DAPHNE ANSON: IS THE SUN SETTING FOR THE JEWS IN THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN?
Sun setting for Jews in the Land of the Midnight Sun? http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/
A Norwegian newspaper recently carried a cri de coeur from a fifteen-year-old girl of part-Jewish parentage. She tells of harassment and name-calling at school and how elderly Jewish relatives of hers bound for a bat mitzvah were refused a ride to synagogue by first one and then another Muslim taxi-driver.
Hmmm. Refusing goods and services to someone because of their creed or ethnicity.
Where have we seen that occuring before?
And what would the taxi-drivers say (they’d scream “Islamophobia! no doubt) if the same were to happen to them?
The girl also reveals how increasingly in Norway “Jew” is used in a derogatory fashion as both noun and verb, as a casual insult, irrespective of whether the person suffering the abuse is or is not a Jew.
In fact, as the scholar Dr Manfred Gerstenfeld has shown, Norway (which most people probably think of, when they think of it at all, as a crisp cold land of fir trees and fjords, and fair-haired blue-eyed children toboganning carefree down snow-covered slopes) has been for some time a haunt of some of the worst antisemitism in Europe. It comes, as you might guess, from leftwing political sources and also from Muslim immigrants, thus replicating a situation not unfamiliar in other parts of Europe.
These picture shows anti-Israel demonstrators in Oslo in 2009; note Kristin Halvorsen, leader of the Israel-loathing Hamas-loving Socialist Left Party (the junior party in government) in one and the Hezbollah flag the other.
The BDS movement is alive and well in Norway, as you might guess from all this. There are initiatives for cutting ties with Israeli universities.
Exacerbating the hostile atmosphere is the Norwegian state broadcaster NRK, since it’s seemingly biased against Israel.
Emblematic of the malaise is graffiti on an Oslo building, referring to “the Jew-parasite” and April 9, upon which day in 1940 the Nazi occupation of Norway began.
Writer Benjamin Ivry, has noted, inter alia:
‘Along with a national neurosis over finite wealth based on exhaustible reserves of oil and herring, Norway is currently experiencing a stiff-necked rebirth of nationalism. Oslo’s paltry Jewish population, only 800 by one count, is the time-honored target.
One symptom was the bizarre government decision to celebrate Norwegian author Knut Hamsun, once a taboo subject for his wartime Nazi collaboration. In 2009, among other honors, a Hamsun postage stamp was printed, shocking many observers.
When I visited Oslo myself a couple of years ago, I noticed a poster of a man in a downtown bookshop and asked if it was advertising an author’s appearance. “No,” a Norwegian told me cheerily, “That’s Quisling!,” referring to the notorious Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling, whose face happened to be on the cover of a Norwegian history magazine that month.’ (See all of Ivry’s piece here: http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/127726/#ixzz1K4QVdsZ7)
Read more: http://tundratabloids.com/2011/04/norway-muslim-taxi-drivers-refused-elderly-jews-ride-to-synagogue.html and http://tundratabloids.com/2011/04/israeli-embassy-says-norwegian-state-broadcaster-nrk-is-biased-against-israel.html
See also the interview in the Jerusalem Post with American literary critic Bruce Bawer on this whole topic of antisemitism in Norway. He believes that the time has come for Norwegian Jewry to consider seriously packing their bags and move to Israel: http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=217194
Since that midnight sun seems to be setting on Norway’s little Jewish community, he might be right.
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