Don't try to wish Israel a happy birthday on Michigan Public Radio
Michigan Public Radio has refused a four-word advertisement wishing Israel a happy birthday, calling it 'radioactive.' This came via Honest Reporting.
For sponsoring a day’s broadcast of Michigan Public Radio, Lisa Lis
was told she was entitled to have a message broadcast on the air. She
chose a four-word sentence, “Happy 68th birthday, Israel.” The station
rejected that line as too radioactive, saying, “this message would compromise the station’s commitment to impartiality and that it crosses over into advocacy, or could imply advocacy,” reports Deadline Detroit.
My hope for Israel as it celebrates 68 years of statehood
is that the public will cease to treat any mention of Israel as a
controversial topic. A non-political offering of congratulations to Israel on its anniversary of independence should be taken at face value and not made into a controversy.
If you think Michigan Public Radio was 'winging it' in order to find an excuse for not carrying the message... you're right. Here's more from that Deadline Detroit link.
Lis, a self-proclaimed progressive and strong supporter of
Israel, whose husband is Israeli and whose son is in the Israeli Defense
Forces, wanted her message to celebrate Israel. Eventually she settled
on "Happy 68th Birthday Israel." Israel celebrates Independence Day this
year on May 12.
Initially, "blessing" was in her message, but the station said that
implied something religious, so she dropped that word. Then the station
said it couldn't accommodate the wish because it needed two months'
notice.
Then the station rejected the message outright. Alison Warren, associate director of development, wrote in an April 26 email:
Dear Lisa,
We will not be able to air your day sponsorship message as written.
We have determined that this message would compromise the station's
commitment to impartiality and that it crosses over into advocacy, or
could imply advocacy.
If there is another message, perhaps celebrating a birthday or
anniversary of an individual, please let me know and I'd be happy to
assist you.
"I'm very upset," said Lis, a daughter of Florine Marks of Weight
Watchers' fame. "It’s sad. There's plenty anti-Israel messages out
there, and they won't allow something for Israel." Lis said she and her
husband, Hannan Lis, donate $40 per month.
...
Last Friday, Lis took it to the next level, writing about the conflict in a weekly newsletter emailed to about 1,000 people.
I am in a battle with Michigan Radio to use my Day Sponsorship to wish
Israel Happy 68th birthday. They denied my request because they said it
would "compromise the station's commitment to impartiality and that it
crosses over into advocacy".
Why would Public Radio need to be impartial about a legally
recognized country other than the fact, many want her wiped from the
face of the earth. Would it be a problem if it were the birthday of
England, Norway or South Sudan?
Israel is a hot button country that the world has accepted as
questionable and debatable and the major infraction Israel has committed
is purely her existence. By the way, I truly look forward to expressing
my same salutation when Palestine can celebrate her birthday.
Deadline Detroit emailed executives at the station Sunday and left phone messages Monday.
Steve Schram, executive director and general manager, responded Monday:
The current request was denied because it doesn’t meet our day
sponsorship policies, which state “typical messages honor an
individual’s birthday, anniversary, retirement, graduation, or other
personal event.”
In accordance with our rules governing donor acknowledgments,
announcements containing political or religious messages are not
acceptable This was shared with the donor.
This policy is not unique to this station and is similar to other public radio stations across the country.
Michigan Radio describes itself as "the state’s most listened-to public radio service, . . .with a broadcast signal that reaches 80% of Michigan’s population." Its three stations -- WUOM in Ann Arbor, WFUM in Flint and WVGR in Grand Rapids.-- "serve approximately 500,000 listeners each week across the southern half of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula."
...
Interestingly, during the volley of emails, Larry Jonas, director of
development at Michigan Radio, responded about whether it would allow
"Happy Birthday Norway."
Jonas wrote to Hannan Lis:
The answer to your question about whether or not we would allow a
"Happy Birthday Norway" is no. . . . We would not air such a message.
Harmless as it may seem, it forces us to make the choice between which
countries or political bodies are worthy of on-air recognition and which
are not.
Mind you, in the initial response, the station said wishing happy
birthday to Israel "would compromise the station's commitment to
impartiality and that it crosses over into advocacy, or could imply
advocacy."
Jonas would be hard-pressed to find many groups protesting U.S. policy in Norway.
Maybe it's time for the Lis's to find a new charity to which to donate that $40 per month. Since their son serves in the IDF, how about American Friends of the IDF?
#DoubleStandard When it's okay to pay 'migrants' to leave and when it's not
Norway is offering large sums of money (80,000 Kroner - some $9,300) and free plane tickets to 'migrants' (Muslims) to leave.
“They thought that when they came to Norway they would get protection
rather quickly. And that they would have the opportunity to work or take
an education – and maybe even to get their family to Norway,” Katinka
Hartmann, head of the The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration’s
(Utlendingsdirektoratet - UDI) return unit, told broadcaster NRK.
But with family reunification application processing times taking
years, many have decided that they don’t want to wait and have applied
for financial assistance to return home.
According to UDI, over 900 people have applied to leave Norway with
financial support from the state. A family with two children can receive
upwards of 80,000 kroner ($9,300 or 8,600 euros) in addition to having
their airline tickets bought by the state.
The number of applications is on the rise, according to the Norwegian
division of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which
processes the requests.
“Earlier this year, the number was an average of 100 per month. In
October, there were 150 and in November there were 230 applications,”
IOM spokesman Joost van der Aalst told NRK.
He said that the long family reunification times were a major factor,
but many people were also put off by having to live in remote areas
where they feel it is difficult to put their work experience to use.
You might remember another country where they wanted to pay migrants to leave, and might have even considered paying migrants who had been in the country for many years to leave. Of course, that country was blasted by its leftist media, by its own legislators, and by its Supreme Court, along with 'human rights watch' and other 'human rights' groups. Can you guess what country was blasted for trying to get illegal immigrants to leave? I knew you could....
The topic of this speech is "My family's story in 1948 - fleeing Jaffa, building a future in Israel."
The speaker is George
Deek, Israel's vice ambassador to Norway, giving a lecture in the House
of Literature in Oslo, during a MIFF event 27 September 2014.
- This is the best speech an Israeli diplomat ever held, was the reaction among several of the listeners.
It's come to this: Obama-Kerry 'peace talks' envoy paid by Qatar (and Norway)
The New York Times reported at length on Sunday on the financing of US think tanks by foreign governments (see also Memeorandum). Among the US think tanks who receive significant financing from foreign governments is the Brookings Institute.
The arrangements involve Washington’s most influential think tanks, including the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Atlantic Council.
Each is a major recipient of overseas funds, producing policy papers,
hosting forums and organizing private briefings for senior United States
government officials that typically align with the foreign governments’
agendas.
Most
of the money comes from countries in Europe, the Middle East and
elsewhere in Asia, particularly the oil-producing nations of the United
Arab Emirates, Qatar
and Norway, and takes many forms. The United Arab Emirates, a major
supporter of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, quietly
provided a donation of more than $1 million to help build the center’s
gleaming new glass and steel headquarters not far from the White House.
Qatar, the small but wealthy Middle East nation, agreed last year to
make a $14.8 million, four-year donation to Brookings, which has helped
fund a Brookings affiliate in Qatar and a project on United States
relations with the Islamic world.
Some
scholars say the donations have led to implicit agreements that the
research groups would refrain from criticizing the donor governments.
“If
a member of Congress is using the Brookings reports, they should be
aware — they are not getting the full story,” said Saleem Ali, who
served as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center
in Qatar and who said he had been told during his job interview that he
could not take positions critical of the Qatari government in papers.
“They may not be getting a false story, but they are not getting the
full story.”
The directors of the institutions claim that all that money doesn't blind them and doesn't make them execute the donors' wishes.
In interviews, top executives at the think tanks strongly defended the
arrangements, saying the money never compromised the integrity of their
organizations’ research. Where their scholars’ views overlapped with
those of donors, they said, was coincidence.
Here's the reaction of one director whose name should be familiar to those who follow the goings on in Israel.
“Our business is to influence policy with scholarly, independent
research, based on objective criteria, and to be policy-relevant, we
need to engage policy makers,” said Martin S. Indyk, vice president and
director of the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings, one of the oldest
and most prestigious think tanks in Washington.
Do any of you think Indyk is telling the truth? If yes, consider this:
In
their contracts and internal documents, however, foreign governments
are often explicit about what they expect from the research groups they
finance.
“In Washington, it is difficult for a small country to gain access to powerful politicians, bureaucrats and experts,” states an internal report
commissioned by the Norwegian Foreign Affairs Ministry assessing its
grant making. “Funding powerful think tanks is one way to gain such
access, and some think tanks in Washington are openly conveying that
they can service only those foreign governments that provide funding.”
...
The Brookings Institution,
which also accepted grants from Norway, has sought to help the country
gain access to American officials, documents show. One Brookings senior
fellow, Bruce Jones, offered in 2010 to reach out to State Department
officials to help arrange a meeting with a senior Norway official,
according to a government email. The Norway official wished to discuss his country’s role as a “middle power” and vital partner of the United States.
Brookings organized another event in April 2013,
in which one of Norway’s top officials on Arctic issues was seated next
to the State Department’s senior official on the topic and reiterated
the country’s priorities for expanding oil exploration in the Arctic.
William
J. Antholis, the managing director at Brookings, said that if his
scholars help Norway pursue its foreign policy agenda in Washington, it
is only because their rigorous, independent research led them to this
position. “The scholars are their own agents,” he said. “They are not
agents of these foreign governments.”
But
three lawyers who specialize in the law governing Americans’ activities
on behalf of foreign governments said that the Center for Global
Development and Brookings, in particular, appeared to have taken actions
that merited registration as foreign agents of Norway. The activities
by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Atlantic
Council, they added, at least raised questions.
“The Department of Justice needs to be looking at this,” said Joshua Rosenstein, a lawyer at Sandler Reiff.
Ona
Dosunmu, Brookings’s general counsel, examining the same documents,
said she remained convinced that was a misreading of the law.
Norway,
at least, is grateful for the work Brookings has done. During a speech
at Brookings in June, Norway’s foreign minister, Borge Brende, noted
that his country’s relationship with the think tank “has been mutually
beneficial for moving a lot of important topics.” Just before the
speech, in fact, Norway signed an agreement to contribute an additional
$4 million to the group.
Here in Israel, the government now believes it knows why the latest 'peace talks' were so biased against Israel. His name is Martin Indyk and he's the director of Brookings and, as noted above, on the payroll (indirectly) of Qatar and Norway (and other countries).
“Qatar has been a major bankroller for Hamas and other terrorist organizations,” one government official said. “The fact that the same Qatari government is also a major provider of funds for a respectable Washington think tank raises a whole series of questions about that think tank’s relationships and impartiality.”
Among the questions this has raised in Jerusalem is the degree to which the institute can impartially draw up papers relating to Qatar, such as its role in the Middle East and the financing of terror organizations.
Qatar is Hamas’s main financial backer.
...
Indyk, who took leave from Brookings to serve as the US special Middle East envoy during the nine months of unsuccessful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that ended in April, returned to the think tank after the negotiations failed and is currently its vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program.
...
In a recent interview with Foreign Policy magazine about the Gaza conflict, Indyk said US President Barack Obama became “enraged” with Israeli criticism of US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Indyk said Gaza has had a “very negative” impact on the US-Israel relationship.
“There’s a lot of strain in the relationship now. The personal relationship between the president and the prime minister has been fraught for some time and it’s become more complicated by recent events.”
The Qatar connection might also explain why US Secretary of State John
FN Kerry was so anxious to do Qatar's (and Turkey's) bidding during
Operation Protective Edge.
Indyk, who served as US negotiator in the failed peace talks, has had his impartiality put into question before due
to his position on the executive board of the radical-left New Israel
Fund, which funds numerous anti-Israel NGOs. In May, Indyk was accused of engaging in a "nasty" anti-Israel tirade at a bar following an address to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Qatar has not only funded Hamas, but according to reports pushed the group to reject
a ceasefire in the recent Operation Protective Edge and return to its
terror war on Israeli citizens, threatening to expel Hamas politburo
chief Khaled Mashaal if it didn't do so.
The position of Qatar led Israel's Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor in August to label the oil-state "a Club Med for terrorists,"
adding that the "hundreds of millions of dollars" Qatar gave Hamas
meant "every one of Hamas's tunnels and rockets might as well have had a
sign that said 'Made possible through a kind donation of the emir of
Qatar.'"
A few more take-aways from this story:
1. Maybe you all now understand why Israel has tried to control or stop foreign government funding of NGO's.
2. The Obama administration touted itself as the 'most transparent administration evah.' Is this what they had in mind?
3. With all the bellyaching by the likes of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer about a supposed 'Israel lobby,' Israel does not appear on the list of countries that have donated money to US think tanks. But nine Arab countries do appear on the list. I'm sure you're all shocked.
Kudos to the New York Times (for a change) for actually letting this story come out.
This is rich... Guess which country is being threatened into complying with Sharia law....
A Muslim terrorist group is threatening a 9/11-type attack in Norway if a section of Oslo isn't turned into Sharia-compliant territory.
The Norwegian news portal VG Nett is reporting that a Muslim terrorist group, Ansar al-Sunna’,
is threatening that if a section of the nation's capitol isn't
transformed into a sharia-complaint Muslim nation, an attack rivaling
9/11 will be launched upon the Scandinavian nation.
VG Nett has stated that the Norwegian Police Security Service (Politiets sikkerhetstjeneste - PST) is already familiar with many members of this particular terror group.
As translated by Michael Laudahn,
"If norwegian soldiers can take planes to Afghanistan, then Osama and Mohammed can also take planes to Norway, inshaAllah.
Now, the government must wake up and assume responsibility, before
this war spreads to Norway. Before the counterpart reacts. Before
moslems take the step necessary.
Do not confuse the moslems’ silence with weakness. Do not profit from
the moslems’ patience. Do not force us to do something that can be
avoided. This is not a threat, only the words of truth. The words of
justice.
A warning that the consequences can be fatal. A warning about a 9/11
on norwegian ground, or larger attacks than the one carried out on 22
july. This is for your own good and in your own best interest.’
We do not want to be a part of norwegian society. And we do not
consider it necessary either to move away from Norway, because we were
born and grew up here. And Allah’s earth belongs to everybody.
But let Grønland become ours. Bar this city quarter and let us
control it the way we wish to do it. This is the best for both parts.
We do not wish to live together with dirty beasts like you."
'22 July' is of course a reference to the attacks carried out on that date three years ago by Anders Breivik, a 'normal Norwegian boy,' who set off a bomb in Oslo and then went to a youth camp in Utoya and opened fire with a machine gun on a camp run by the ruling Labor party, murdering approximately 98 people. The Muslim terrorists would like to exceed that total.
And why did I say that this entire story is 'rich'? Because Norway is arguably the most anti-Semitic country in Europe. Here's what was going on in that youth camp the day before Breivik committed his terror attack:
I worry when I see the likes of Mads Gilbert being taken seriously (Hat Tip: Memeorandum, without which I would not have touched this post with a ten-foot pole, because it's so absurd as to be unworthy of a response). .
Renowned Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert,
who witnessed the horrific injuries caused by DIME bombs during
Israel’s 2009 Gaza onslaught, told The Electronic Intifada over the
phone from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City that patients are showing up
with DIME-related injuries.
“A good number of the injuries seen here are consistent with the use
of dense inert metal explosives, or DIME, that we saw during the 2009
attack and also in 2006,” said Gilbert. “The bodies are pretty much
destroyed by enormous energy released by the explosives that are shot
near them or at them.”
Gilbert first witnessed the effects of DIME munitions on the human
body during Operation Summer Rains, Israel’s 2006 months-long attack on
the Gaza Strip that killed more than four hundred Palestinians.
“Large chunks of flesh, of muscles were cut away. We didn’t find any
shrapnel and [the wounds] were delivering a strange fume. Gradually we
came to understand these must have been the new DIME weapons developed
by the US Air Force together with the Israelis,” he said.
The experimental weapon was used on a larger scale during Operation
Cast Lead, Israel’s attack on Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009, which
killed 1,400 Palestinians, including 352 children.
“We had a large number of patients who came in with these horrendous
injuries where arms and legs were cut off as though a huge axe had
chopped off their limbs with a direct immense force, cutting through
skin, muscles and bones. Bones would be shattered and completely cut
off,” Gilbert recounted. “In addition we saw very, very destructive
burns coming from some extreme temperature that turned skin, muscle and
even bones into charcoal.”
Who is Mads Gilbert and is he credible? This is from Professor Gerald Steinberg at NGO Monitor.
"We urge media outlets and human rights
organizations to treat Dr. Gilbert's comments and assessments from Gaza
with great caution," said NGO Monitor' president, Prof. Gerald
Steinberg. "By justifying terror, supporting Hamas and fueling the
conflict, NORWAC and Mads Gilbert have violated the Hippocratic Oath -
'first, do not harm'."
In 2009, Dr. Gilbert traveled to Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital as a member of the Norwegian Aid Committee, NORWAC, an
NGO funded by the Norwegian government ostensibly to provide health
care services in partnership with the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
During the fighting and afterward, Gilbert repeatedly and falsely accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilians and invented allegations of use of illegal weapons, while making no mention of evidence that
Al-Shifa hospital had been used for military purposes and also shielded
the Hamas leadership. There is also evidence that he helped stage emergency room scenes for a "propaganda effect."
...
In addition, the centrality of his ideology
was highlighted in comments following Al-Qaida's terrorist attacks on
USA on September 11, 2001, in which Dr Gilbert expressed sympathy with
the terrorists. Days after the atrocity, in an interview for the
Norwegian newspaper DagbladetGilbert said "The
attack on New York did not come as a surprise after the policy that the
West has led during the last decades...The oppressed also have a moral
right to attack the USA with any weapon they can come up with." When
asked directly in the same interview, "Do you support a terror attack
against the USA?," Gilbert replied, "Terror is a bad weapon but the
answer is yes within the context which I have mentioned."
One does not, however, have to dig very deep to discover that the
halo effect around Gilbert masks some very disturbing affiliations. To
begin with, Gilbert is an active member of Norway’s Red Party, a Maoist organization formed in 2007, which begs the question as to how someone who perpetuates the ideology of a tyrant who murdered 45 million
of his own people over four years can be described as a “humanitarian.”
Nor does Gilbert have a track record of helping anyone other than the
Palestinians; as the journalist Benjamin Weinthal revealed on Twitter,
his emails and phone calls to Gilbert asking the doctor why he wasn’t
treating victims of the slaughter in Syria were met with silence.
Gilbert’s reputation is derived not from his medical work, but from
his frequent verbal assaults on Israel and the United States, which
stretch back to the early 1980s, when he became active in Palestinian
solidarity work....
None of this has eroded Gilbert’s celebrity; arguably, it’s enhanced
it. When he and his colleague Erik Fosse visited Gaza during Israel’s
Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09, their expenses were covered by a
Norwegian NGO that is funded by the Norwegian government. While the two
doctors were in Gaza, spending an inordinate amount of time talking to
journalists about Israeli “war crimes,” they received a phone call from
no less than Jens Stoltenberg–then Norway’s prime minister, now the
incoming secretary-general of NATO–who assured them
that “all of Norway is behind you.” A subsequent book about their
experiences in Gaza was praised by Norway’s Foreign Ministry, which said
that conveying their impressions was “not their duty, but their
responsibility,” given that in such dire situations, “civilians become
voiceless.”
No wonder, then, that Gilbert now feels licensed to elevate the
political goals of his current Gaza mission above any medical
considerations. Speaking to a reverential Amy Goodman on the left-wing Democracy Now! show,
Gilbert went so far as to say, “As a medical doctor, my appeal is don’t
send bandages, don’t send syringes, don’t send medical teams. The most
important medical thing you can do now is to force Israel to stop the
bombing and lift the siege of Gaza.”
As Operation Protective Edge enters its second week, we can expect
Gilbert to make ever more outlandish statements the longer he remains in
Gaza. But that won’t stop media organizations from trumpeting Gilbert’s
medical credentials–as did Britain’s Channel 4 News, which billed him
as “a Norwegian volunteer surgeon at Shifa Hospital in Gaza,” thereby
encouraging its audience to take the good doctor at his word–while
ignoring the fact that he is an integral element of the Hamas propaganda
network.
But that, ironically, is what underlies Gilbert’s appeal. He tells
Europeans what they want to hear: that Israel has made Gaza into a
prison camp, and that nothing is more noble than the Palestinian
determination to resist. Once you succeed in getting that message
across, what does it matter whether Hamas rejects a ceasefire, or
invites a firm Israeli response by sending even more missiles over the
border?
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman met on Wednesday with Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende. During the meeting, which was in Ashkelon, the two were forced to flee into an underground bomb shelter. We can only hope that Lieberman at least asked Brende to stop Norwegian government support for Mads' Madness. But even if he did, I doubt it would make a difference. The Norwegian government is anti-Semitic.
Breaking the silence to lie, funded by UNICEF, OXFAM, Norway, Spain and the European Union
Jake Wallis Simons has some disturbing news about 'Breaking the Silence,' the European and United Nations-funded NGO that exaggerates the activities of IDF soldiers in Judea and Samaria. Simons concludes that the Europeans ought not to be funding this organization.
For now, my point is this: I couldn’t shake the feeling that Breaking the Silence was milking it.
It was only a hunch at first. But later, the bias of the organisation
became clearer. During a break between interviews, I asked Yehuda
Shaul, one of the founders of the organisation, how the group is funded.
It was with some surprise that I learned that 45 per cent of it is
donated by European countries, including Norway and Spain, and the
European Union. Other donors include UNICEF, Christian Aid and Oxfam GB.
To me this seemed potentially problematic.
As is the case in all democracies, the IDF is an organ of the state,
not a political decision-maker. If the goal of Breaking the Silence was
simply to clean up the Israeli military, it wouldn’t be such a problem.
Instead, the aim is to “end the occupation”, and on this basis it
secured its funding.
It appeared, therefore, that these former soldiers, some of whom draw
salaries from Breaking the Silence, were motivated by financial and
political concerns to further a pro-Palestinian agenda. They weren’t
merely telling the truth about their experiences. They were under
pressure to perform.
Indeed, I later discovered that there have been many allegations in
the past that members of the organisation either fabricated or
exaggerated their testimonies.
The matter became more unsettling when one of Breaking the Silence’s
former soldiers accompanied me to Hebron, a thriving Palestinian city in
the southern West Bank. This is the only Palestinian city to have a
Jewish settlement embedded in its centre, and as such is the most
acrimonious and violent place in the region.
...
We set up our video camera outside an army base in the Israeli sector
of Hebron, and I began to interview the former soldier from Breaking
the Silence. He was talking about his army service, and came out with
the line, “the first time I ever met a Palestinian was when I entered
his house in the middle of the night”.
While he was speaking a car drove by behind him, drowning out his
words. I said: “Just give me it one more time about how… the first time
you ever met a Palestinian was when you kicked down his door in the
middle of the night”. This was my mistake; he hadn’t said that he kicked
down anything.
He duly repeated it. This time, however, he took my lead and changed
his account from “entered his house in the middle of the night” to
“kicked down his door in the middle of the night”. On the surface it may
seem like a small detail. But when we played back the tape I found the
ease with which he exaggerated his story very troubling. We didn’t use
the interview.
The next time you're flying on an international flight and you hear that sob story about donating your 'spare change' for UNICEF to 'help kids around the world,' keep your change in your pocket and tell the cabin crew why. Maybe they'll choose another charity.
Norwegian foreign minister says world won't bankroll 'Palestinian state building' forever
Does the 'international community' seriously believe that the morning after - God forbid - there is a 'Palestinian state,' that 'state' will be economically viable? It sure sounds like it from this interview with Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, who currently chairs the 'Palestinian donor conference.'
Both the Palestinians and Israel should know that the world will not bankroll
Palestinian Authority state-building forever, and that if progress is not made
the donations will stop, Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told The
Jerusalem Post Tuesday.
“The donors will not be ready to keep funding
Palestinian state-building much longer if we are not seeing a political
horizon,” said Eide.
Norway heads the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, which is
the international group of donors scheduled to meet next month in New York on
the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting.
Eide said it was
important for both sides to know – as they have just restarted negotiations –
that the world was not willing to provide a blank check.
“I think this is
important for the Palestinians to know, because if anyone there thought they
could sort of just fall back to the comfort of an internationally subsidized
state-building endeavor, that may be wrong,” he said in an interview. “And I
think that it is important for some people on the Israeli side – living in
reasonable comfort [given] that cooperation with the pseudo-state in the West
Bank is quite good – to know that this cannot continue forever.”
So if the 'international community' decides that there is no hope of there ever being a 'Palestinian state,' they will cut off all their financial support? Then why are we at the table?
And if 'international community' believes they're not going to have to support the 'Palestinians' forever (as they have done for the last 65 years) once there is a 'Palestinian state,' why are the 'Palestinians' at the table? After all, in the 20 years since Oslo, the 'Palestinians' have shown absolutely zero interest in economic development or the kinds of activities that go into running a state on a day-to-day basis like roads, sewers, water supply etc.
The 'international community' has to understand that just like the United States has been propping Egypt up economically for the 36 years since Camp David - because otherwise why would they keep to the peace treaty - the 'international community' is signing on to support the 'Palestinians' in perpetuity. The day that the 'Palestinians' stop being bribed to live in peace will be the day that they stop living in peace.
Swedes and Norwegians seething over comparison between 'Palestinian' terrorists and Anders Breivik
The Israeli ambassador to Sweden, Isaac Bachman, managed to touch off a storm by comparing the release of 'Palestinian' terrorists to an imaginary release of Norwegian mass murdererAnders Behring Breivik.
"The horrors that [the Palestinian prisoners] did, to put it in a
Scandinavian understanding, it's like what happened in Norway with
Breivik," he told SR.
"Imagine if Breivik was released as a gesture of some sort," he added,
explaining that Israel was not getting enough credit for agreeing to the
release. "Research has shown that these people will return to crime.
It's not easy to get public support for releasing these people."
"The comparison does not make sense," added Bjørn Ihler, who survived
the massacre by hiding on the southern tip of the island. "Breivik was a
solo terrorist whose actions were based purely on an unreal situation.
The situation in the Middle East is very different. There is a real
fight for Palestinian freedom going on."
Middle East expert Per Jönsson with the Swedish Institute for
International Affairs (Utrikespolitiska institutets - UI) also slammed
Bachman's Breivik comparison.
"The comparison with Brevik is insane in several ways. Breivik is very
special. These people that Israel is now releasing are freedom fighters,
murderers, and in some cases terrorists, but they are nevertheless
rather normal people," he told the Aftonbladet newspaper.
Rather normal? Really? Let's go back to the description of how Ronen Karamani and Lior Tubul HY"D (May God Avenge their blood) were found on that August night in 1990:
They were later found bound and murdered outside of Ramot in the northern end of the city.
The two youths, Ronen Karamani, 18, and Lior Tubul, 17, were last
seen Saturday night at the close of the Jewish holy day when friends
dropped them off on a main road leading north from Jerusalem.
They
had said they intended to hitchhike to the home of Tubul's girlfriend,
who lives in the northern suburb of Givat Zeev and was about to leave on
vacation in Eilat.
When the two youths did not arrive, police
were notified, and search parties were organized. Helicopters, trained
dogs and professional trackers took part in the search.
About 1:30
p.m. Monday, searchers found the bodies about 20 yards apart in a
ravine off the road. One bore about 50 stab wounds, witnesses said, and
the other's skull had been bludgeoned.
"The way they were tied
down, the way they were stabbed points definitely to a political
murder," Turner was quoted as saying. "There was no reason to think that
these two normal, good teen-agers were murdered for any criminal
reason."
Late Monday, police began a massive search for the
killers, believed to be Arabs who picked the boys up on the road. Nearby
villages were placed under curfew.
And recall this story from the Munich Olympic Massacre, funded by none other than Abu Mazen.
In
1996, I, along with other Munich orphans and three of the widows, were
invited for the first time to the Olympic Games in Atlanta. Before the
Opening Ceremony, we met with Alex Gilady. Gilady has been a member of
the IOC's Radio and Television Commission since 1984 and has been the
senior vice president of NBC Sports since 1996.
I have known Mr.
Gilady since I was a kid; in fact, I grew up with his daughter. He had
been supportive in the past regarding our plea for a moment of silence
during the Opening Ceremonies, so we arrived with high hopes. Gilady
informed us that a moment of silence was not possible because if the IOC
had a moment of silence for the Israeli athletes, they would also have
to do the same for the Palestinians who died at the Olympics in 1972.
My mother said, "But no Palestinian athletes died."
Gilady responded, "Well, there were Palestinians who died at the 1972 Olympics."
I heard one of the widows say to Gilady, "Are you equating the murder of my husband to the terrorists that killed him?"
Silence.
Then
Ilana Romano burst out with a cry that has haunted me to this day. She
screamed at Gilady, "How DARE you! You KNOW what they did to my husband!
They let him lay there for hours, dying slowly, and then finished him
off by castrating him and shoving it in his mouth, ALEX!"
Alex Gilady, as you might recall,
is an Israeli who led the Israeli media delegation at the 1972
Olympics. Avery Brundage, who was the IOC President who infamously said
in 1972 'let the games go on,' was a Nazi.
This is what Swedes and Norwegians consider 'normal'? You bet, as long as it is only happening to Jews. Then again, they don't appear to place too much value on their own lives either.
Breivik is currently serving a minimum 21-year prison sentence for
killing 77 people and wounding 242 others in a gun and bomb massacre in
Norway in July 2011.
21 years for murdering 77 people? That's incredible.
We've known for a while now that the Norwegian government supports 'Palestinian' and Leftist Israeli NGO's. It turns out that Israel is not the only country where the Norwegians are attempting to practice thought control. According to this report, Norway has been a big supporter of US Leftist 'think tanks' like Think Progress and the Brookings Institute.
Newspaper Aftenposten reported on Wednesday that around NOK 250 million (USD 43 million) from the ministry’s foreign aid (bistand)
budget was sent to some 40 organizations in the US in 2011 alone. About
half of it, according to a confidential state report obtained by Aftenposten,
was sent further to developing countries, but the rest stayed with
organizations including The Brookings Institution and the Center for
American Progress.
...
Aftenposten reported that the internal document, which had
been withdrawn from the public domain, was ordered by the ministry and
written last year by the Norwegian Peace Building Resource Center, which
was established as an independent organization by the ministry itself
in 2008. Its report offers an overview of how the Norwegian government
is trying to buy influence among US organizations that in turn can
influence US policy in Washington. The organizations mostly conduct
research, foreign aid projects of their own and environmental
protection.
The Brookings Institution, a long-established think tank that aims to
strengthen American democracy along with economic and social welfare,
received NOK 10 million over a three-year period for studies on changes
in the balance of international influence. The New America Foundation
received NOK 580,000 to study regional dimensions in the conflict
Afghanistan, including relations with Iran. The Center for American
Progress, a major think tank for the Democratic Party, received NOK 1.3
million to look at fairness in the workplace. The Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, meanwhile, received NOK 3.5 million
in 2010 for peace research in Latin America.
The list goes on, with the resource center’s report noting that only
the governments of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have given more
money to the various organizations in the US, according to Aftenposten.
But don't worry: All that money being sent to the US isn't distracting the Norwegians from their real mission.
The money sent to the US organizations accounts for a fairly small
percentage of Norway’s foreign aid budget, which amounted to NOK 27
billion last year. The five largest recipients of Norwegian foreign aid
in 2011 were, according to the most recent figures available,
Afghanistan, Tanzania, Palestine, Somalia and Mozambique.
I wonder whether the US Federal Election Commission might take a look at how much Norwegian money went to the Obama campaign.
Norway 'discovers' that its money is funding terrorism
Surely Norway is not the only European country whose aid money to the 'Palestinians' is being used to fund terrorism. But they were probably the most righteously indignant about it.
The Palestinian Authority misled Oslo when it claimed Norwegian aid
money was not used to reward the murderers of Israelis, Norway’s foreign
minister said.
Espen Barth Eide said Monday in a statement that “it is unfortunate
that the incorrect information obtained from the Palestinian Authority
was communicated to the Parliament.” The statement was quoted in an
article by the daily Dagen.
Anders Anundsen, a lawmaker for the Progress Party, said the
government has long claimed that Norwegian aid did not go to
Palestinians who are incarcerated in Israeli jails for murders and
terrorist activities. The Palestinian Authority has pledged monthly
payments to Palestinian prisoners in Israel since 2003 and raised
payments by as much as 300 percent in 2011, according to Israel’s
Channel 2 television network.
Eide’s statement came after the ministry received new information
that revealed “major difference to what we have assumed, according to
earlier information we received from the P.A.,” the minister's statement
said.
Norway's foreign ministry brought up the subject last week during a
meeting between its representatives and Palestinian Authority Prime
Minister Salam Fayyad, according to Eide.
"In this meeting we also took up the dispensation and the level of
subsidy for the prisoners, and we clearly expressed that we found this
to be problematic," Eide said. "We also noted the new information on
this issue differs from earlier information provided by the P.A. We also
stated that we find this unfortunate.”
They can't say they weren't warned.
Money is fungible, so any country that is giving money to the 'Palestinians' is funding the payments to terrorists highlighted in the excerpt above. And many more countries are probably financing the terrorist payments directly.
In a lecture at the University of Oslo, and in interviews in the Norwegian press and with Haaretz, Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung made anti-Semitic remarks, including the outrageous claim that the Mossad was behind Anders Breivik's murderous Norwegian rampage last summer, and praise for the anti-Semitic primer, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Galtung is known as the 'father of peace studies.' Among other statements, Galtung claimed that a possible connection exists between the terrorist responsible for the massacre of children in Norway last summer, and the Mossad. “The Jews control U.S. media, and divert for the sake of Israel,” wrote Galtung in an article published in Norway. He pointed out that one of the factors behind the anti-Semitic sentiment that led to Auschwitz was the fact that Jews held influential positions in German society. Galtung also recommended reading “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” – one of the most popular anti-Semitic texts in the world.
Professor Galtung, 82-years-old, is one of the founders of the discipline called “Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution,” as well as a founder of the international Peace Research Institute in Oslo. He is considered well-respected sociological researcher, has been awarded many prizes, and is the author of over a thousand articles and over a hundred books. Some of his work has also been translated into Hebrew.
Larry’s dismissal is made all the more obscene by virtue of the light it sheds on the egregious double-standard that once-professional publication now employs in regard to conservative versus liberal opinion; I say that as someone who fondly remembers the fairly conservative op-ed editor of my own time at the Post soliciting op-ed pieces he openly disagreed with. Larry worries his post might end up on some Hamas website. This is yet to occur, and even if it does take place, it’s doubtful it would influence the decision of any young Palestinian whether to become a terrorist or not. By contrast, the writings of Jerusalem Post deputy-editor Caroline Glick were cited in the manic manifesto of Norwegian terrorist Anders Brevik in justification of the bloodbath he executed earlier this summer; unlike Derfner, Glick has yet to be shown the door.
Moreover, right after the Norway carnage the Jerusalem Post published an outlandish editorial suggesting the calculated, murderous rampage of a self-confessed xenophobe was an opportunity for Norway to revisit its immigration policy. The editorial was so beyond the pale the Post only put it up on the website with a disclaimer, and sparked such an outrage in Norway the newspaper had to spend another editorial on an apology; to my knowledge, all of those responsible for this serialised farce kept their jobs. Not so for Derfner.
Now, I’m not suggesting Glick and the author of that editorial (assuming they’re not the same person) should be fired for their opinions. There are many other reasons not to retain Glick’s services. Serious complaints of her conservative column’s ultra-liberal attitude to facts should be a warning sign for any reader; her suggestions regarding the possibility of an alliance between Israel and the Vatican, instead of fickle, fickle USA, are enough to give anybody pause; and as far as embarrassing appearances outside the Jpost go, her responsibility for a “satirical” clip showing a blackface minstrel Barack Obama singing to Israel’s destruction is hard to forget.
Yet Glick’s right to express even the strangest and most obsolete of opinion from the pages of what publication would have her remains in place and should not be infringed upon. Opinion is up there to be read, to be disagreed with and to be criticised; this is the fundamental principle of op-ed pages. The Jerusalem Post has obviously sunk so low and became wedded to Glenn-Beck-type readership so tightly it now applies this principle to conservative opinion only. Pity. It used to be a newspaper once.
Hello? It was a business decision! By Derfner's own admission, the Post had HUNDREDS of subscription cancellations because of what Derfner wrote. A newspaper is a commercial enterprise (unlike blogs which are written by true believers who toil in anonymity for free). Is the Post supposed to lose money to give Derfner a platform to spew his noxious venom at Israelis?
Caroline Glick is probably the most popular columnist in Israel and is certainly the most popular Israeli columnist among Israelis abroad. Given that the writer - Dimi Reider - acknowledges Glick's right to write whatever she pleases, what is the point of implying that she should be fired because Derfner was?
Reider may not like it, but the fact is that English-speaking olim are far more conservative than are Israelis or diaspora Jews. Unlike Haaretz, the JPost caters (or at least did until a couple of weeks ago) to that crowd.
Finally, Glick did not suggest that Norway revisit its immigration policy. Neither did Barry Rubin, who has also been subject to constant attack on the Post's editorial pages by representatives of the Norwegian government. Rather, Glick and Rubin suggested that Norway ought to do some introspection as to whether their support for 'Palestinian' terrorists was giving succor to those who would terrorize Norwegians. Norway still has not (or doesn't want to) get that point.
And for those wondering why Reider didn't mention Barry Rubin along with Glick, go here.
The Norwegian terror attacks have turned into an excuse to beat up on conservative, anti-Islamist bloggers. In a disgraceful piece written this morning, the New York Times all but blames Robert Spencer, Baron Bodissey and Pam Geller for the Oslo attacks.
In the document he posted online, Anders Behring Breivik, who is accused of bombing government buildings and killing scores of young people at a Labor Party camp, showed that he had closely followed the acrimonious American debate over Islam.
His manifesto, which denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country from Islamic influence, quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch Web site, 64 times, and cited other Western writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture.
...
In the United States, critics have asserted that the intense spotlight on the threat from Islamic militants has unfairly vilified Muslim Americans while dangerously playing down the threat of attacks from other domestic radicals. The author of a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremism withdrawn by the department after criticism from conservatives repeated on Sunday his claim that the department had tilted too heavily toward the threat from Islamic militants.
The revelations about Mr. Breivik’s American influences exploded on the blogs over the weekend, putting Mr. Spencer and other self-described “counterjihad” activists on the defensive, as their critics suggested that their portrayal of Islam as a threat to the West indirectly fostered the crimes in Norway.
Mr. Spencer wrote on his Web site, jihadwatch.org, that “the blame game” had begun, “as if killing a lot of children aids the defense against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, or has anything remotely to do with anything we have ever advocated.” He did not mention Mr. Breivik’s voluminous quotations from his writings.
The Gates of Vienna, a blog that ordinarily keeps up a drumbeat of anti-Islamist news and commentary, closed its pages to comments Sunday “due to the unusual situation in which it has recently found itself.”
Its operator, who describes himself as a Virginia consultant and uses the pseudonym “Baron Bodissey,” wrote on the site Sunday that “at no time has any part of the Counterjihad advocated violence.”
The name of that Web site — a reference to the siege of Vienna in 1683 by Muslim fighters who, the blog says in its headnote, “seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe” — was echoed in the title Mr. Breivik chose for his manifesto: “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.” He chose that year, the 400th anniversary of the siege, as the target for the triumph of Christian forces in the European civil war he called for to drive out Islamic influence.
Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”
“This rhetoric,” he added, “is not cost-free.”
...
Mr. Breivik frequently cited another blog, Atlas Shrugs, and recommended the Gates of Vienna among Web sites. Pamela Geller, an outspoken critic of Islam who runs Atlas Shrugs, wrote on her blog Sunday that any assertion that she or other antijihad writers bore any responsibility for Mr. Breivik’s actions was “ridiculous.”
“If anyone incited him to violence, it was Islamic supremacists,” she wrote.
Mr. Breivik also quoted European blogs and writers with similar themes, notably a Norwegian blogger who writes under the name “Fjordman.” Immigration from Muslim countries to Scandinavia and the rest of Europe has set off a deep political debate across the continent and strengthened a number of right-wing anti-immigrant parties.
I understand that Melanie Phillips, Richard Landes and Phyllis Chesler are also mentioned in Breivik's manifesto. I can't link to the post that confirms that right now because Melanie Phillips' website has been attacked and is down right now.
Breivik did not specifically target Muslims, but the opportunists who would force their way of life on all of us are attempting to use this case as an instance of 'Islamophobia.'
None of the people cited in this article has ever called for or advocated violence. Unfortunately, others have used their writings as an excuse for it.
The picture at the top is Robert Spencer holding an Israeli flag in Berlin shortly after German authorities had removed one from someone's window.
In an editorial in Monday's paper, the Jerusalem Post urges that Friday's tragedy in Norway not be allowed to shut off criticism of the failures of multiculturalism.
Undoubtedly, there will be those – particularly on the Left – who will extrapolate out from Breivik’s horrific act that the real danger facing contemporary Europe is rightwing extremism and that criticism of multiculturalism is nothing more than so much Islamophobia.
While it is still too early to determine definitively Breivik’s precise motives, it could very well be that the attack was more pernicious – and more widespread – than the isolated act of a lunatic. Perhaps Brievik’s inexcusable act of vicious terror should serve not only as a warning that there may be more elements on the extreme Right willing to use violence to further their goals, but also as an opportunity to seriously reevaluate policies for immigrant integration in Norway and elsewhere. While there is absolutely no justification for the sort of heinous act perpetrated this weekend in Norway, discontent with multiculturalism’s failure must not be delegitimatized or mistakenly portrayed as an opinion held by only the most extremist elements of the Right.
Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel have both recently lamented the “failure of multiculturalism” in their respective countries.
Amartya Sen, the 1998 Nobel Prize laureate for welfare economics from India, has noted how terribly impractical it is to believe that the coexistence of an array of cultures in close proximity will lead to peace. Without a shared cultural foundation, no meaningful communication among diverse groups is possible, Sen has argued.
Norway, a country so oriented toward promoting peace, where the Muslim population is forecast to increase from 3 percent to 6.5% of the population by 2030, should heed Sen’s incisive analysis.
The challenge for Norway in particular and for Europe as a whole, where the Muslim population is expected to account for 8% of the population by 2030 according to a Pew Research Center, is to strike the right balance. Fostering an open society untainted by xenophobia or racism should go hand in hand with protection of unique European culture and values.
Europe’s fringe right-wing extremists present a real danger to society. But Oslo’s devastating tragedy should not be allowed to be manipulated by those who would cover up the abject failure of multiculturalism.
Bruce Bawer explains why Friday's terror attacks in Norway are a double tragedy (Hat Tip: Instapundit).
It is chilling to read my own name in postings by this mass murderer. And it is deeply depressing to see this evil, twisted creature become the face of Islam criticism in Norway. Norwegian television journalists who in the first hours of the crisis were palpably uncomfortable about the prospect of having to talk about Islamic terrorism are now eagerly discussing the dangers of “Islamophobia” and “conservative ideology” and are drawing connections between the madness and fanaticism of Breivik and the platform of the Progress Party. Yesterday’s events, then, represent a double tragedy for Norway. Not only has it lost almost one hundred people, including dozens of young people, in a senseless rampage of violence. But I fear that legitimate criticism of Islam, which remains a very real threat to freedom in Norway and the West, has been profoundly discredited, in the eyes of many Norwegians, by association with this murderous lunatic.
During appearance by Norwegian Foreign Minister, Norwegian youth camp urged boycott of Israel
During an appearance by Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store at a Norwegian youth camp on Thursday, the Foreign Minister was urged to support the anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement.
A terrorist attacked the same camp on Friday, murdering more than 80 camp participants, and set off a bomb at a government office building in Oslo, murdering seven other people.
Here's a Google translation from Norwegian:
Jonas Gahr Store: - The occupation must end, the wall must be demolished and it must happen now
[Photo caption] AUF WANT BOYCOTT: Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store was met by demands that Norway must recognize a Palestinian state when he visited the Labour Youth League summer camp at Utøya Thursday. Here the Minister ushered around in the camp of the AUF leader Eskil Pedersen. (Reuters)
[Text] During the second day of Labour Youth League summer camp at Utøya got the Labour Party's young hopefuls visit by Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store.
Together with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent Sidsel Wold and Norwegian People's Aid Kirsten Belck-Olsen, discussed the Foreign Minister of the deadlock between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
As foreign minister arrived Utøya he was met with a demand from the AUF that Norway must recognize a Palestinian state.
- The Palestinians must have their own state, the occupation must end, the wall must be demolished and it must happen now, said the Foreign Minister to cheers from the audience.
There are already people out there trying to blame this on Israel and on supporters of Norway's Progress party. Neither had anything to do with this.
After the Sabbath ended, Prime Minister Netanyahu issued a statement expressing Israel's identification with the 'deep pain and grief' of the Norwegian people.
The Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that Israel "expresses its shock at the revolting terror attacks in Oslo, which have taken the lives of innocent victims. Nothing at all can justify such wanton violence, and we condemn this brutal action with the utmost gravity."
The statement said that Israel would offer Norway any assistance it may require, an offer repeated in a phone conversation Defense Minister Ehud Barak had with his counterparts in Norway. The Norwegians, according to a statement issued by Barak's office, thanked Israel for the offer, but said that at this time they did not need any assistance.
Israel offered forensic assistance, help in evacuating the wounded, and medical support.
Goyim (non-Jews) murder goyim and the Jews get blamed. The more things change, the more they stay the same....
It turns out that the bomb in central Oslo that was reported just before the Sabbath started here in Israel was just the warm-up. During the evening, a man opened fire on a youth convention of Norway's ruling Labor party and murdered anywhere from 85-98 people, mostly teenagers.
The shooter confessed - who is also charged in the bombing in central Oslo that killed seven people - is said to be a Christian who is opposed to 'multiculturalism.' But it sounds like most of his victims were Norwegian teenagers and not necessarily of any specific ethnicity.
Breivik had belonged to an anti-immigration party and wrote blogs attacking multi-culturalism and Islam, but police said he had been unknown to them and that his Internet activity traced so far included no calls for violence.
Witnesses said the gunman, wearing a police uniform, went on a prolonged shooting orgy on Utoeya island northwest of Oslo, picking off his prey unchallenged as youngsters scattered in panic or jumped in the lake to swim for the mainland.
A police SWAT team eventually arrived from Oslo, 30 km (19 miles) away, to seize Breivik after nearly 90 minutes of firing, acting police chief Sveinung Sponheim told a news conference.
"We don't know yet" if he acted alone, Sponheim said, adding that Breivik had surrendered immediately and had confessed.
Sponheim said 85 people were known to have died in the shooting and seven in the Oslo bomb blast. The overall death toll could reach 98 if some missing people proved to have died.
Police gave no figure for the number wounded in Norway's worst violence since World War Two.
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, sharing the shocked mood in this normally safe, quiet country of 4.8 million, said: "A paradise island has been transformed into a hell."
Labour Party youth member Erik Kursetgjerde described the panic on Utoeya when the gunman began shooting.
"I heard screams. I heard people begging for their lives and I heard shots. He just blew them away. I was certain I was going to die," Kursetgjerde, 18, told Reuters outside a hotel in the nearby town of Sundvollen, where many survivors were taken.
"People ran everywhere. They panicked and climbed into trees. People got trampled."
The killer, dressed as a policeman, "would tell people to come over: 'It's OK, you're safe, we're coming to help you.' And then I saw about 20 people come towards him and he shot them at close range," he said.
Kursetgjerde said he ran and hid between cliffs, then swam into the lake and nearly drowned. "Someone (in a boat) rescued me. They saved my life."
Norwegian NRK television showed blurred pictures taken from a helicopter of a man, apparently in police uniform, standing with his arm outstretched amid numerous victims, some prone on the rocky shore, others floating in the water.
"This lasted for hours," Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told a news conference, describing the killings on the island northwest of Oslo where about 600 young people had gathered.
The bloodbath was believed to be the deadliest attack by a lone gunman anywhere in modern times.
Here's video of the emergency services on the scene at Utoya Island shortly after the massacre. Let's go to the videotape.
Here's a CNN report from Friday night. Let's go to the videotape.
Someone was kind enough to link this post on Twitter after the Sabbath started here in Israel. It's no secret that there is lots of anti-Semitism in Norway. But this attack apparently had nothing to do with that. In fact, the attacker is allegedly pro-Israel. But that's not to say that we would want him.
In his twisted ideology, the struggle was not between Christians and Jews, but Christians and Jews versus Muslims. Jews, and especially Israel, formed the bulwark against Muslim domination of Europe.
There are many web sites where adherents of this particular brand of racism connect, stew and brew with one another. Islamversuseurope.com (“Where Islam Spreads, Freedom Dies”) even now posts an apologia for the child-killer, essentially blaming Muslims for Breivik’s massacre of Christian children.
“These are Google translations of comments Anders Behring Breivik made on the website document.no.” the author writes. “There is very little that he said that I would disagree with. It is clear that he is a Counterjihadist and visits the same sites that most of us do, Gates of Vienna, Jihadwatch, Atlas Shrugs, etc. He cites Fjordman’s “Defeating Eurabia” many times.”
Here is a taste of Breivik: “When did multiculturalism cease to be an ideology designed to deconstruct European culture, traditions, identity and nation-states?” said one entry, “According to two studies, 13 percent of young British Muslims aged between 15 and 25 support al-Qaida ideology.”
It is just bizarre, right, that the new Nazism embraces the Jews and Israel. In an essay on AlArabiya, Ravi Shankar, executive editor of the New India Express, makes a compelling case that Christian Europe’s compulsion to hate has found a new roost.
“… Europe’s Muslim population of 15 million will become 30 million by 2015, while Europeans will shrink by 4 per cent,” he writes. “Princeton academic and Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis famously said, ‘Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century.’ If Friday’s bombings in Oslo is a dark harbinger of troubled times, soon, Muslims will be the new Jews of Europe. For all the old Jews are dead: murdered by fellow Europeans in Auschwitz, Riga, Buchenwald and so many other “anus mundis.”
“Anti-semitism has strong roots in Europe going back centuries; in the Dark Ages, Venetians preferred to trust Arabs as trade partners and equals while Jewish merchants were exiled to ghettos or deported at will.
“Europeans today hate America for its Jewish gestalt, distrusts US Israel policy which they argue is driven by a powerful Jewish financial lobby in America; much like how the Rothschilds financed wars in 18th century Europe. An interesting 1980s study about why Europe has been more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause until the late 1990s and hostile to Israel puts it down to simple neighborhood deprivation: the postwar generation of Europeans grew up without Jewish neighbors, Jewish classmates, Jewish friends. Hence, they had no natural empathy with Jews.
“Now the reverse is happening in Europe. It is the presence of Muslims in Europe that is the source of social panic and anger. The fear of being overwhelmed and alienated in their own country by outsiders who they think will breed terrorists. All this makes a fertile breeding ground for anti-Islamic neo-Nazism…What happened in Oslo Friday may be the early beginning of a new civil war ‑ Europeans fighting each other, both Muslim and Christian. In this scenario, the horrifying irony could be that Islamist terrorism may become redundant. “
The Jewish reaction to all this should be strong and clear: take your hate elsewhere. To paraphrase our prophet Groucho Marx, we don’t want to be part of any club that would have us as a member.
These racists see Judaism as a tribe with which they can make a strategic anti-Islam alliance. That is a misconception. Judaism has a tribal aspect, but it is more than just a tribe. It is a set of laws and values that Jews believe God set before that tribe, and which they must adhere to (with room for argumentation and interpretation, thank God).
Those values pretty much preclude the murder of innocents, baseless hatred, and the death penalty for people whom you fear. And that is why a person like Breivik’s head would spin to know that Muslims in Israel have greater rights to free speech than they do in most Muslim countries, as well as the freedom to practice their religion. Israel’s record on Arab minority rights isn’t perfect (standard disclaimer), but it reflects the values of Judaism that supersede those of pure tribalism.
In other words, against the Muslims and the Brieviks, I side with the Muslims.
Indeed.
By the way, did you note the penalty this guy faces? 21 years in prison? He'd still have a life when he gets out. That's unbelievable.
The Norwegian government claims to be surprised by the results of a survey of the Oslo public schools, but anyone who read the story of Alan Dershowitz's visit to Norway in April (also here) cannot be surprised. What is surprising is that after the report, the Norwegian government has the gall to appoint a minister with a proven track record of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel behavior to deal with the problem.
Last month’s publication of a study ordered by the Oslo municipality on racism and anti-Semitism among students of the 8th through 10th grades in the town’s schools came as a shock. The study found that 33 percent of the Jewish students regularly experience bullying at school. According to the definition used, this means that at least two or three incidents of verbal or physical abuse target these Jewish students per month.
It would be hard to find similarly extreme data anywhere else in Western Europe. The study also rendered it difficult to blame anti-Semitism exclusively on Muslim children, as it became evident that autochthonous Norwegians are also heavily involved.
After Jews, the next most pestered group was Buddhists, with 10 percent experiencing bullying; “Others” were at 7 percent and Muslims at slightly over 5 percent. Fifty-one percent of all students believe that the term “Jew” is used pejoratively, 41percent had heard ethnic jokes about Jews and 35 percent heard insulting comments. Close to 5 percent had been present when the Holocaust was denied in class. Only 25 percent of the students never witnessed anything negative about Jews in school.[1]
All this happens in a country where among a general population of about 5 million, the membership of the organized Jewish community is only 800. The total number of Jews in the country which includes Israelis, who often leave after a few years, is estimated at 2,000.
...
After the broadcast, Halvorsen ordered a national study on racism in schools, which is still underway. After the study of the Oslo municipality was made public, Halvorsen announced that she will provide more than $1,000,000 to familiarize teachers with the issue and how it should be handled in schools.
This effort is unlikely to be very successful. Halvorsen and her party colleagues are extremist anti-Israeli hate mongers. In 2006, she promoted a consumer boycott of Israeli goods. The Norwegian government had to distance itself from her statements after the then U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice threatened Norway with serious political consequences.[5]
In 2009, when Halvorsen was Minister of Finance, she announced that the Norwegian government had decided that the state pension plan should divest from the Israeli company Elbit because it was involved in the construction of Israel’s security barrier.[6]This was considered incompatible with the so-called investment ethics which had been laid down for the pension fund. At the same time however, the fund continued to hold shares in companies in other countries involved in highly unethical activities.
In 2009 during the Cast Lead war in Gaza, Halvorsen was the only Western minister to participate in an anti-Israeli demonstration. She was photographed standing close to someone holding a poster saying: U.S. and Israel – the Axis of the Greatest Evil.[7]At the demonstration, shouts of “Death to the Jews” could also be heard.
The main question concerning the actions to be taken is: Can a minister with a continuing arsonist record become a fireman at the same time?
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
