Norwegian anti-Semitism

A face book friend, a journalist who lives in Canada, asked me if I could comment on an article he had read about anti-Semitism in Norway. The article referred to a study the Holocaust Center in Oslo had conducted in November 2011.

I think it's bad when Norway is profiled in this way abroad.

In my answer, I described the main reasons for this sad situation.

This picture was in the New York Times after an anti-Israeli demonstrations in Oslo in January 2009, where a minister in the Norwegian government participates. She went under the poster "The greatest axis of evil, are the U.S. and Israel

Hello S……!

You wrote an email, where you asked me to check out an article about anti-Semitism in Norway. 

This article refers to a survey of Norwegian attitudes toward Jews and other minorities, undertaken by the Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious

Minorities in Oslo, November 2011

This report has received some attention in the Norwegian newspapers, and in the Norwegian parliament.

The information I received concerning this survey, I have received from a pro Israeli organization MIFF (http://www.miff.no) who had a thorough review of this report on their website.

This is the Web address of the report (a pdf document)

http://www.hlsenteret.no/aktuelt/2012/HL_Rapport_2012_web.pdf

The report is written in Norwegian, but on page 8, you will find an English summary

In this report, the Norwegian Holocaust Center has sought to find the attitudes

Norwegians have to some nationalities, and religious minority groups that we have here in Norway,

Americans, Catholics, Jews, Poles, Pentecostals, Muslims, Somalis and Gypsies

The survey has also mapped attitudes toward the Middle East conflict. While approximately half of the respondents take no stand regarding this conflict, 13 per cent support Israel and 38 per cent support the Palestinians.

I think these numbers are quite accurate when it comes to the support of the Palestinians, but I don’t think these numbers give a completely accurate picture of the support of Israel among Norwegians.

Half of those asked do not take a stand on the conflict. I'm pretty sure this is due to the media situation in Norway, where Israel always is portrayed as the aggressive party in the conflict with the Palestinians. This means that many Norwegians who do not feel they have enough knowledge about what is going on, remains neutral to the conflict, although they have sympathies with Israel.

On page 24 of the report 27% say they feel a special sympathy for the Jews.

Avlad Ivri, a former deputy ambassador at the Israeli embassy in Oslo, had a lecture on a MIFF meeting some years ago. He told us that the Israeli embassy in Oslo had conducted a poll of the support Israel had among the Norwegians, and they came up with 22% which clearly supported Israel. After the Mavi Marmara episode, a Norwegian newspaper conducted an opinion poll, about Israel's treatment of the protesters. There was about 46% support for Israel. The reason for this support had to do with the pictures shown on TV, which did not exactly show any peaceful flotilla protesters.

I will return later to the Norwegian media situation, how the media affects us in an anti-Semitic direction.

I think these questions below, on page 33 in the report, gives a better picture of the Norwegians' feelings about Jews.

Norway has become a highly secular country, where many people are more scared of having contact with Pentecostals, than with Jews.

But what the Norwegians fear most of all,

are Muslims, and Gypsies from Romania.

We have many Muslims and Gypsies in Oslo today

Question: When you think of… the type of connection

You would think was good for you? to what extent would you

like or dislike that they were brought into your circle of friends?

                         

	Dislike strongly	dislike it a little	nothing against it
Americans	1%	2%	66%
Catholics	1%	5%	70%
Jews	3%	6%	73%
Poles	2%	10%	71%
Pentecostals	7%	16%	61%
Muslims	11%	12%	64%
Somalis	15%	17%	55%
Gypsies	17%	21%	49%

Question: When you think of…the type of connection

You would think was good for you? to what extent would

you like or dislike that they married into your family?

	Dislike strongly	dislike it a little	nothing against it
Americans	1%	11%	65%
Catholics	5%	15%	63%
Jews	10%	23%	54%
Poles	8%	25%	55%
Pentecostals	18%	29%	39%
Muslims	38%	28%	26%
Somalis	38%	27%	25%
Gypsies	37%	27%	25%

Page 24 in the report shows that a total of 88 percent do not show any signs of dislike having contact with Jews

Page 37

39% of respondents believe that Jew-Hatred must be fought

Page 46

39% believe that Palestinian groups are behind the unrest.

But there are also some very negative things in this report

38% believe that Israel treat the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews

Here it is quite clear that the Norwegian media have influenced the outcome.

A brief review of the Norwegian history.

Norway is located in the outskirts of Europe, off the beaten track for hundreds of years,

a homogeneous tribe, with a lot of xenophobia, which also led to some anti-Semitism, particularly in the 1930's and 40s

Norway was occupied by Germany from 1940 -1945.

From 1945 to 1964 the Norwegian Labour Party was the governing party.

This party had a very good relationship with Israel, and most Norwegians were pro-Israeli those days.

But when the 68th generation began to influence Norwegian politics in the late 70's and 80's, it changed the whole picture.

These Marxist Leninists, formed their own party, (Rødt) which has never been above 2%, but they have power in the universities and the media,

We also have another very Israeli hostile left-socialist party, (SV) which gets about 4-8 % of the votes. These two parties together with the Labour Party, totally dominate the Norwegian media, and are the cause of much of the pro Palestinian and Israel hostile attitudes in this report.

The Labour Party is the biggest party in the parliament. From being a very pro Israeli party from 1945 to the 1970s, this party is an Israeli hostile party today.

We also have some small centrist parties. One of this is a pro Israeli Christian Democratic party and two right wing parties, one of this (The Progress party) is strongly Israel's friendly, and get approx. 16-22% of the votes.

But these parties have not been in government the last eight years.

Norwegian anti-Semitism.

Although Norway does not have a particularly anti-Semitic history, there are some ugly pages in our history book too.

A clause in the Norwegian constitution of 1814 banned Jews from entering Norway. This clause was repealed in 1851.

In the 1930s the influence from Nazi Germany was strong in Norway, especially in some of the eastern part of the country. The largest newspaper in the country "Aftenposten" became very pro German, and Norwegian borders were closed to Jews who had to flee from Germany.

In 1941-42 during the German occupation, the German authorities used the Norwegian police to gather 775 Jews, who were sent to Germany with the SS Donau, a shameful stain on our history, that many Norwegian long refused to talk about.

(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Norway)

But Norwegian anti-Semitism is however not like the Eastern European anti-Semitism, which comes from the grassroots of the people and the church.

In Norway, anti-Semitism mostly comes from above. In the early 40s from the Norwegian Nazi bureaucracy.

To day, the anti-Israeli stance in Norway, are acting largely as a "trinity" of the media, left-wing politicians, and the university management.

Alan M Dershowitzs,

and his anti-Jewish experience at Norwegian universities.

Alan Dershowitz visited Norway in 2011 in a large pro Israel gathering in Oslo "Oslo Symposium” on behalf of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem.

His sponsor, a Norwegian pro-Israeli group, offered three major universities to have him lecture without any charge, about international law as applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

The Universities said No.

When Stephen Walt, co-author of "The Israel Lobby," came to Norway, he was immediately invited to present a lecture at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Likewise with Ilan Pappe, a demonizer of Israel. 

Dershowitz was rejected by the Universities of Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim.
But the students themselves took action, inviting him to lectures at all three universities in packed auditoriums.

In October 2010 the Israeli embassy in Oslo sent a complaint to the Norwegian Broadcast Council

Where they accused the official Norwegian TV channel NRK, of prejudiced and biased coverage of the Palestinian - Israeli conflict

 Researcher Cecilia Hellestveit at the University of Oslo,

 was given the task of reviewing the complaint.

 She agreed with Israel's embassy in some of the criticism.

 It was not what NRK said, but what they do not say, and the sources they use, that is the problem, according to her report.

NRK uses only Palestinian and Arab sources, including Hamas.

Never Israeli sources.

When the broadcasting council discussed the report,

NRK was acquitted of the Council's majority, and was praised for its coverage,

against the votes of the Christian Democratic Party and the Progressive Party members in the Council..

In April 2011, the Israeli Army IDF sent their spokesperson Avital Leibovich to Norway,

for dialogue with Norwegian media about bias coverage in Norwegian newspapers, radio and TV

She was attending a media event (SKUP) in Tønsberg, which gathered 600 Norwegian journalists.

At the conference, she met considerable resistance and hostility from most of the 600 journalists, only one single Norwegian journalist supported her.

She was calm, and argued well in this hostile Assembly. She referred to the movie "Tears of Gaza," which had been shown in both channels of NRK, a propaganda film made ​​by a left-wing Norwegian filmmaker, along with people from Hamas.

She pointed out that good manners allowed the accused to defend himself.

but Israel is constantly accused of major crimes in NRK's broadcasts, without being allowed to defend herself.

She said, I have my office right in the press area of ​​Jerusalem,

BBC is constantly talking to me, I am regularly interviewed by Al Jazeera, but where are the Norwegian journalists? Where is the reporter from NRK, I've never seen this reporter before today

This encounter was not shown in the Norwegian media (I saw it on a video that was posted on the website of the Israeli embassy)

No interview from any Norwegian journalists, but a Norwegian-Pakistani journalist Shabama Rehman had an interview with her in one of the major newspapers in Oslo "Aftenposten". It was a friendly and informative interview with the headline "Let her be allowed to speak to us!

Norwegian anti-Semitism is directed primarily against Israel.

But this report on anti-Semitism also tells of a domestic harassment of Jews.

We have two main cities with Jewish communities and synagogues,

It is Trondheim and Oslo.

I have not heard about problems in Trondheim, but I know that the Jewish community in Oslo has experienced harassment and problems. The synagogue has been attacked, Jewish children are bullied at school, and the word Jew has become a term of abuse, but as far as I am informed , it's mainly the Muslim population in Oslo, that is behind this harassment.

There are actually people in the media, also in NRK that has discovered and revealed much of the harassment Muslims are doing to the Jews.

But when it comes to Israel, there is little sympathy from the media.

Something that keeps coming up in the news is call for boycott of certain Israeli goods

There are NGOs and trade unions that use substantial resources to promote a boycott against Israel

The youth organization of the Labour Party - AUF, has also been working for a boycott of Israel. This youth organization of the biggest party, participating in the government, has for years been very hostile to Israel. These young people are the future labour party politicians.

21. of July 2011, this youth organization was gathered on a small island Utøya. This day was devoted to condemning the crimes of Israel against the Palestinians, and demands for a boycott of Israel.

The Foreign Minister Jonas Gaare Støre from The Labour Party, visited the Island, and gave a speech to his young audience, in which he denounced Israel in harsh words

The next day 22 of July, Anders Behring Breivik arrived on the island and butchered 69 of these youngsters, and 55 were transported to hospitals, with minor to critical injuries.

Breivik did not come because of their attitude toward Israel, but because these future Labour party politicians were strong defenders of multiculturalism.

It was a shocking experience for the whole nation.

Especially for those families that were affected. They watched this drama on television and by radio for hours and could do nothing.

The head of a Christian book publishers, was interviewed on NRK a few weeks later

He said, perhaps we Norwegians now understand a little more of what Israel is fighting against.