethics committee, who would like circumcision to be completely phased out:
“I urge the Jewish and Muslim communities to find an alternative religious ceremony.”
A Norwegian newspaper recently carried a cri de coeur from a fifteen-year-old girl of part-Jewish parentage. She tells of harassment and name-calling at school and how elderly Jewish relatives of hers bound for a bat mitzvah were refused a ride to synagogue by first one and then another Muslim taxi-driver.
Hmmm. Refusing goods and services to someone because of their creed or ethnicity.
Where have we seen that occuring before?
And what would the taxi-drivers say (they'd scream "Islamophobia! no doubt) if the same were to happen to them?
The girl also reveals how increasingly in Norway "Jew" is used in a derogatory fashion as both noun and verb, as a casual insult, irrespective of whether the person suffering the abuse is or is not a Jew.
In fact, as the scholar Dr Manfred Gerstenfeld has shown, Norway (which most people probably think of, when they think of it at all, as a crisp cold land of fir trees and fjords, and fair-haired blue-eyed children toboganning carefree down snow-covered slopes) has been for some time a haunt of some of the worst antisemitism in Europe. It comes, as you might guess, from leftwing political sources and also from Muslim immigrants, thus replicating a situation not unfamiliar in other parts of Europe.
These pictures shows anti-Israel demonstrators in Oslo in 2009; note Kristin Halvorsen, leader of the Israel-loathing Hamas-loving Socialist Left Party (the junior party in government) in one and the Hezbollah flag the other.
The BDS movement is alive and well in Norway, as you might guess from all this. There are initiatives for cutting ties with Israeli universities.
Exacerbating the hostile atmosphere is the Norwegian state broadcaster NRK, since it's seemingly biased against Israel.
Emblematic of the malaise is graffiti on an Oslo building, referring to "the Jew-parasite" and April 9, upon which day in 1940 the Nazi occupation of Norway began.
Writer Benjamin Ivry, has noted, inter alia:
'Along with a national neurosis over finite wealth based on exhaustible reserves of oil and herring, Norway is currently experiencing a stiff-necked rebirth of nationalism. Oslo’s paltry Jewish population, only 800 by one count, is the time-honored target.
One symptom was the bizarre government decision to celebrate Norwegian author Knut Hamsun, once a taboo subject for his wartime Nazi collaboration. In 2009, among other honors, a Hamsun postage stamp was printed, shocking many observers.
When I visited Oslo myself a couple of years ago, I noticed a poster of a man in a downtown bookshop and asked if it was advertising an author’s appearance. “No,” a Norwegian told me cheerily, “That’s Quisling!,” referring to the notorious Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling, whose face happened to be on the cover of a Norwegian history magazine that month.' (See all of Ivry's piece here: http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/127726/#ixzz1K4QVdsZ7)
See also the interview in the Jerusalem Post with American literary critic Bruce Bawer on this whole topic of antisemitism in Norway. He believes that the time has come for Norwegian Jewry to consider seriously packing their bags and move to Israel: http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=217194
Since that midnight sun seems to be setting on Norway's little Jewish community, he might be right.
