Norway FM Støre acknowledges that Hamas has carried out terrorist actions but refuses to “label” Hams as a terror-organization. Not everybody finds such discrimination wise. Israel’s MFA is not alone in seeing newspeak and doublethink where Norwegian apparatchiks see reason.

In a parliament question and answer session on February 9th, Hans Olav Syversen (Christian Democrats) put the following question to FM Jonas Gahr Støre: “Does the government find Hamas to be a terrorist organization or not?” Støre’s answer seems to imply that the word “terrorist” ought to be removed from the dictionary altogether. For Støre’s lengthy answer, read the complete transcript.

Israel MFA’s comment to Støre is well put, and reads as follows:

In response to comments made by Norway’s Foreign Minister at the debate in the Storting on Wednesday, February 9, the Foreign Ministry of Israel would like to emphasize the following:

He who refuses to call a murderer a murderer blurs the distinction between good and evil, which lies at the base of all ethical consideration. Hamas is an organization that has indiscriminately killed civilians, in a deliberate and calculated manner, giving it political, religious and racist justification. If this kind of organization cannot be defined as terrorist, who can? When it is claimed that no one should be tagged as terrorist, does it mean that the term “terrorism”  should be removed from the dictionary altogether?  This would annul the capacity to deal with this form of criminality, and lead to the slippery slope of moral relativism.

As Nobel laureate Albert Camus has said: “Misnaming things adds to the misery of the world.”

In George Orwell’s 1984, moral relativism is not a vice, but a virtue. One may well ask what it has become here in Norway.