Norway prosecutor: Rapper’s ‘F**king Jews’ slur could be criticism of Israel

Via Times of Israel:

A Norwegian rapper who cursed Jews while performing at an event in Oslo promoting multiculturalism will not be charged with hate speech because his words may have been criticism of Israel, prosecutors said.

Kaveh Kholardi said “f***ing Jews” on stage at an event last year for which he was hired by the city.

Tor-Aksel Busch, Norway’s director of public prosecutions — a title equivalent to attorney general – rejected legal action last week, the news site Document.no reported Sunday.

Pro-Israel activists had filed a police complaint but it was dismissed. Busch rejected their appeal, explaining that whereas what Kholardi said “seems to be targeting Jews, it can however also be said to express dissatisfaction with the policies of the State of Israel.”

At the concert, the rapper wished Muslims a happy Eid al-Fitr holiday and acknowledged Christian listeners. He did not mention Israel.

On June 10, 2018, five days before the concert, Kholardi wrote on Twitter “f***ing Jews are so corrupt.”

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Norway: Newspaper apologizes for using phrase ‘Jewish question’

Via Jerusalem Post:

Editor in chief said the print headline was an editing error and the words "should never have been used"

Norway's largest print newspaper apologized this week for running an article about Israel and antisemitism that used the phrase "the Jewish question" in the headline.

That phrase has a long history of being used to demean, dehumanize and stigmatize Jewish people, both before and during the Holocaust.
 

Espen Egil Hansen, the editor in chief of Aftenposten, issued a lengthy apology for the original article - which ran in the newspaper last week. In a full page commentary in Monday's newspaper, Hansen apologized for the original article, which was headlined in print: "The Jewish question splits the left on both sides of the Atlantic." The article examined accusations of antisemitism against figures including US Rep. Ilhan Omar and UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Hansen took full responsibility for the unfortunate wording.

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Europe: EU stops funding anti-Israel NGO, Netanyahu’s office says

Via EJP:

The European Union announced that it will immediately stop funding and contact with the "Freedom Protection Council", an NGO operating in Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.

In a statement, the office said that the EU decision to stop funding the "Freedom Protection Council", is a result of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s "diplomatic efforts."

The NGO "undermines the State of Israel’s right to exist and seeks to defame it around the world," the statement said.

"This is only the beginning. We will continue to take determined action against organizations that seek to delegitimize the State of Israel and strive to defame the state and the IDF around the world," Netanyahu said.

When he meets European officials, Netanyahu prioritizes the cessation of funding for anti-Israel NGOs. Last Sunday, he reportedly rebuked visiting Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide for her country’s financial support of anti-Israel groups.

Norway demands Israel explain seizure of Gaza-bound boat

Obviously, not a single Norwegian/European flotilla on its way to Yemen, to the Congo…

Via Ynet:

Norway has asked Israel to explain the legal grounds for detaining a Norwegian-flagged fishing boat seized while activists tried to sail with aid to the Gaza Strip, Norway's foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

The ministry said its diplomats in Israel had been providing consular assistance to five Norwegians who were among the 22 passengers and crew detained onboard the vessel Kaarstein on Sunday. Two Israelis on board were quickly released.

"We have asked the Israeli authorities to clarify the circumstances around the seizure of the vessel and the legal basis for the intervention," the spokesman for the Norwegian foreign affairs ministry in Oslo said. A spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry declined to comment.

Torstein Dahle, head of the group Ship to Gaza Norway which organized the shipment, said it was the first Norwegian aid vessel to attempt to breach the Israeli blockade of Gaza. 

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Norway: Rapper curses ‘the f***ing Jews’ at diversity concert

Via Times of Israel:

A Norwegian rapper hired by the City of Oslo to sing at an event intended to celebrate diversity cursed “the f***ing Jews” during his performance.

In response to the profane statement Friday by Kaveh Kholardi, the leader of the country’s Jewish community has threatened to take legal action against the 23-year-old performer.

Kholardi wished Muslims “Eid Mubarak,” a greeting in Arabic for the Eid al-Fitr holiday that on Friday marked the end of Ramadan, Dagen reported. He went on to ask if there were Christians present, smiling upon hearing cheers. Then he asked if there were any Jews, adding “f***ing Jews… Just kidding.”

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Norway: Lawmaker says nomination of BDS for Nobel Peace Prize is against Israel, not Jews

Via JTA:

The Norwegian lawmaker that nominated the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel for a Nobel Prize said his nomination is against Israel and not the Jewish people.

Norway Parliament Member Bjornar Moxnes said Friday in an interview with the Middle East Eye that “The BDS movement is a legitimate, peaceful, non-violent movement trying to push the Israeli government to abide by international law, and trying to struggle for a peaceful solution in Palestine and in the Middle East.”

Moxnes, who heads Norway’s far-left Red Party which he says works to achieve social justice in Norway and internationally, told the news outlet that said the nomination has received overwhelming support from inside Norway and “people all over the world who struggle for peaceful and just solution between Israelis and Palestinians,” and acknowledged negative reactions from advocates for “the right-wing extremist government of Israel.”

He said his that his position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “is completely free of anti-Semitism.”

“It’s not against the people of Israel. It’s not against the Jewish people; it’s against the policies of a state, which (are) without doubt against international law,” he said.

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Denmark cuts funding and is reviewing all funding of PA NGOs

Via Palestinian Media Watch (Itamar Marcus and Maurice Hirsch):

• Denmark announced this week that it cut funding and is reviewing all funding of NGOs, in response to PMW exposing that money it provided was used to build a community center that Palestinians named for a mass murderer 

• Other countries cutting or freezing funding this year following PMW reports: Norway, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland
   
• PMW is changing European attitudes one country at a time 

On May 26, 2017 PMW reported that funds provided by Norway, the UN and a conglomerate of countries including Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland had been used to build a center for young women that was subsequently named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi. Mughrabi led a terror attack that resulted in the murder of 37 Israelis, including 12 children, in 1978.

Denmark
Last week, Denmark decided to cancel some grants and review further funding of Palestinian NGOs. The decision was made following an investigation initiated after PMW's report that the women’s center funded by Denmark, was named after a Palestinian terrorist murderer. Denmark announced that it will also tighten the conditions for providing funding to all Palestinian NGOs and that the majority of the aid, suspended after PMW’s report, will not be paid.

“Denmark will tighten the conditions for providing money to Palestinian NGOs, Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said... The review followed revelations [by Palestinian Media Watch] in May that a women’s center partly funded with European aid money... was named after Dalal Mughrabi, who took part in the Coastal Road massacre in 1978 that killed 37 people... Samuelsen also said that the 'majority of aid' suspended from the summer while the review was under way will not be paid.” 

[The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 24, 2017]

Norway

When PMW released its report documenting the center named for terrorist Mughrabi, Norway immediately demanded that the Norwegian money be returned:

Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende: 

"The glorification of terrorist attacks is completely unacceptable, and I deplore this decision in the strongest possible terms. Norway will not allow itself to be associated with institutions that take the names of terrorists in this way... We have asked for the logo of the Norwegian representation office to be removed from the building immediately, and for the funding that has been allocated to the centre to be repaid."

[Norwegian Foreign Ministry website, May 26, 2017]

Belgium
When PMW reported that a Palestinian school built with Belgium funds, was also named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi, Belgium condemned it and froze the construction of ten additional Palestinian Authority schools.

Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Didier Vanderhasselt:

“Belgium unequivocally condemns the glorification of terrorist attacks [and] will not allow itself to be associated with the names of terrorists... Belgium has immediately raised this issue with the Palestinian Authority and is awaiting a formal response... In the meantime Belgium will put on hold any projects related to the construction or equipment of Palestinian schools.”

[The Algemeiner, Oct. 7, 2017]

Additional Countries

Germany,  Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands also cut off funding to one or more Palestinian projects following PMW reports on the ways in which Palestinians are using donor funding to glorify terror.

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Norway: What the Norwegian elections mean for Israel and the Jews

Via Mosaic Magazine and The Jerusalem Post  (Manfred Gerstenfeld):

From 2005 to 2013, writes Manfred Gerstenfeld, Norway’s government was the most hostile toward Israel in all of Europe, and both hostility toward Israel and outright anti-Semitism were on the rise in the country as a whole. The situation has improved since 2013, when the Norwegian Conservative party won an electoral victory, ending eight years of the Labor party’s rule. Against most predictions, the recent elections returned the Conservatives to office. Gerstenfeld comments:  

[If] the Labor leader, Jonas Gahr Stoere, would have become prime minister, (...) it is likely that Norway would have joined Sweden sooner or later in recognizing a [Palestinian state]. (...)  

[The previous Labor prime minister] was not so much an anti-Israeli inciter himself as he was tolerant of such incitement by his party and allies. At several venues where he spoke, there were brutal verbal attacks on Israel while he remained silent. By not confronting these attacks he condoned them. As for his successor Stoere, his anti-Israelism reached an extreme point when he wrote a blurb legitimizing a book by two Norwegian Hamas supporters [who] claimed that Israel entered the Gaza Strip in 2009 to kill women and children.  

[But] Stoere always played both sides. In January 2009, the most anti-Semitic riots that ever took place in Norway happened in Oslo. Muslims attacked pro-Israel demonstrators with potentially lethal projectiles. Stoere visited the Oslo synagogue afterward to express his solidarity with the Jewish community. (...)

Many often underestimate the importance of Norway because the country is not a member of the European Union and has only about 5 million inhabitants. Yet its huge gas and oil income has enabled it to make important donations abroad, including to Palestinian causes.  

 read more at The Jerusalem Post

Norwegian minister: 'We now get what Israel goes through'

Via Ynet News:

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Ynet in Oslo, Immigration Minister Sylvi Listhaug says Europeans 'are experiencing now the fear that you have experienced for decades'; supporting Israel's right to defend itself, Listhaug adds 'you live in a region that has a lot of problems.' 

Norway’s minister of immigration drew comparisons Wednesday between the plight of Europeans suffering from increasingly common terror attacks with the experiences endured by Israel for decades. 

“We are experiencing now the fear that you have experienced for decades,” said Sylvi Listhaug in an exclusive interview with Ynet in Oslo. “Many people now understand the situation you live in. We see what is happening in Sweden, in Britain and in France.”   

European nations, she added, “and their citizens need to understand the situation in Israel better because of the terror attacks in Israel.”  Since taking office, Listhaug has cracked down on illegal immigration into the Scandinavian country by adopting stringent policies that have resulted in just 1,000 illegal migrants entering the country in 2017 from 30,000 in 2015.   

According to Listhaug, her Progress Party, which governs in a coalition with the Conservative Party, is a staunch supporter of Israel.  “The Progress Party has always been a supporter of Israel’s need to protect themselves (sic) in a region where you are the only democracy,” she claimed.

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Danish anti-Israel moralizers in huge corruption scandal

Via Arutz Sheva 7 (Manfred Gerstenfeld):

Danske Bank, which boycotted Bank Hapoalim, Elbit and other Israeli concerns for "ethical reasons," caught laundering billions of dollars. 

Sometimes important news items which seemingly have no relevance for Israel reveal significant Israel-related insights upon closer investigation. Danske Bank, the largest bank in Denmark, has recently admitted to having been a conduit for a giant corruption scheme by the leadership of Azerbaijan. Some of the documents covering this scandal became available to the Danish daily, Berlingske Tidende.  

According to the British Guardian, based on leaked data, Azerbaijan’s leadership used the bank to fund a secret $2.9 billion scheme to pay prominent Europeans through a network of British companies. The Guardian claims that between 2012 and 2014 more than 16,000 covert payments were transacted through the Danske Bank’s branch in Estonia. Part of this money appears to have been passed on to politicians and journalists in the framework of lobbying operations. 

At that time, Azerbaijan was under attack for arresting human rights activists, journalists and conducting rigged elections. The leaders of this oil-rich country wanted to promote a positive image. 

The scheme is nicknamed ‘the Azerbaijan Laundromat.’ Among those receiving payments were former members of the human rights body, the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, as well as a Board Member of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). It has not been proven that all recipients knew the source of the money as it was disguised via intermediaries. (...) 

While being involved for several years in these hugely unethical activities Danske Bank decided in 2014 to add Bank Hapoalim to a list of companies in which it could not invest due to its corporate accountability rules. 

It published that the exclusion was based on “legal and ethical reasons.” Danske Bank also stated that Bank Hapoalim was funding settlement activities and was “acting against the rules of international humanitarian law.” Earlier, Danske Bank withdrew its investments from Africa Israel Investments Ltd and from two other Israeli companies, Elbit Systems and Danya Cebus. 

In 2016, Danske Bank withdrew its boycott of Bank Hapoalim. No clear reasons were given.  

Nowadays one could assume that as the Danish bank was itself so unethical and had broken laws in such a major way, accusing others of something incomparably smaller made it even more vulnerable. This withdrawal of the boycott got little attention. The damage had already been done however. The BDS movement knows that its activities are almost irrelevant to Israel’s economy. Its main aim is to blacken Israel’s image. 

Earlier in 2017, Danske Bank had already been found to be involved in other major corruption scandals.  (...)

There has in the past years been frequent exposure of extreme and widespread Scandinavian hypocrisy toward Israel. This mainly focused on Norway and Sweden and in particular when the social democratic parties and their allies controlled the government. However, the huge Danske Bank corruption scandals show once again that in the exposure of extreme anti-Israeli hypocrites Denmark should not be forgotten.

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Norway gets refund in Palestinian terror episode

Via JNS.org:

Members of Congress and Jewish leaders are urging the U.S. to follow in Norway’s footsteps, after Oslo secured the return of funds it gave to a Palestinian women’s center that was named in honor of a terrorist. 

Earlier this year, Palestinian Media Watch and NGO Monitor revealed that the Norwegian government helped finance a Palestinian Authority (PA)-affiliated women’s center in the town of Burqa, which had been named after Dalal Mughrabi, the leader of a notorious terrorist attack in 1978. 

In response, Norwegian officials said they would demand the return of the funds and the removal of the Norwegian flag from the banner in front of the center. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry this week for the first time confirmed it has received the refund. 

Spokesperson Gur Solberg told JNS.org, “The logo was removed immediately and the Norwegian support of $10,000 has been returned to the Norwegian Representative Office (NRO).” The NRO is Norway’s liaison to the PA.  

Palestinian Media Watch Director Itamar Marcus called Norway’s action “a major breakthrough” that may signal “the beginning of a new European attitude towards the PA. For years, PMW has been showing European leaders what the PA was doing with their money to glorify terror and the Europeans tried to excuse it. I hope this is ending now.” 

Olga Deutsch, director of NGO Monitor’s Europe Desk, praised the Norwegian government for “insisting that its funds be returned, and that its monies not be used to glorify a mass-murderer.” She said the incident “can serve to increase awareness among donors” of the danger of funds intended for humanitarian purposes being used to “promote extremism and radicalization.”

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Norway behind center named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi who led killing of 37 civilians, including 12 children (Update)

Update via the Algemeiner: UN, Norwegian Government, Distance Themselves From Palestinian Youth Center Named for Terrorist Dalal Mughrabi

Via Palestinian Media Watch:

In another show of admiration for terrorist murderers and according to the Palestinian Authority's policy of presenting them as role models for Palestinian youth, the Palestinian NGO "Women's Technical Affairs Committee" (WTAC) has named a youth center for women after the terrorist murderer who led the most lethal attack in Israel's history.

The Dalal Mughrabi Center is a joint initiative of the NGO, the PA, the UN, and the Norwegian government! The center's name sign prominently includes the logos of:
- The PA Ministry of Local Government - UN Women- The Norwegian Representative Office to the PA 

The center, which was inaugurated last week, is named after the terrorist who in 1978 led a group of terrorists who hijacked a bus and killed 37 Israelis, among them of these 12 children:

Worse still, it is not only the name that glorifies the terrorist murderer, the purpose of the center is to educate about her murderous terror attack to youth. At the inauguration of the center, which is situated in the village of Burqa in the Nablus district, a member of the village council, explained about the center's activities: 

"Reem Hajje, a member of the village council, noted that the center will focus especially on the history of the struggle of Martyr Dalal Mughrabi and on presenting it to the youth groups, and that it constitutes the beginning of the launch of enrichment activities regarding the history of the Palestinian struggle."

[Ma'an, independent Palestinian news agency, May 15, 2017]

The Norwegian Representative Office describes its cultural activities with Palestinians on its website:

"The Norwegian Representative Office (NRO), along with Norwegian cultural institutions, are among the main cooperation partners in the culture sector in Palestine. The NRO culture program includes supporting cultural rights and increasing the capacity of the culture sector, through civil society organizations that can play the role as agents of change, in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture."

[Website of the Representative Office of Norway to the Palestinian Authority, accessed May 25, 2017]

It would seem Norway expects the WTAC to "play the role as agents of change" - but one wonders which change that might be when the new center teaches youth that a terrorist murderer is a role model for women.
UN Women is listed on WTAC's website as a "partner," and NGO Monitor has documented that UN Women is a donor of the WATC. 

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Norway: Caricature equates circumcision with pedophilia

Via Ynet News:

Norway's fourth-largest newspaper has recently published a caricature depicting supporters of circumcision for Jews and Muslims as pedophiles. 

The offensive caricature appeared in The Dagbladet, the second largest tabloid in the country that has a circulation of approximately 75,000 copies a day.  The caricature depicts a man wearing a kippah (skullcap) and a bearded man standing next to him, both holding signs reading 'Yes to circumcision' and 'Religious freedom.' A third man, wearing a ratty coat, tells them: "I know what you mean. I, too, am told by an invisible man to fiddle with children's penises."

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It's not the first time.  In 2013, Dagbladet carried this caricature: 

Norway paper’s cartoon ‘so anti-Semitic it would have made Hitler weep with joy’

Norway’s largest trade union calls for blanket boycott of Israel

Via Jerusalem Post:

 Norway’s largest trade union reaffirmed its support for boycotts of Israel.

The assembly of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions on Friday called for a total boycott of Israel in a nonbonding resolution.

The confederation, known locally as LO, represents over 900,000 unionized workers in the country – more than one quarter of the adult working population. Its delegates voted 193 to 117 in favor of a boycott of the State of Israel.

“Since dialogue and resolutions have had little effect, there must henceforth come an effort to achieve an international economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel in order to achieve those objectives,” the resolution read.

In recent years, LO has called to boycott various Israeli institutions, including the Histadrut labor union, and businesses “that profit from the occupation of Palestinian land,” as the organization stated in a 2013 resolution. Virtually all major player in Israel’s industrial and economic sector have dealings with or offices in Israeli settlements, a fact that has contributed to such calls by LO being interpreted as a call for a blanket boycott on the Israeli economy.

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Europe: The drumbeat against Jewish ritual sounds once more

Via The Algemeiner (Ben Cohen):

This past week, Jewish ritual observance came under attack in both Belgium and Norway. (...) both speak to an ingrained tendency in Europe that dismisses these core requirements for Jews as no more and no less than cruelty of a particularly Jewish sort.  

On May 8, the environment committee of the parliament in Wallonia — a French-speaking region accounting for more than half of Belgium’s territory and a third of its population — voted unanimously to ban shechita on the grounds that the practice involves cruelty to animals; the decision will take effect in September 2019.
On the same day, the annual convention of Norway’s Progress Party — a libertarian, anti-immigration party that is a partner in the country’s ruling coalition — passed a resolution urging a government ban on ritual circumcision for boys under age 16, on the grounds that it is a violation of human rights. Jews, as is well-known, circumcise their sons eight days after birth, in accordance with the biblical covenant between God and the patriarch, Abraham. You may say that these developments are about many things. You might even make the case that antisemitism is a minor factor here. There are many more Muslims than there are Jews in Belgium, Norway and pretty much every other country in Western Europe — and they, too, circumcise their sons for religious reasons and consume ritually slaughtered halal meat. That certainly explains why right-wing populists like the National Front in France and the United Kingdom Independence Party have made halal slaughter a primary focus of their broader campaign against what they see as social acceptance of Islamic sharia law-based rites. (...) 

(...)  for more than a century, antisemites have demonized Jewish rites with the same enthusiasm as their Church forebears. One of the first acts of the Nazis after they came to power in Germany in 1933 was to ban shechita. The famous Nazi propaganda film Der Ewige Jude (“The Eternal Jew”) portrayed shechita as a gruesome Jewish celebration of animal suffering. 

(...) contemporary advocates of the shechita and brit milah bans angrily deny that they are motivated by antisemitism — in much the same way, and for the same reasons, that anti-Zionists present the cause of eliminating Israel as a legitimate human rights campaign. It is, of course, tiresome for them to have to deal with the charge of antisemitism every time they take aim at Jews as a collective, so they flip the equation by depicting themselves as victims of a malicious reputational smear.
The sad thing is, this approach often works. It feeds into the sentiments of those segments of the European public who regard antisemitism as a censorship tool — preventing them from protecting animals, babies and national reputations unfairly soiled during World War II — and the right to condemn Israel for alleged human rights abuses. (...)

For 2,000 years in the Diaspora, Jewish identity was preserved by adherence to these religious commands. This, in turn, bred the resentment of supersessionist Church theologians and, later on, universalist Enlightenment philosophers. Both despised Jewish separateness even as their rulers enforced it through ghettoization and other discriminatory measures. From Martin Luther to Karl Marx, the imperative of ending the conditions for a separate Jewish existence — through means varying from outright persecution or conditional emancipation — has been a binding thread in European thought.

It follows logically that even in a modern democracy, a ban on the core rituals making Jews Jewish — and Muslims Muslim — effectively ends the conditions for a separate existence as a Jewish community. It’s true that many Jews don’t keep kosher, but virtually all Jewish males are circumcised, regardless of their family’s degree of religious observance. Ending the right to engage in those practices poses a choice: stay if you are willing to obey the law, or leave if you are not. 

Norway and Belgium are not the only countries where political battles over Jewish rites have erupted. Shechita is outlawed in Poland, New Zealand and Switzerland, among others, while nasty public campaigns against circumcision have been seen in San Francisco on one half of the globe, and Oslo on the other. The campaign advances in fits and starts, but it is always there, and is present among liberals and nationalists alike. 

American Jews are fortunate to live with a constitution clearly demarcating religion and state. European Jews don’t have such clear guidelines, and therefore become hostages to the fortunes of political clashes in which their freedom of worship is just one consideration among many.

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Norway: Progress Party in favor of banning male circumcision

Good thing they support Israel, since they apparently don't want Jews to live in Norway.

Via Aftenposten (h/t morsmal):

The right-wing Progress Party voted during its national gathering Saturday in favor of banning male circumcision.

An attempt at a compromise which would have banned government funding for the procedure, fell through.

Party leader Siv Jensen says the vote was not aimed at Jews in any way, and that the party is a strong supporter of Israel. 

She voted in favor of the ban, though she explains that she made a mistake in the voting procedure, and that she herself opposes it.

European funded folk dance competition calls to eliminate Israel

Europe claims they support the two state solution.  Well?

Via PMW:

The Yafa Cultural Center, which receives funding from the German development agency GIZ, Norway, and the European Union, recently posted to its website photos from the first Yafa Folk Dance Competition. The gold prize winner danced to the song Pull the Trigger. The following is a longer excerpt from the song's lyrics:

“The Zionists coveted [our] homeland,
compounding damage and enmity
But the popular revolution awaits [them]
The orchard called us to the struggle
We replaced bracelets with weapons
We attacked the despicable [Zionists]
We do not want [internal] strife or disputes
While this invading enemy is on the battlefield
This is the day that Jihad is needed
Pull the trigger.
We shall redeem Jerusalem, Nablus and the country.”

This song was previously broadcast on PA TV in 2010.

In keeping with the song’s theme of destroying Israel, the three top scoring dancers were awarded maps of “Palestine” replacing Israel. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the PA and Fatah regularly disseminate maps that erase Israel from the map.

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Norway: Amid growing concerns about antisemitism, learning about Judaism is taken off school curriculum and replaced with Islam

Via Norway, Israel and the Jews:

The Norwegian Government prides itself on being one of the first nations to have an action plan against antisemitism in Norway. A central strategy to rid us of this scourge is to have more education about Judaism and antisemitism in school, as well as dedicating more funds towards research on the subjects. It is therefore highly ironic that the national syllabus on Religious Education in secondary school does not mention Judaism even in an parenthesis.

lifted from utrop.no (google translate) 

Judaism made invisible in school textbooks  

Judaism’s space in textbooks has become as small as the period before the 1970s. With growing anti-Semitism in society, this is unfortunate, according to a researcher.  

Ouarda Jannaouni (06.02.2017)  

Christianity and Islam have very large place in the textbooks, which makes Judaism a little dot in relation to the other religions, says Suzanne Thobro.
Thobro (36) is a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at the University of Tromsø (UiT). She has researched books on religion course for high school and have seen the development right from 1935 and until today.  

She says it’s striking that Judaism’s space in textbooks has become increasingly smaller, and she considers it a setback for Judaism’s place in the study of religion.

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Norway: Media doesn't forget to explain that Trump's son-in-law is Jewish

Via The Local (h/t CFCA):

Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has apologized for a formulation used when describing Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser.
On January 12th, Aftenposten wrote in an article about Kushner that “the Jew Kushner reportedly pushed for David M. Friedman as the new ambassador to Israel”.
The Norwegian Jewish society Det Mosaiske Trossamfund (DMT) took offence to the wording and asked the newspaper to issue an apology.

“It is anti-Semitic when Aftenposten journalists believe that Kushner’s Jewish identity explains why he allegedly pushed to get Friedman as ambassador. This is a coarse generalization based on the myth that Jews have a different loyalty. The accusation that Jews have a different loyalty is an accusation that is hundreds of years old,” DMT head Ervin Kohn told Norwegian news source Minerva.

Aftenposten news editor, Tove Tveøy Strøm–Gundersen told the same source that the newspaper has sent an apology to the Jewish community.

“This is a term that has also been used in an anti-Semitic context. It was not our intention to create that kind of negative association. We've discussed this internally and concluded that it is right to apologize for the choice of wording,” she said.

Strøm–Gundersen added however that Aftenposten did not conclude that Kushner’s lobbying on behalf of Friedman was because he is Jewish but rather that his religion “is not uninteresting information for our readers”.

“When [conservative American politician] Rick Santorum fights for stricter abortion laws, we inform readers that he is a Catholic. When Donald Trump chooses to use his son-in-law as a player in the Middle East - and when one of the issues Kushner is reported as having been directly involved in was the appointment of a new Israeli ambassador - then it is natural to mention that he is an Orthodox Jew,”  she said.

While Aftenposten issued an apology, rival newspaper Dagbladet said it saw no reason to regret its choice of wording in an article on Kushner in which the headline asked “what experience does he have besides being a Jew and married into the family?”

 
“It’s important to look at the context in which Jared Kushner’s religious affiliation was mentioned. Trump himself has made a number out of the fact that Kushner is Jewish, in part to position him as a friend to Israel, and has already set his Middle East policy high on his agenda,” Dagbladet editor Hilde Schjerve told Minerva.

“It has also been controversial that Trump has appointed his own son-in-law as responsible for the Middle East because Kushner lacks political experience and has previously given money to Israeli settlements - something that has helped to cast doubt on his ability to mediate peace between Israelis and Palestinians,” Schjerve added.

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Norway: Documentary about antisemitism

It's a common misconception that Jews in Europe suffer mainly or mostly from Muslims. As this documentary show, that is far from the truth.  Jews suffer from antisemitism from all directions, and the worst part is that antisemitism is not even seen as a problem.

TV 2 Norway investigate Norwegian anti-Semitism. The word "Jew" is a common insult in many communities in Norway. What role does the neo-Nazis’, muslim immigrations and the - BDS (boycott Israel) movement play – if any? And: Can old prejudices be joked away?

Program: Vårt lille land, TV 2 Norway (Our little country. Everybody has a story) Sendt 27. November 2016.