Norway, Israel and the Jews
Akersgata – Norway’s Fleet Street – appears to be disappointed over President Obama. The cartoon above is from Verdens Gang, Norway’s largest daily, but it is hardly original. What we see is a boisterous star of David threatening to buck Obama right out of the saddle. The headline below says: Obama’s round-turn. The editorial...
The Jerusalem Post reports that HRW founder Robert L.Bernstein criticizes HRW for “helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.” Norwegian daily DagenMagazinet follows up on it. Other Norwegian newspapers, so eager to comment when HRW condemns Israel, remain silent on occasions such as this – actually Dagsavisen, a minor daily,...
The cartoon above is from Belgium, read Philosemitism (bilingual blog) for the details. This Belgian cartoonist might well find a market for his art up here in Scandinavia. The post below is from Norwegian Document.no. Check out the Zionist flag at the bottom. Something rotten in the state of Norway By Hans Rustad on Januar...
In this post we comment upon how the Norwegian edition of Le Monde Diplomatique manages, in a “fact box” on Israel’s history, to omit mention of the 1948 war. As is well known this war was initiated by Israel’s neighbors immediately upon the establishment of Israel, and cost Israel 1% of her population. Seeing...
For a long time Scandinavia was a faraway nowhere-land of plenty. Nothing much happened up here, except maybe Volvo would produce a new model or there would be a delightful abundance of snow for christmas. Then the milk and honey went to our leaders’ heads. They decided to export Scandinavian virtues to the rest...
It is a peculiar phenomenon that riots can go on for weeks in neighboring Sweden without the Norwegian mainstream media hardly giving it any coverage at all. If these riots had occurred in Israel, it is fair to say that they would have got more attention. As it stands, Sweden is a bit too...
On August 30th Aftenposten printed a letter from Line Khateeb of the Norwegian Palestine Committee where she referred to the eviction of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem on August 2nd as “ethnic cleansing”. One of NIJ’s readers wrote Aftenposten in reply, pointing out that East Jerusalem (like most of the rest of the Arab...
Mr. Jørgen Lohne is Aftenposten’s correspondent in the Middle East. As an “ear on the ground” for Aftenposten, a larger Norwegian daily, he is pretty much an “ear on the ground” for all of Norway. On August 18th Aftenposten published one of Mr. Lohne’s stories – about how his pet dog Maja is acclimatizing...
There is unfortunately no “anti-Norwegian” smear campaign to blame. When Norway looks bad it’s because prominent Norwegians, in their endeavours to smear Israel, occassionally go wrong and smear themselves by accident. The most recent example is Trettebergstuen’s attribution of a quote from this site (“In addition to being gay, Trettebergstuen is fiercely secular”) to...
Prominent Norwegians claim that Cast Lead was “similar to” or even “worse than” what happened in Warsaw during WWII, among them: NORWAC doctor Mads Gilbert, former first secretary – now consul – Trine Lilleng, mayor of Tromsø Arild Hausberg and leader of Rødt (Red – a socialist political party) Torstein Dahle. As none of...
Norwegians are repeatedly told that Israel is criticised “like any other country”. We are told that Israel is only getting what’s coming to them, same as any other nation would if they did what Israel is doing, that Norwegian newspapers have due cause, an obligation even, to humanity… These are all bright, shining lies....
In this article by journalist Flemming Olsen in Aftenposten.no, the reader is informed about how Israeli tourist authorities have removed advertisements of Israel from the London subways. The reason? The advertisements showed a map where the West bank, Gaza and the Golan heights are shown as part of Israel. We can only wonder whether...
American author Bruce Bawer makes some interesting comments on mainstream Norwegian media on his blog. Here is an excerpt: Thursday, May 28, 2009, 5:49 P.M., CET: In yesterday’s Aftenposten, that paper’s culture and opinion editor, Knut Olav Åmås, ventured to say a couple of reasonably respectful things about me and my book Surrender. In...
The Norwegian anti-Israel lobby and the media repeatedly claim that Israel is being criticized just like “any other country”. There is reason to doubt the validity of this claim. NIJ has a new woman onboard, Sophie, who in her line of work as a journalist has access to Retriever, a media analysis tool. Below...
On March 30th 2009 Aftenposten could inform the public about how the Jerusalem Post had run a story on anti-Semitism in Norway in which it was alledged that the Norwegian Minister of Finance Kristin Halvorsen had participated in a march (true) in which she had been heard crying “death to the jews” (false – other people made such...
The Jerusalem Post’s article on anti-Semitism in Norway has led to much head-wagging in the Norwegian media. You can find an editorial by Harald Stanghelle in Aftenposten here. In Adresseavisa, a newspaper based in the Trondheim region, we find a similar editorial: A number of Israelis appear to have made themselves guilty of an erronous...
On March 1st the Israeli political scientist Manfred Gerstenfeld from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs was misquoted by 20 Norwegian newspapers for saying that “Norway is the most anti-Semitic country in Europe” and “Norwegians are unintelligent and barbaric”. These misquotes still circulate in the Norwegian media. You can find more about these misquotes here....
The Norwegian media is increasingly upset over the article in the Jerusalem Post, which among other things questioned how Norwegian Minister of Finance Kristin Halvorsen could march with demonstrators who shouted “death to the jews” on January 8th of this year. The official response from the Socialist Left, in form of a press release, is...
Hilde Henriksen Waage’s claims of Norway having fallen victim to an Israeli smear campaign have so far not met with massive resistance. The political left has after all told Norwegians about Israeli PR before, so what is one to believe? Even so, the fact that the boycott of Israel so far has been a...
More people are picking up on the articles about Norway in the Jerusalem Post. Here is an unofficial translation (all translations on this site are) from Bjørn Gabrielsen in today’s Dagens Næringsliv, Norway’s largest business newspaper. Follow the link below to see the original. —–Excerpt begins: Dagens Næringsliv 01.04.09—– A taste of our own...