NORWAY 2009

 

Some 1,500 Jews live in Norway out of a population of 4.8 million. There are two Jewish communities in the country, located in Oslo and Trondheim.

            Anti-Israel sentiments ran high in Norway during Operation Cast Lead in late 2008/January 2009, and were accompanied by an increase in the level of antisemitic incidents reported. There were several instances of verbal attacks and hostility toward Jews in the media, in the streets, and against Jewish schoolchildren. During this period, the Jewish kindergarten in Oslo, located in the same building as the synagogue, kept the children indoors for fear of attacks if they played outside.

            Pro-Palestinian participants in demonstrations in Oslo on December 28, 2008, January 4 and January 8 physically attacked individuals assumed to be Jewish or sympathetic to Israel. They also shouted "Death to the Jews,” firebombed a children's party at the Oslo Free Masonry headquarters, and trashed several shops and restaurants. On January 5, a person of Middle Eastern extraction handed out antisemitic fliers on a busy street in central Oslo. Referring to Operation Cast Lead, the flier instructed the public on how to harass Jews, by dumping garbage by the synagogue, desecrating the Jewish cemetery, and drawing antisemitic cartoons.

In Trondheim, a class of 6th grade students and their teachers from Åsveien elementary school refused to visit the Trondheim Jewish Museum because of “angry feelings toward Israel.”

            Serious antisemitic incidents were also reported during the year. The Jewish section of the Sofienberg cemetery in Oslo was desecrated on the anniversary of the declaration of Israeli independence on May 14, 2009. On November 9, the anniversary of Kristallnacht, rocks were aimed at a window etched with a Star of David in the Oslo synagogue.

            Holocaust inversion by a Norwegian foreign office official provoked anger in Norway and abroad. In January, Trine Lilleng, first secretary at the Norwegian embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, circulated an email from her official foreign ministry account, equating Operation Cast Lead with the Holocaust, and stating that the grandchildren of the survivors of the Holocaust were doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews. Lilleng urged recipients to spread the message further. In response to public protests and official complaints, the Norwegian foreign ministry noted that Lilleng had violated ministry policy. She now works as a civil servant in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Oslo.

            At the beginning of November another extreme anti-Israel manifestation was initiated by 34 lecturers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the University College of Sor-Trondelag, in Trondheim, who called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. NTNU professor Bjorn Alsberg led the fight against them. Following a resolution presented by rector Torbjorn Digernes, the board of NTNU, Norway's second-largest university, voted unanimously not to support the boycott.

            On May 25, British Holocaust denier David Irving was invited to Norway and interviewed on Norwegian TV2.