Dershowitz: Norway’s anti-Semitism doesn’t even mask itself as anti-Zionism
On March 29, Alan Dershowitz had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Norway to Jews: You’re Not Welcome Here.” Dershowitz was not pleased with the less than enthusiastic reception he received on a recent speaking tour organized by a Norwegian pro-Israel group:
It was then that I realized why all this happened. At all of the Norwegian universities, there have been efforts to enact academic and cultural boycotts of Jewish Israeli academics. This boycott is directed against Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian land — but the occupation that the boycott supporters have in mind is not of the West Bank but rather of Israel itself. Here is the first line of their petition: “Since 1948 the state of Israel has occupied Palestinian land . . .”
The administrations of the universities have refused to go along with this form of collective punishment of all Israeli academics, so the formal demand for a boycott failed. But in practice it exists. Jewish pro-Israel speakers are subject to a de facto boycott.
The first boycott signatory was Trond Adresen, a professor at Trondheim. About Jews, he has written: “There is something immensely self-satisfied and self-centered at the tribal mentality that is so prevalent among Jews. . . . [They] as a whole, are characterized by this mentality. . . . It is no less legitimate to say such a thing about Jews in 2008-2009 than it was to make the same point about the Germans around 1938.”
This line of talk—directed at Jews, not Israel—is apparently acceptable among many in Norway’s elite. Consider former Prime Minister Kare Willock’s reaction to President Obama’s selection of Rahm Emanuel as his first chief of staff: “It does not look too promising, he has chosen a chief of staff who is Jewish.” Mr. Willock didn’t know anything about Mr. Emanuel’s views—he based his criticism on the sole fact that Mr. Emanuel is a Jew. Perhaps unsurprisingly, fewer than 1,000 Jews live in Norway today.
The country’s foreign minister recently wrote an article justifying his contacts with Hamas. He said that the essential philosophy of Norway is “dialogue.” That dialogue, it turns out, is one-sided. Hamas and its supporters are invited into the dialogue, but supporters of Israel are excluded by an implicit, yet very real, boycott against pro-Israel views.
