The West Stands With Israel – Except for Norway Yet again, Oslo breaks with the pack when it comes to the “Jewish question.” by Bruce Bawer
https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-west-stands-with-israel-except-for-norway/
Writing the other day in the Jerusalem Post, Mette Johanne Follestad – who is associated with both Palestine Media Watch and the Norwegian organization With Israel for Peace (Med Israel for Fred) – noted that the most powerful Western countries, after spending months criticizing Israel for its military actions in Gaza, had “finally acknowledged the existential threats Israel faces” and consequently “lined up in defense of Israel’s war to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program.” The German Chancellor, for example, acknowledged Israel’s “right to defend its existence.” So did the French Foreign Minister. Britain’s Industry Minister said it might help defend Israel. And U.S. President Trump was the most supportive of all.
Arrayed on the pro-Iran side were countries like Qatar, Oman, Turkey, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates – all of them autocracies, most of them Islamic. Joining this pack, observed Follestad, was the one major Western democracy to refuse to stand with Israel: namely, her own country, Norway.
She wasn’t surprised. As a longtime resident of Norway, I wasn’t either.
Part of the reason is Norway’s distinctive approach to international relations. In the hours after Israel’s June 13 attack on Iran, I saw both the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, and the Foreign Minister, Espen Barth Eide, rush to issue condemnations on camera. Both of them cited international law, which, explained Støre, permits the use of military force in two cases: in self-defense after an attack, or in accordance with a UN Security Council resolution. Israel, pronounced Eide, had no right to bomb Iran as a pre-emptive measure because Iran didn’t yet have atomic weapons. By doing so, charged Eide, Israel had “violated international law.”
Norwegian leaders, you see, tend to be very big on international law. They love the global order, and love obeying commands from above. So it is that even though Norway isn’t in the EU (it belongs to the European Economic Area), it’s quicker to adhere to EU dictates than most, if not all, EU members. In the same way, Norwegian leaders love to knuckle down to the UN, whose absurd Security Council and even more absurd Human Rights Council they actually take quite seriously. (Indeed, generations of Norwegian citizens have been brainwashed into revering that most laughable of organization: in no country on earth, according to surveys, is the level of trust and respect for the UN higher than it is in Norway.) So when the HRC actually condemns Israel for the millionth time while continuing to ignore real human-rights offenders, the powers that be in Oslo actually behave as if it means something – indeed, as if it means everything.
Above all, Norwegian leaders love diplomacy. The word “diplomacy” is their mantra. Or maybe it’s “negotiation.” Or “dialogue.” In any event, how could it be otherwise? Where would Norway, with its long history of brokering peace arrangements between other countries, be without diplomacy? Somebody pointed out on X the other day that “diplomacy is a tactic, not a strategy.” Tell that to the geniuses in Oslo. For them, diplomacy isn’t a tactic. It isn’t even a strategy. It’s a lifestyle. It’s something that’s central to Norwegian national identity, giving meaning to the idea of living in the self-styled “peace country.” Among self-respecting Norwegian officials, it seems to be a given that virtually anything can be settled peacefully if you spend enough time sitting at a negotiating table.
You might argue with these officials that some international players simply can’t be trusted to negotiate in good faith – that they’re duplicitous by nature, incapable of dealing honestly with anyone because they’re determined to destroy their enemies. To most if not all Norwegian officials, such an argument carries the whiff of bigotry. After all, as those distinguished anthropologists Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder have informed us, “people are the same wherever you go.” Then there’s the philosopher John Lennon’s injunction to “imagine all the people living life in peace.” Some of these officials will tell you with a straight face that all human beings want peace. Doesn’t every mother love her children more than she loves war?
Of course, the history of conflicts in the modern Middle East has taught us that such generalizations are sentimental claptrap, especially when it comes to societies marinated in Islam. But when you’ve been born and raised in a country that was, in your youth, an unusually safe, ethnically homogeneous, and almost unimaginably high-trust country (yes, Islamization has changed life in Norway in the last couple of generations, but much more for the deplorables than for the elites), you can reach a relatively advanced age, and attain extraordinary heights of authority, while remaining remarkably naive about even the most pronounced cultural differences. Hence, for many of these high-level Norwegian officials, the notion that Iranians really want to crush every Jew into dust is beyond belief. As far as they’re concerned, it’s sheer hyperbole.
To be sure, a couple of prominent Norwegians have written in support of Israel’s attack on Iran. Both understand Iran better than Støre and Eide do, and for a very good reason: both of them are – surprise! – originally from Iranian. Mahmoud Farahmand, who was born in Karaj, Iran, in 1979, attended Norway’s military college, and spent a decade working in the Norwegian armed forces, now represents the Conservative Party in Parliament. In an op-ed, he handily dismissed Oslo’s preoccupation with dialogue:
If dialogue had been the solution in an encounter with a regime that butchers its own population, it would already have yielded results.
The regime in Tehran wants to have atomic weapons. They want to annihilate Israel and the U.S. None of these three goals is consistent with our goals, or compatible with our understanding of the world.
It can seem as if today’s government is using the same logic in regard to Iran today that was used in regard to Germany in the 1930s.
It didn’t work against Hitler in 1938, on Putin after 2014, and it won’t work with the Islamists in Iran in 2025.
Adding her voice to that of Farahmand was Lily Bandehy, a well-known commentator who fled Iran in 1988 and is a founder of Ex-Muslims of Norway. In her own op-ed, Bandehy, who maintains frequent contact with family and friends in the old country, declared that “the Iranians have greater confidence in Israel’s prime minister, ‘Bibi,’ than in Ali Khamenei,” that they consider the war to have been forced on Israel by Khameini and to be necessary to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. Yes, Bandehy admitted, the war “will cost many lives, but fewer than the number killed in prisons, executed on cranes, or murdered in 46 years of demonstrations.”
If such logic is incapable of persuading Norwegian leaders to side with the U.S., Britain, and France rather than with Qatar, Oman, and the UAE, it’s because of an additional factor that, unfortunately, plays a considerable role in their thinking processes: namely, anti-Semitism. Living in Norway for over two decades, I’ve grown accustomed to Norwegian leaders’ often poisonous hostility to Israel – and their stunning indifference to the welfare of Norway’s own tiny Jewish community (which forms a dramatic contrast with their nauseating readiness to praise and appease the country’s far larger, and fast-growing, Muslim population).
In 2002, when I was a relative newcomer in Norway, I started a blog. The second entry, dated April 9, was about a man who’d been told by Parliament security guards “to remove his jacket because a Star of David was displayed on the chest pocket” – this even though, as the man put it, people were always walking around the building “with Palestinian scarves and other pro-Palestinian symbols without any reaction.” (Except, I would suspect, the occasional smile or thumbs-up.) For decades, you see, Hamas leaders have been given a hearty welcome in the corridors of the Norwegian Parliament; whereas the U.S. and EU designated Hamas as a terrorist group a long time ago, Norway didn’t join in – and then only under enormous pressure from both at home and abroad – until four days after the genocidal October 7 attack on Israel.
Despite this designation, the Norwegian state chose not to halt but to increase its annual aid package to Gaza by several million dollars. In May of last year, Norway went even further, joining Ireland and Spain in recognizing Palestinian statehood. And in November, after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry – displaying its usual eagerness to comply with obscene international rulings – announced that if Netanyahu and Gallant were to travel to Norway, they’ll be immediately put in handcuffs.
So no, Norway’s refusal to stand by Israel in its war with Iran is no surprise. But a big disappointment? Yes, indeed. Norway is a NATO ally, a country full of decent, patriotic, freedom-loving people who are (and again, this is based on surveys) the most Americanized in Europe. The problem is that Norway has an execrable political class and appalling media establishment – most of whose members were brought up in a far-left cultural elite that is as antisemitic as it is reflexively submissive to Islam. Fortunately Israel doesn’t need Norway’s moral support. But Norway’s refusal to provide that support will – not unlike, for instance, Sweden’s decision to remain neutral in World War II – be a stain on the nation’s good name for a long time.
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