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Accusations of anti-Semitism in Norway October 5, 2009

Posted by Sverre in : Academic matters, International relations, Norwegian politics , comments closed

It seems to be a recurring trend to accuse Norway of anti-Semitism and hate against Israel. Lately these criticisms have come from Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman over the decisions to divest Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit from the national pension fund stock portfolio and from the Israeli embassy over a seminar series at the Norwegian university NTNU (if you read Norwegian, here’s a blog post from me, and another on the latter).

It seems there are a great number of people out there with an interest in portraying Norway as a country of Jew-haters who wish to see Israel destroyed. From my experience, that couldn’t be further from the truth. With the obvious exception of both the extreme right and the extreme left, there seems to me like there is very little hate of Jews and Israel in Norway. There is, however, much sympathy for Palestinians and much resentment over the actions of the Israeli state. This should not be confused. Critique of the so-called Operation Cast Lead aka. the Gaza Massacre is not equal to hate of Israel. Support for UN resolutions condemning the separation wall is not anti-Semitism. (more…)

The sinister conspiracy behind the finance crisis January 28, 2009

Posted by Sverre in : Malaysia, Political economy, World politics , comments closed

The conspiracy has been found. As always we can rely on Malaysia’s perceptive grand old man, Mahathir Mohamad to see through the smoke screen of western economics and discover the hidden threads that are being pulled. And this time he has returned to a good old classic:

The jews did it

8. The current financial crisis which is destroying the economies of the U.S. Britain and in fact all the countries of the world is due to manipulations of banks, financial institutions and the monetary system by Jewish supporters of Israel. (chedet.co.cc)

And why is this interesting? Because this isn’t just some random crackpot blogger. This is the man who led Malaysia for just about three decades and has been seen as one of the more prominent moderate voices of the Muslim world. This is the man who crossed the IMF and handled the previous finance crisis in ’98 in his own way. This is a man many still listen to.

How the financial crisis helps Israel is still somewhat unclear to me.