The good news is that, despite their prior views on Islam and the Middle East, heads of state have taken adamantly pro-Israel stances in the wake of the Hamas atrocities of October 7. Hamas’ actions were described by Joe Biden as” natural, pure evil.” The United Kingdom stands with Israel against this terrorism- today, tomorrow, and often, according to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. ” Unambiguous condemnation of Hamas and its appalling acts of terrorism” was issued by French President Emmanuel Macron. The Jewish flag was flying in the colors of the Empire State Building, Eiffel Tower, Brandenburg Gate, Sydney Opera House, and Number 10 Downing Street, among several other famous landmarks. Finally there is Norway. I’ve lived in Norway for about 25 years, and let me just say that I love it. However, its elite in politics, culture, academia, and the media are a different matter. The image of Norway as the best” peace nation” is happily held aloft by far too many members of that elite. Of course, it bestows the Nobel Peace Prizes. Norwegians hold the UN in the highest regard and regard it as a heroic guarantor of peace, more than any other people on earth. The scientific field of Peace Studies, whose founder Johan Galtung detested American capitalism and liberal democracy and admired Stalin, Mao, and Castro, was likewise founded in Norway. The greatest threat to peace for Galtung’s successors is armed political resistance to them, not tyrants or terrorists, mainly non-Western ones. In fact, Peace Studies reflexively defends organizations like Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas for even the worst atrocities because they are seen as desperate acts that are justified by their alleged” cause ,” which is the liberation of oppressed peoples from Western imperialism. Peace Studies, meanwhile, advocates for dialogue, concessions, appeasement, and submission in the West as a response to such actions, with( presto !) always the outcome. peace. In contrast, if nations like the United States and Israel use force to respond to 9 / 11 or the October 7 Hamas attack, then those nations are the true terrorists and, consequently, the real enemies of peace. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the government of Norway, whose elites have been at least somewhat trained in the kind of thinking that made Peace Studies feasible, has long been a holdout on that front, even though the U.S. and EU view Hamas as an international terrorist organization. Norway Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stre continued to hold his position yet after October 7. He continued to refuse until October 11’s afternoon, when he suddenly gave in. He couldn’t stop there, yet after agreeing to acknowledge that Hamas was a criminal organization. Second, he insisted on making a distinction between Hamas and the Gazan people— those who had chosen to be under his rule. Secondly, he claimed that there is a distinction between Hamas and the ruling authorities in Gaza, which is equivalent to saying that the President of the United States and its Commander-in-Chief are two different people. Finally, he assured that Norway would continue to send money to Gaza while making ludicrous promises that it wouldn’t fall into Hamas’ hands. Fourth, earlier on October 13, he simultaneously defended Israel’s right to self-defense and denounced its actions in Gaza. Second, he declared that evening that Norway would increase its assistance to Gaza by$ 7 million while other European nations were freezing it. Stre’s stance is both abhorrent and pointless. It’s hardly surprising, though. He has lived his entire life as a member of the small metropolitan elite that was raised to be world-class virtue signalers, like nearly all prominent Norwegian politicians. This entails dispersing enormous sums of” charitable aid” to specific American nations while being aware that warlords will receive the majority of it. Even though these Norwegian elites rely on American military protection, savor American pop culture, send their children to American colleges, and gladly vacation in New York and Disney World, it entails funding news outlets that frequently spread misinformation about America. And it entails, above all, being utterly self-righteous in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The left is frequently criticized for pitting Israel and the Palestinians against one another morally. When dealing with Norway elites, you need not worry about such things because, in their eyes, Palestinians are morally superior to Israelis at all times. a dozen succinct examples from the past that are fairly new. Shimon Peres, the prime minister of Israel, received the 1994 Peace Prize, but never PLO terrorist Yasir Arafat, according to a number of Nobel Peace Committee members who expressed regret in 2002. In a stunningly malevolent book titled” God’s Chosen People ,” the internationally bestselling novelist Jostein Gaarder, claimed that Jews are” child murderers” who believe God has given them” license to kill.” Did he make any remarks about Israeli terrorists in any way? Obviously no. He received rousing applause for his disgusting lies from the Oslo social elite. And let’s not forget about Finn Graff, the most well-known journal cartoonist in Norway, who earned his notoriety by frequently equating the Nazis of today with those of the past. Ultimately, each of the three major Norwegian universities refused to give Alan Dershowitz a platform in 2011 because of his pro-Israel stance. The universities had recently hosted speakers who had spoken out against Israel. Dershowitz wrote,” Just once before have I been prevented from lecturing at universities in a country.” South Africa under apartheid was the another nation. Dershowitz noted that Norway’s then-foreign minister, none other than Stre, vehemently defended dialogue with Hamas. I should also add that Anniken Huitfeld, who served as foreign minister until October 16 and has long called for an outright boycott of Israel, was swift to engage in foolish, kneeling conversation with the Taliban following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Next October 7 arrived. Even though she had joyfully flown the rainbow flag earlier this year, the mayor of Stavanger, Norway’s third-largest city, refused to do so while governments around the world hoisted Jewish flags. Huitfeld urged the global community to continue to support the Palestinians in the meantime. On October 10, the state TV prime-time program Debatten covered the events in Israel. The host, Fredrik Solvang, remarked that” Israel’s oppressive occupation” was” the background for the attack ,”” desperation ,” and” violence breeds violence” were two of the reasons he quipped. A Muslim visitor concurred, saying that Gazans” haven’t been heard.” Line Khateeb of Norway’s Palestine Committee, another visitor, described Hamas’ invasion as” a response to a 16-year blockade.” Khateeb warned that the word” terror”” doesn’t help” when asked about Hamas’s acts of terror. When asked about Hamas’ charter, which uses derogatory language about Jews and Israel, she instructed the host to” take up the charter with Gazas” because she was concerned about” Palestinian rights” and Israeli” apartheid.” Yes, the program featured three pro-Israeli Jews, including Conrad Myrland of the MIFF( With Israel for Peace ) organization. They pointed out that Hamas teaches Palestinian children to kill Jews and uses them as human shields, among other things, and corrected the other participants’ horrifying accusations about Israel’s” occupation” and” blockade.” They received contemptuous smirks in response to these icy, hard facts. Tuesday was that day. Dagsnytt 18’s evening news segment on Wednesday was totally devoted to gaining sympathy for Gazan civilians. To top it all off, Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor who is well-known for visiting Gaza frequently with his colleague Erik Fosse to treat patients hurt in Jewish attacks and to use his high media profile back home to portray Israel as the big, was honored by the Norwegian media for the majority of the week. Gilbert famously responded to September 11th by defending Al-Qaeda’s” moral right to attack the USA.” Gilbert is a member of the Red ( Communist ) Party and Palestine Committee and was formerly the fanatically pro-Mao group known as the Workers’ Communist Party. He has received praise from Stre and honor from the King of Norway. He and Fosse published an article in Aftenposten on October 9 defending Hamas’ attack as a reasonable response to Israel’s alleged” increased brutal and overt colonization policy,” which they claimed involves” harassing” and” killing,” Israeli civilians. The article, which repeatedly used the false terms” occupation” and” occupied,” was pure propaganda that blamed Israel rather than Hamas for every Gazan issue. Myrland exposed the gigantic lies in response to this malicious screed on the MIFF website. Was Israel, for instance, halting health supplies at the Gaza border? No, Hamas frequently conceals defense equipment in clinical equipment packages, so it was inspecting it. Since January, had Israel killed” more than 200 Palestinians” on the West Bank? Terrorists, indeed. Three cheers for Myrland How some Norwegians visit the MIFF website, though? How some affluent Norwegians are actually interested in learning the truth about the Middle East? On October 13, word spread that Gilbert and Fosse were en route to Gaza, which Gilbert referred to as” the world’s largest cemetery ,”” hell on earth ,” and” an enormous kids’ prison.” Numerous social media commenters praised him profusely in response, saying,” Respect and love.” What a man he is! What a cultural conscience, indeed! What a wonderful person you are! ” You understand what this is about, Gazan civilians!” ” Best wishes to you and the Arab people!” I’ve never seen so many heart emojis. This is how to entice a particular vile segment of the Scandinavian populace, which is as ferociously anti-Semitic as it is privileged and protected. These Norwegians’ first reaction is to kick Jews in the teeth, make fun of their suffering, and lie ruthlessly about them and their enemies as they are going through their worst days since the Holocaust. Knowing that this situation will ultimately change is the only solace offered here, and it is a very cold consolation indeed. Yet the wealthiest and most protected elites in Norway will eventually experience negative effects from the country’s individual Islamic population, which already has a negative daily impact on the lives of many regular Norwegians. They will finally understand what it has been like to be an Jewish Jew for all these years. They might also learn what it was like to be an Israeli Jew in the days following October 7 and experience profound regret for their callousness and cruelty during this awful period, God forbid. Unfortunately, by that point, their change of heart won’t have any impact on anyone.
In the wake of the Hamas atrocities of October 7, the positive news has been this: throughout the Western world, heads of government, whatever their previous positions on Islam and the situation in the Middle East, have taken strong pro-Israel stances. Joe Biden called Hamas’s actions “pure, unadulterated evil.” British PM Rishi Sunak said: “The United Kingdom stands with Israel against this terrorism – today, tomorrow, and always.” French President Emmanuel Macron issued an “unequivocal condemnation of Hamas and its appalling acts of terrorism.” The Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate, the Sydney Opera House, and Number 10 Downing Street, along with many other landmarks around the world, were alight in the colors of the Israeli flag.And then there’s Norway.Let me say that I love Norway, where I’ve lived for almost a quarter century. But its political, cultural, academic, and media elite are another question. All too many members of that elite proudly hold aloft the image of Norway as the ultimate “peace nation.” It awards the Nobel Peace Prizes, of course. More than any other people on earth, Norwegians revere the UN, which they actually take seriously as a noble guarantor of peace. Norway is also the birthplace of the academic discipline known as Peace Studies, whose founder, Johan Galtung, despised Western capitalism and liberal democracy and admired Stalin, Mao, and Castro. For Galtung’s successors, the greatest threat to peace isn’t tyrants or terrorists, especially non-Western ones; it’s armed democratic resistance to them.Indeed, Peace Studies reflexively defends groups like Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas for even the worst atrocities, because they’re considered acts of desperation that are justified by their purported “cause” – the liberation of oppressed peoples from Western imperialism. Meanwhile, Peace Studies preaches that the Western response to such actions should take the form of dialogue, concessions, appeasement, submission – the result of which is always (presto!) peace. By contrast, if countries like the U.S. and Israel respond to events like 9/11 or the Hamas attack of October 7 with force, then – well – they’re the real terrorists and hence the real enemies of peace.It’s no surprise, then, that while the U.S. and EU consider Hamas a terrorist organization, the government of Norway – whose elites have been schooled, to at least some extent, in the kind of thinking that made Peace Studies possible – has long been a holdout on that front. Even after October 7, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store refused to change his stance. And he kept refusing right up until the afternoon of October 11, when he finally buckled.But even when he agreed to admit that Hamas was a terrorist group, he couldn’t leave it at that. First, he insisted on distinguishing between Hamas and the people of Gaza – the people, that is, who voted for Hamas to rule them. Second, he asserted that there’s a difference between Hamas and the governing authorities in Gaza – which is like saying that there’s a difference between America’s President and its Commander-in-Chief. Third, he affirmed that Norway will continue to send money to Gaza – while offering ridiculous assurances that it wouldn’t get into the hands of Hamas. Fourth, early on October 13, he confirmed in one breath Israel’s right to defend itself and, in the next, condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza. Fifth, on that evening, he announced that while other Western countries were freezing their aid to Gaza, Norway would in fact be increasing its Gaza aid by $7 million.Store’s position is at once vile and inane. But it’s not surprising. Like almost all leading Norwegian politicians, he’s spent his life as a member of a tiny urban elite who are bred to be world-class virtue signalers. This means sending massive amounts of “humanitarian aid” to certain African countries knowing that most of it will end up in the pockets of warlords. It means funding news media that routinely smear America – even though these Norwegian elites rely on American military protection, lap up American pop culture, send their kids to American colleges, and happily vacation in New York and Disney World. And it means, above all, being supremely self-righteous about the Israeli-Palestinian situation.Many people criticize the left for playing moral-equivalence games between Israel and the Palestinians. You need never worry about such things when dealing with Norwegian elites: in their view, the Palestinians are, always and ever, morally superior to the Israelis. A few quick examples from the relatively recent past. In 2002, several members of the Nobel Peace Prize committee said that they regretted giving the 1994 Peace Prize to Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres – but not to PLO terrorist Yasir Arafat. In 2006, the internationally bestselling novelist Jostein Gaarder, author of Sophie’s World (1991), contended in a stunningly malevolent op-ed, “God’s Chosen People,” that Jews are “child murderers” who believe God has given them a “license to kill.” Did he say anything of the kind about Palestinian terrorists? Of course not. For his repugnant lies, he was applauded roundly by the Oslo cultural elite. And let’s not forget Norway’s most famous editorial cartoonist, Finn Graff, who made his name by routinely equating today’s Israelis with yesterday’s Nazis.Finally, in 2011, Alan Dershowitz, who’d given talks about Israel around the world, was denied a platform by each of the three major Norwegian universities because of his pro-Israel stance, which had recently hosted speakers presenting anti-Israel bile. “Only once before have I been prevented from lecturing at universities in a country,” wrote Dershowitz. “The other country was Apartheid South Africa.” Dershowitz noted that Norway’s then Foreign Minister – none other than Store – piously defended dialogue with Hamas; I might add that Anniken Huitfeld, who was Foreign Minister until October 16, has long called for an all-out boycott of Israel, was quick, after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, to enter into naive, groveling dialogue with the Taliban about (of all things) women’s rights.Then came October 7. While governments around the world hoisted Israeli flags, the mayor of Stavanger, Norway’s third largest city, refused to do so, even though she’d happily flown the rainbow flag earlier this year. Meanwhile Huitfeld urged the international community to maintain support for the Palestinians. On October 10, the prime-time program Debatten, aired on state TV, took on the events in Israel. The host, Fredrik Solvang, stated that “the background for the attack” was “Israel’s oppressive occupation”; he attributed the attack to “desperation”; and he quipped, “Violence breeds violence.” A Muslim guest agreed: Gazans “haven’t been heard.”Another guest, Line Khateeb of Norway’s Palestine Committee, called Hamas’s invasion “a response to a 16-year blockade.” Asked about Hamas’s acts of terror, Khateeb cautioned that the word terror “doesn’t help.” Asked about Hamas’s charter, which contains reprehensible language about Jews and Israel, she told the host to “take up the charter with Hamas”; her concern, she said, was with “Palestinian rights” and Israeli “apartheid.” Yes, there were three pro-Israeli Jews on the show, including Conrad Myrland of the organization MIFF (With Israel for Peace). They corrected, among much else, the other participants’ grotesque calumnies about Israel’s “occupation” and “blockade” and pointed out that Hamas teaches Palestinian children to kill Jews and uses them as human shields. In response to these cold, hard facts, they got dismissive smirks.That was Tuesday. On Wednesday, the evening news show Dagsnytt 18 focused entirely on ginning up sympathy for Gazan civilians. To top it all off, the Norwegian media spent much of the week celebrating Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor who’s famous for traveling to Gaza, often with his colleague Erik Fosse, to provide medical help to patients injured in Israeli attacks – and to use his high media profile back home to paint Israel as the heavy. A member of the Red (Communist) Party and Palestine Committee – and a former member of the now-defunct Worker’s Communist Party, a fanatically pro-Mao group – Gilbert famously responded to 9/11 by defending Al-Qaeda’s “moral right to attack the USA.” He’s been praised by Store and honored by the King of Norway.On October 9, he and Fosse published an op-ed in Aftenposten defending Hamas’s attack as an understandable response to Israel’s “increasingly brutal and overt colonization policy,” which, they charged, involves “harassing” and “killing” Palestinian civilians. The op-ed, which repeated the bogus words “occupation” and “occupied” several times, was pure propaganda, blaming every Gazan problem on Israel rather than on Hamas. Replying to this mendacious screed at the MIFF website, Myrland exposed its colossal falsehoods. For example, was Israel stopping medical equipment at the Gaza border? No, it was inspecting it, because Hamas routinely hides military materiel in packages of medical equipment. Had Israel killed “more than 200 Palestinians” on the West Bank since January? Yes – terrorists.Three cheers to Myrland. Yet how many Norwegians read MIFF’s website? How many elite Norwegians really care to hear the truth about the Middle East? On October 13 came the news that Gilbert and Fosse were on their way to Gaza, which Gilbert described as “the world’s largest cemetery,” “hell on earth,” and “an enormous children’s prison.” In response, hundreds of commenters on social media praised him to the skies: “Respect and love. What a man!” “What a social conscience!” “What a magnificent human being you are!” “You know what this is about, the civilians of Gaza!” “All good wishes to you and to the Palestinian people!” Never have I seen so many heart emojis.This is how to win love from a certain sordid segment of the Norwegian population, which is as viciously anti-Semitic as it is privileged and protected. At a moment when Jews are undergoing their worst days since the Holocaust, the first instinct of these Norwegians is to kick them in the teeth, mock their pain, and lie shamelessly about them and their enemies.The only hint of consolation here, and it’s cold comfort indeed, is to know that this state of affairs will – eventually – change. In time, the steady growth of Norway’s own Islamic population, which already has a deleterious day-to-day impact on the lives of many ordinary Norwegians, will affect the quality of life of even the country’s most affluent and sheltered elites. At last they’ll know what it’s been like to be an Israeli Jew all these years. Perhaps – heaven forfend – they’ll even find out what it was like to be an Israeli Jew in the days after October 7, and will repent profoundly of the callousness and cruelty they displayed during this terrible time. By then, alas, it’ll be too late for their change of heart to make any difference to anyone.
