For the first time in my life, I’m ashamed to be Norwegian. Why on earth would I be ashamed of coming from a peaceful, prosperous nation, with one of the supposedly happiest populations on earth, beautiful nature and a history of bravery and diplomacy, you may ask? Surely everyone loves Norway, that innocuous, northern country of five million, which hardly ever makes the news except once a year when it’s yet again come out on top, or at least close to the top, of some “best quality of life” survey?
Well, that was before Norway decided to recognise Palestine as a state. Last week, the Norwegian Government joined Ireland and Spain in unilaterally recognising a state of Palestine on May 28th. The move has received praise from Hamas, and prompted the departure of the Israeli ambassador to Oslo, Avi Nir-Feldklein. He told the Norwegian state broadcaster NRK: ”It’s a very sad moment for the relationship between Israel and Norway… This is the low point in the relationship between Norway and the Israeli people.” Norway is now regarded as one of the “most hostile countries”, according to Nir-Feldklein.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, Hamas is thanking Norway, as well as Spain and Ireland, for what it believes to be support for its cause. “We consider this an important step towards affirming our right to our land,” a spokesman for Hamas said, according to the Daily Mail. Hamas is calling on “countries around the world to recognise our legitimate national rights”.
Most Western governments say they will recognise Palestine as a sovereign state, but not before agreement has been reached on issues like where it’s borders will be drawn and what the status of Jerusalem will be.
Norway is out of step not only with the U.K., but also the U.S., France and Germany, which have all said this isn’t the right time for such a move.
What is prompting Norway, which played a central part in the (failed) Oslo Accords negotiations, to take such a radically different stance to most of its NATO allies and other Western governments?
Unfortunately, this is not as shocking as it appears at first glance. Norway has a track record of showing – both financially and politically – support for Palestine. Norway is a top donor to the controversial UN agency UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). After it was revealed by an Israel intelligence dossier that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the attack on Israel on October 7th, countries around the world paused funding to the agency. Yet Norway has maintained its funding. It made its annual contribution of 275 million NOK (£20.5 million) in February and said more could be on its way.
The key person in Norway’s stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict is Espen Barth-Eide. The 60 year-old minister of foreign affairs in Norway’s red-green coalition Government has climbed the ranks of the Labour party over several decades. He was co-editor of International Peacekeeping, a London-based journal, and in 2003 he was named as a “Global Leader of Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum. Wiki-Leaks revealed that he was not only described as competent and knowledgeable, but as a “weasel” by the CIA. He is also a long-standing campaigner for Palestine and used to champion their cause as a youth politician.
As well as recognising Palestine as a state, Barth-Eide says Norway will arrest Israel’s president Benjamin Netanyahu if an arrest warrant is issued by the ICC and he sets foot on Norwegian soil. Norway is the first country in Europe to issue such a statement.
In contrast, the Taliban Government of Afghanistan was flown into Oslo in 2022, paid for by Norwegian taxpayers, to talk to Norwegian ministers. The Taliban delegation received a warm welcome, whereas the elected president of the only democracy in the Middle East has been warned to stay away.
Thankfully, many Norwegians support Israel in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack on Israeli soil. Our King, Harald V, wanted to send his condolences to Israel, but was advised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs not to because it was a “political” conflict, the King revealed in a recent documentary.
While supporters of Palestine, who march through the streets of Oslo yelling “from the river to the sea” are in their thousands, Jews in Norway are a tiny minority. This is the country that lost between 30 and 40% of its small Jewish population of 2,100 people in the Holocaust. Norwegian Jews, at present number only about 1500 and tell of how they now feel unsafe, as they do in the U.K. and many other Western nations.
Ayelet Azoury, a Norwegian-Israeli Jew living in Oslo, recently decided to move back to Israel because she no longer feels safe in Norway. “The Norway I once knew is no longer safe for Jews or Israelis,” she said in a Facebook post. Azoury is an activist who has highlighted the atrocities of Hamas, something the Norwegian media have been reluctant to do. The focus is very much on the Palestinians, and a friend recently commented that even the Guardian is more balanced in its coverage of the current conflict than the Norwegian mainstream media.
Norway hosted the Oslo Accords in 1993. The outcome was the decision to pursue a two-state solution, yet this has proved impossible in the years since. Now Israel says there is no role for the country in future negotiations.
Ambassador Nir-Feldklein claims Norway was trusted as an honest broker because it used to be seen as a neutral country. “Today Norway lost that role,” he told NRK yesterday. The trust is gone, he said. “I see no role for Norway. It’s Qatar, Egypt and the USA that have a role.”
Surely, this is a big blow to Norway’s reputation as a peace-keeper.
In Norway, there is a phrase we use to describe ourselves which translated as the “different country” – and it’s not always used in a positive way. The expression “annerledeslandet” was coined by the poet Rolf Jacobsen and later used during the EU referendum in 1994. Norway should be different and stay out of the EU, said some, while the pro-EU side used the word mockingly. Sometimes it’s good to be different, but in this instance, being different means taking the side of terrorists. Whether it’s because of naivety, weaselly politicians wanting to climb the UN ladder, or simply a lack of moral judgement, I don’t know. But Norway certainly stands out now as a different sort of country, and one that I am thoroughly ashamed of.
Stop Press: in her latest Substack post, Melanie Phillips says the human rights establishment, in its unrelenting attack on Israel since October 7th, has destroyed any claim it has to the moral high ground.
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That’s what just one journalist feels.
The majority of the rest of the world support Palestine and rightly so.
And who worked for a number of years at Bloomberg news, so her views on Israel/Palestine are hardly surprising.
I suppose you have spoken to them all, have you? This is the sort of asinine, and juvenile, statement that we hear about scientists and global scamming.
If anyone is making an “asinine, and juvenile, statement” it is you.
I hope you don’t delete or edit it so everyone can see what a fool you are.
“I suppose you have spoken to them all”. Absolutely puerile.
Sort of like how 99% of scientists agree that humans cause climate change.
No, nothing like that at all.
Man made global warming is a made up fiction.
The occupying Jewish forces in Palestine committing atrocities against the indigenous people for the past 76 years is reality.
It’s a pity that the remnants of the 600 year old Ottoman Empire are still causing trouble.
It’s a pity that European Jews occupying Palestine are causing trouble.
There is already a Palestinian State. It’s called Jordan. But why aren’t these made-up ”Palestinians” allowed to move there? Even Egypt for that matter? We should all already know the answer to this by now. These above three countries are doing nothing more than legitimizing and rewarding terrorism and denying the Jewish people a state of their own.
Some of this is covered in these 10 myths about ”Palestine” which the ‘useful idiots’ so love to harp on about;
”Most of their hysterical claims—genocide, apartheid, “it’s all ours, Zionists are white supremacists”—can’t stand up to a few simple facts, let alone a disciplined academic debate.
The lies come from the demonstrators’ leaders—students and faculty—who have been “trained” in a neo-Marxist ideology based on critical race theory, which holds that society’s fundamental conflict is between “oppressed” and “oppressors.”
Yet ultimately, it’s the obligation of good people, moral people and rational people to tell the truth and defeat the lies. It’s our job to disrupt the campus party and discredit the liars.
Here are ten of the greatest lies pro-Palestinian protesters tell themselves and try to sell us:
Lie #1: “Zionists are white supremacists.” A white supremacist believes that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society. The Jewish people originated as people of color in the Middle East. Zionists believe in the right of Jews to have a state in their ancient, indigenous homeland, where they have lived continuously for 3,000 years. Today, over two-thirds of Israel’s population are people of color.
Lie #2: “Jews go back home, Palestine is ours alone.” In other words, the Land of Israel belongs exclusively to the Palestinian Arabs even though they never owned any of it or ever had sovereignty or a state there. This denies the right of Jewish people to self-determination in a land they purchased, settled and defended against Arab invaders and the United Nations recognized as their country in 1948.
Lie #7: “End Israel’s occupation, no peace on stolen land.” An occupation exists when one country illegally controls the territory of another country. Palestinians never owned or controlled any part of “Palestine,” nor was it ever a “country.” Israel has never stolen or occupied Palestinian land, but it made many offers of a Palestinian state, which the Palestinians always refused.”
https://www.jns.org/10-pro-palestinian-lies-told-by-the-useful-idiots/
”Apartheid”? What apartheid? ( <2mins )
https://x.com/NiohBerg/status/1792145792972587387
There is already a Palestinian State. It’s called Jordan.
Jordan is an Arabian test-tube kingdom established by England on formely Turkish territory after the first world war with no ties to the region nowadays known as Palestine. During the course of the war which begat Israel, Jordan conquered and later annexed the so-called west bank. Israel conquered it during the Six Days War and decades later, Jordan formally renounced any claims to it.
Zionists believe in the right of Jews to have a state in their ancient, indigenous homeland, where they have lived continuously for 3,000 years.
Assuming the bible can be trusted, the Jews came into this territory as a foreign invasion force of liberated Egyptian slaves and then pretty genocided the indigenuous population because they believed their God had granted the country to them. Being tired of their endless insurrections, the Romans drove them out towards the end of the first century AD, creating the so-called Jewish diaspora. Arab muslims conquered it from the Romans in the 7th century AD and until 1918, it remained part of the muslim state whose ruler was the nominal, spiritual head of Islam at that time, first various caliphates and finally, the Ottoman Empire.
This transparent kind of lying is no more endearing when employed by Netanyahu’s henchmen then by Putin’s. A conqueror in his pride can be respected. A playground bully will never be.
There has been long term concerns of apartheid voiced within Israel.
“In 1976 interview, Rabin likens settler ideologues to ‘cancer,’ warns of ‘apartheid’” – did the settler movement become less of a problem?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-1976-interview-rabin-likens-settlements-to-cancer-warns-of-apartheid/
“Tamir Pardo [former Head of Mossad] becomes the latest former senior official to compare Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank to apartheid”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/former-mossad-chief-pardo-says-israel-enforcing-apartheid-system-in-west-bank/
“Over the past nine months, the dots connecting the advance of tyranny within Israel and the entrenchment of apartheid in the territories…have been laid bare.”
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-09-29/ty-article-opinion/messianism-apartheid-and-coup-connecting-the-dots-of-israels-emerging-tyranny/0000018a-dd28-d476-abcf-ffeab9a00000
An interesting reading of accusations of genocide and apartheid.
“‘He [Netanyahu] wants the world to accuse Israel of genocide and apartheid, violent occupation and ethnic cleansing’ so that Israelis believe ‘the world hates us, and he is the only one who can save them.'”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/podcasts/2024-03-05/ty-article-podcast/netanyahu-wants-the-world-to-accuse-israel-of-genocide-apartheid-and-ethnic-cleansing/0000018e-0f0f-d203-a9ce-1fbf16dc0000
Indigenous Norwegian Katherine Jebsen Moore has no reason at all to feel “ashamed” of her ancestral homeland of Norway. The Leftist politicians of Norway, Spain & Ireland decided to join the 142 other countries that have long recognised Palestine as a state, but these decisions are always taken out of the hands of the people, just like politicians decide to open their borders to Mass Invasion from the Third World, and to go to war without consulting the people, who are forced to pay for everything with taxes, blood and suffering.
Only about 50 countries still do not recognise Palestine, but what does it matter? Palestine is not the problem of other world countries. Let the Middle East sort out their own problems in their own way.
We in the West must focus on our own survival now.
I don’t really understand what is the problem with recognising the Palestinian state. Perhaps someone can explain it to me.
They had the opportunity following the Oslo accords to conclude a comprehensive peace agreement with Israel which included the dismantling of settlements in the West Bank and also East Jerusalem, but Arafat was unable to commit to it. So recognising just now a Palestinian state is wrong both because it enables them to continue not accepting the right of Israel to exist and a reward for the most vile terrorist actions
Thanks for that very clear explanation.
What is your understanding of the borders of this Palestinian state that people recognise? I suppose if that area represents part of what the Israelis feel is their country then that’s what the “problem” is in recognising a Palestinian state – assuming you think that the current area of Israel is more or less correct and that the state of Israel should continue to exist as a majority-Jewish country.
Three downvotes and all I have done is ask a question. We get the full range here from interesting debate to silliness
What’s silly is people moaning every time anyone downvotes them.
I’m just trying to stimulate debate and get an idea of what other people think about these issues – that seems to me what these forums should be used for, or one of the main things at any rate
This is not really a forum, just the Comments section for comments about the relevant article. Most newspapers only let people have one comment per article, none of these back & forth arguments or chitchat, or people using the newspaper website to publish their own interminably long rants on completely unrelated topics. Cheaper than paying for your own website, I guess.
Well it doesn’t seem like a normal newspaper article comment section to me- for a start it’s largely the same small number of people who comment and the site software provides a reply button and a way to get notifications for replies.
As for the interminably long rants on unrelated topics, I have seen very few of those and I don’t think we should be discouraging anyone from commenting as there is precious little going on here to start with.
tof, I am in complete agreement. Some people on here are better off ignored and some could start an argument in an empty house.
Well then try another website if you’re not happy, or set up your own, instead of constantly complaining.
Well nowhere is perfect; DS has a lot of potential.
Or I could stick around and try to persuade others over to my point of view by “constantly complaining”.
As part of Palestine was supposed to become “a home for Jewish people” as decreed by the conquerors of 1918, there has been a UN-sanctioned partition plan for two states. This included Jerusalem, a holy place to Jews, Muslims and Christans alike, as internationalized city. This partition plan didn’t satisfy anyone and hence, the area was de facto partitioned through a series of wars during which the state of Israel was most successful and meanwhile includes a lot of territory which wasn’t supposed to become part of it according the the ‘rule based international order’ partition. Further, Israel is also slowly expanding into the still predominantly Palestinian areas. That’s for background.
This means there are two options here.
If the choice is one, Israel must vacate the areas it illegally occupied, restore them to Palestinian control and must accept that a souvereign Palestinian state is to be established there.
Assuming the choice is two, ie, Israel’s is whatever Israel can violently take, this obviously also applies to the other side. Should the Palestinians ever manage to gain the upper hand by warfare (middle-eastern warfare, that is, ie, military aimless slaughter of civilians), their rights to what they managed to conquer are just as good as those of Israel are now.
These are the two conceivable impartial standpoints. The first could also be described as the ‘globalist’ standpoint, to use a term that’s popular round here.
Lastly, there’s the partial standpoints both parties in this struggle have made their own. It’s God is on our side and therefore we are …, while the others must not …!
Can we please stop with the “I’m ashamed to be…” nonsense? You are not responsible for other people’s actions over which you have no control.
There seems to be at least one DS reader who thinks it makes sense to be “ashamed” of what other people do. Weird!
Israel’s PM seems quite committed so I doubt Norway’s statement will have much influence.
“‘There is no substitute for absolute victory’ – this is what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his speech in the Knesset plenum: ‘1,000 prosecutors in The Hague cannot stand up to the moral righteousness of our ways'”
https://x.com/KnessetT/status/1795111507614638106
For the first time in my life, I’m ashamed to be Norwegian.
Well, join the club. I was ashamed to be English when the country became internationally famous for its football hooligans. I am ashamed that my country’s prime minister caused Ukraine’s president to revoke the peace agreement reached with Russia in March 2022. I am ashamed that my country sends long range missiles to Ukraine which are used to kill civilians in Russia. I am ashamed that my country fully supports the genocide in Gaza. What can you do?
The key person in Norway’s stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict is Espen Barth-Eide … Wiki-Leaks revealed that he was not only described as competent and knowledgeable, but as a “weasel” by the CIA.
Being regarded as a weasel by CIA is glowing praise, as far as I am concerned. How many democratic governments have been overturned by that out-of-control institution?
Ayelet Azoury, a Norwegian-Israeli Jew living in Oslo, recently decided to move back to Israel because she no longer feels safe in Norway.
What nonsense.
“Surely everyone loves Norway”…..Depends on their “diversity”….If it’s becoming like its neighbour, I would give it a miss.
Please see these two photos of Sweden in 2015 compared to Sweden in 2024:
RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) / X
I’m a 50yo Norwegian and I’m damn proud of my Country at this moment, which doesn’t happen that often.. Everyone I know here in Norway, friends, family, co-workers are supportive of the Palestinian cause and no it’s not like they are all left-wingers.
What I don’t understand is how the Daily Sceptic crowd can be so gung-ho for ethnic cleansing and bombing civilian people and infrastructure. The Zionists themselves wrote they would colonize the area and called it Palestine. Actually they suggested buying land in Uganda but of course our Western Empire had no use for a rabid proxy force there. You’d think the sceptics would read history before okt7??! But even if you don’t know anything pre okt 7 the social media posts of IDF soldiers themselves should make you vomit and not want anything to do with this murderous apartheid ethno-state called Israel. Free Palestine!
You need to Free Norway first.
Is the DS pro genocide ? I have not seen any articles condemning Israel’s policy or actions in Gazza.
Where have you been? The DS has repeatedly shown its support for Israel, so your comment is just stupid.
Oops, I read your comment too quickly.
Your comment is not stupid, just joining the crowd whining about Gaza.
The only “Genocide” we in the West should be worrying about is the Genocide Against Ethnic Europeans.
To be genocide according to the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”
the acts have to be “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”.
Note specifically:
1) it has to be “with intent”
2) the intent has to be “to destroy”
3) “in whole or in part”
4) “the group”
5) “as such”
And the critical two words are “as such”.
Israel is not setting out to destroy any group “in whole or in part” “as such”.
Israel is:
1) defending itself against the 7th October barbarous atrocities being repeated – as threatened by Hamas;
2) to recover the hostages taken by the officially designated “terrorists” of Hamas.
Now the history of the dispute may be somewhat chequered but what is happening now is happening now and has to be faced up to.
It is a bloody and messy dispute which is ensured by:
1) Hamas
2) neighbouring Arabic/muslim states refusing to let Gazan’s settle in their countries.
Now that is being somewhat simplistic but if Gazan’s could live somewhere else which is safe and could bring up their families versus staying in Gaza, what would you do in their shoes?
Ha!
A downvote for common sense and plain English.
Dontcha just love it.
Gazza is a footballer.
If Israel were doing to him what you suggest, he would be first to complain.
You are reading the wrong publication.
This is the Daily Sceptic not the sports pages of The Sun.
So, what happens if Israel gets no weapons from other nations and has sanctions and cannot defend its people?
We will have exactly the same situation but everyone calling for a ceasefire to prevent all the Israelis being wiped out.
All you need to do is look into the crystal ball and see the future as it might play out.
What we see is a war in a region of sectarian politics with no end in sight unless one side defeats the other.