Norway has indirectly promoted Palestinian terrorism

 From Ynet News, 2 August 2011, by Manfred Gerstenfeld:

After the horrific Oslo and Utoya killings, we see increased media attention to the multi-faceted anti-Israeli incitement by the Norwegian government and the country’s cultural elite. However, the Norwegian Ambassador to Israel, Svein Sevje, has not yet grasped this. After the murders, he implied that Palestinian terror against Israelis is more justified than terror against Norwegians. Alan Dershowitz reacted: “I can’t remember many other examples of so much nonsense in such short an interview.” A few days later, Sevje told Haaretz: “The history of Norway vis-à-vis Israel is one of great support.”

To expose the fallacy of Sevje’s last statement, one can provide many examples of Norway’s accommodation of anti-Israeli terror, with this is being executed in three ways. The first method entails applying double standards and being soft on terror by criticizing Israel, while mentioning little or nothing about murderous Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians and Hamas’ genocidal program. The second entails statements that indirectly encourage terrorism. The third method is financing organizations that do the same.


Regarding the first method: In 2002, several members of the 1994 Norwegian Nobel Committee who granted the Nobel Peace Prize to Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Yasser Arafat – i.e. Bishop Gunnar Stålsett, Sissel Rønbeck, and former Norwegian Prime Minister Odvar Nordli - expressed their disappointment in Peres. A fourth member, Hanna Kvanmo, said she wished there was a way to take the prize back from Peres. She also said Peres was on the verge of being considered guilty of war crimes.

Kvanmo was jailed after World War II, as a Nazi collaborator. Nevertheless, the Socialist Left party had selected her for the Nobel Prize Committee, which is comprised of political appointees. Then-bishop of Oslo Stålsett described the involvement of Nobel Laureate Peres in human rights abuses as absurd. He remained silent about Yasser Arafat, who had continued to order the murder of Israeli civilians even after he had received the Peace Prize. In 2004, the Jerusalem Post published an article noting that the members of the Nobel Committee still stood by their choice of Arafat. By that time, Israel had publicized a list of the terrorist operatives Arafat financed and showed that his signature was on the page listing the amounts paid to the murderers.”

Modern-day blood libel

Last month, a day before the murders in Oslo and Utoya, Norway’s Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere spoke at the anti-Israel incitement camp of the AUF, the youth organization of his Labor party. He called for the dismantling of Israel’s security barrier. Stoere knew well that it was built to prevent further murderous Palestinian terror attacks. He was thus indirectly promoting terrorism against Israelis, one day before some in his audience would become terror victims themselves.

In the past, even while acknowledging the threat of terror against Israel, the Lutheran Church demanded that Israel’s security barrier be dismantled. This State Church can thus also be considered an indirect promoter of Palestinian terrorism. Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) receives major funding from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. One can debate whether it is only soft on terror, or an indirect terror promoter. Following Hamas’ takeover of Gaza in 2006, the NCA criticized the Norwegian government for "withdrawing economic support" for the "Hamas government."
Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) did the same. It is one of the largest and most highly regarded of Norway's humanitarian and development NGOs and is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Its website promotes the “Stop the Wall Campaign” in Norway.
Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse, two extreme left-wing doctors, came to Gaza during the Cast Lead War in 2008-2009, claiming that they wanted to provide medical assistance to the Palestinians. After the September 11 attacks, Gilbert stated that he supported the terrorist attacks on the United States. He and Fosse were interviewed extensively by the Norwegian and world press, and made serious accusations against Israel. According to Norway’s largest paper Verdens Gang, their trip to Gaza was paid for by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.
Gilbert and Fosse failed to mention that the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza where they worked had been used for military purposes by Hamas. Later it became known that Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and other Hamas executives took over an entire ward of that hospital during the war.  

Gilbert and Fosse later wrote a best-selling book on their stay in Gaza. They were once again silent about the Hamas military presence in the hospital. Their claim that Israel had gone into Gaza in order to kill women and children is a contemporary mutation of the classic blood libel. This book, with its anti-Semitic message, had back cover comments written by Stoere and former Conservative Prime Minister Kare Willoch.

Finally, there is Deputy Minister of the Environment, Ingrid Fiskaa, who delights in visions of terrorism against Israel. A year before she entered the government, Fiskaa told a newspaper that she sometimes dreams about the United Nations firing rockets into Israel. One should pay attention to similar statements in the future, in order to identify those Norwegians who have learned nothing from the horrific murders of so many of their fellow citizens by “one of their own.”  

Norway's sordid complicity with Nazism and Hamas terrorism

From Aish.com, by Alan M. Dershowitz:
 

In a recent interview, Norway's Ambassador to Israel has suggested that Hamas terrorism against Israel is more justified than the recent terrorist attack against Norway. 

... "We Norwegians consider the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel." In other words terrorism against Israeli citizens is the fault of Israel. The terrorism against Norway, on the other hand, was based on "an ideology that said that Norway, particularly the Labor Party, is foregoing Norwegian culture." 

It is hard to imagine that he would make such a provocative statement without express approval from the Norwegian government.

I can't remember many other examples of so much nonsense compressed in such short an interview. First of all, terrorism against Israel began well before there was any "occupation". The first major terrorist attack against Jews who had long lived in Jerusalem and Hebron began in 1929, when the leader of the Palestinian people, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, ordered a religiously-motivated terrorist attack that killed hundreds of religious Jews-many old, some quite young. [Actually the Mufti inspired "fedayeen" earlier attacks in the early 1920s against Jews and also against Arabs who opposed him - SL]

Terrorism against Jews continued through the 1930s. Once Israel was established as a state, but well before it captured the West Bank, terrorism became the primary means of attacking Israel across the Jordanian, Egyptian and Lebanese borders. If the occupation is the cause of the terror against Israel, what was the cause of all the terror that preceded any occupation?
 

Norway is the most anti-Semitic and anti-Israel country in Europe today. I was not surprised to hear such ahistorical bigotry from a Norwegian Ambassador. Norway is the most anti-Semitic and anti-Israel country in Europe today. I know, because I experienced both personally during a recent visit and tour of universities. No university would invite me to lecture, unless I promised not to discuss Israel. Norway forbids Jewish ritual slaughter, but not Islamic ritual slaughter. Its political and academic leaders openly make statements that cross the line from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism, such as when Norway's former Prime Minister condemned Barak Obama for appointing a Jew as his Chief of Staff. No other European leader would make such a statement and get away with it. In Norway, this bigoted statement was praised, as were similar statements made by a leading academic.

The very camp that was attacked by the lone terrorist was engaged in an orgy of anti-Israel hatred the day before the shooting. Yet I would not ever claim that it was Norway's anti-Semitism that "caused" the horrible act of terrorism against young Norwegians.

The causes of terrorism are multifaceted but at bottom they have a common cause: namely a belief that violence is the proper response to policies that the terrorists disagree with. The other common cause is that terrorism has often been rewarded. Norway, for example, has repeatedly rewarded Palestinian terrorism against Israel, while punishing Israel for its efforts to protect its civilians. While purporting to condemn all terrorist acts, the Norwegian government has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism as having a legitimate cause. This clearly is an invitation to continued terrorism.

It is important for the world never to reward terrorism by supporting the policies of those who employ it as an alternative to reason discourse, diplomatic resolution or political compromise.

I know of no reasonable person who has tried to justify the terrorist attacks against Norway. Yet there are many Norwegians who not only justify terrorist attacks against Israel, but praise them, support them, help finance them, and legitimate them.


The world must unite in condemning and punishing all terrorist attacks against innocent civilians, regardless of the motive or purported cause of the terrorism. Norway, as a nation, has failed to do this. It wants us all to condemn the terrorist attack on its civilians, and we should all do that, but it refuses to live by a single standard.

Nothing good ever comes from terrorism, so don't expect the Norwegians to learn any lessons from its own victimization. As the Ambassador made clear in his benighted interview, "those of us who believe [the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel] will not change their minds because of the attack in Oslo." In other words, they will persist in their bigoted view that Israel is the cause of the terrorism directed at it, and that if only Israel were to end the occupation (as it offered to do in 2000-2001 and again in 2007), the terrorism will end.

Even Hamas, which Norway supports in many ways, has made clear that it will not end its terrorism as long as Israel continues to exist. Hamas believes that Israel's very existence is the cause of the terrorism against it. That sounds a lot like the ranting of the man who engaged in the act of terrorism against Norway.

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.

Norwegian Premature Immaculation

From The Australian, October 10, 2009:

US President Barack Obama sensationally won the Nobel Peace Prize last night ...It shocked Nobel observers because the 48-year-old president took office less than two weeks before the February 1 nomination deadline.

...Sydney Peace Foundation director Stuart Rees said Mr Obama had been given the prize prematurely. Professor Rees said Mr Obama's win came as a massive shock and he had much work to do if he was to live up to the award. .... "I think the guy is full of promise but I don't think the promise has been realised yet particularly in regards the Middle East."

...many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to honour the US President. Observers had also suggested there was no obvious candidate for the prize as no major conflicts had been resolved by peaceful means in the past year.

...The Nobel committee praised Mr Obama's creation of "a new climate in international politics" and said he had returned multilateral diplomacy and institutions such as the UN to the centre of the world stage.

..."The exciting and important thing about this prize is that it's given to someone ... who has the power to contribute to peace," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said....

Norway's new Quisling

From THE JERUSALEM POST Mar. 21, 2007, by ALEXANDER ZVIELLI ...

Why was Raymond Johansen, the Norwegian deputy foreign minister, in such a hurry to be the first European representative to meet Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the new Palestinian unity government in Gaza?

What was the hurry? He certainly read Haniyeh's March 17 speech in which the Hamas chief outlined the Fatah/Hamas government program. Haniyeh said: "The government affirms that resistance is a legitimate right of the Palestinian people." And he knows what Haniyeh means by "resistance" - suicide bombings of cafes and buses, drive-by shootings, rocket launchings.
He knows the new government demands the "right of return" to pre-1967 Israel for millions of Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendents. He knows that that means killing Israel demographically.

Johansen knows that the Fatah/Hamas government does not renounce violence; that it will not honor previous agreements signed by the PLO, and that it will never recognize the right of a sovereign Jewish state to exist anywhere in the Middle East.

So, I asked myself, again, just what was Johansen's rush? Now, I recall that Johansen was quoted back in March 2001 (by the Norwegian news agency NTB) as saying that international law gave the Palestinians the right to fight an "occupier," but he later said that he'd been misquoted....

...It was Norway that, during World War II, produced the original Quisling - Vidkun Quisling. When Germany invaded Norway on April 9, 1940, Quisling announced a pro-Nazi coup. He thus betrayed his king and his country to collaborate with the invading German forces. The very name "Quisling" still stands for a betrayal.

...after World War II was over, the Norwegian government announced that it would agree to re-absorb, within its great land, precisely the same number of Jews as had been living in Norway before 1939 and had been murdered in the Holocaust. But not a single Jew more....

...in 1993, it was the Norwegian government that helped foist the Oslo agreement on us.
Now, after over 2,000 Israelis perished or were maimed by the Palestinian terror which came in the wake of Oslo, the very name "Oslo" has became anathema to most Israelis. ....thanks to Oslo, we turned over most of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinian Authority. We brought Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas and the entire enemy command and control from exile in Tunis and set them up in Ramallah.

More recently, we even pulled out entirely the small Jewish communities from Gaza.
Still, our Arab enemies lost no opportunity to work hard, not for for the sake of two independent states, Israel and Palestine, as envisaged in the agreements signed so far, but for a single country, where only those Jews who lived in Palestine before 1918 would be eligible for citizenship.

The whole problem can today be summarized in a few words: There will be no peace as long as the Arabs believe that Israel can be destroyed - and sitting with Hamas reinforces this belief.
As long as Europe allows the Arabs to fantasize about "the right of return" there can be no end to this conflict.

But this message has failed to reach the consciences of the Norwegian government.

So let me appeal to the people of Norway: Tell your government that Israel has a right to live in peace and security. And that to do so, the Palestinian government must recognize the agreements signed between Israel and the PLO; must renounce the threat and use of terrorism against Israelis; and must recognize the right of the Jewish people to live as a sovereign nation in the Middle East.