It's April 1st, or at least it will be when anyone gets a chance to read this.
Kåre Willoch, the former prime minister of Norway, is concerned that the debate about Israel is getting confused and has made a novel proposal to clarify things for the general public.
"It is important that when people read letters to the editors, op-eds, and even news articles that are favorable to Israel, they understand that such pieces are biased; and more importantly, what the bias is. The press should signal the bias at the outset."
What are these biases?
"There are two main biases," Willoch explains, "either misguided Jews or fundamentalist Christians. It should be crystal clear that no reasonable person could possibly defend Israel's policies, and why we should obviously let the misguided Jews and fundamentalist Christians have the right to express themselves, they should show their colors when doing so."
Willoch's concrete proposal is that the Norwegian press should make a practice of marking everything written in favor of Israel with either a Star of David, or a cross, depending upon the background of the writer.
When asked whether articles critical to Israel should have a similar notation next to the contributor's name, Willoch scoffs.
"You're obviously missing the point. As I said, any reasonable, rational person will condemn Israel like I do. The country has committed some of the most murderous policies we've known, has encouraged the formation of terrorism, and is committing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. What kind of person could possibly defend that? I think the answer gives itself. Only misguided Jews and fundamentalist Christians. Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, etc., that condemn Israel are only doing what any reasonable person would do."
Willoch believes that once the public is accustomed to this notation, it may be extended.
"In particular, articles written about the Holocaust should be marked in a similar way. What we see quite often is what the acclaimed expert and Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein calls the 'holocaust industry,' a tendency for Zionists to justify Israel because of the Holocaust. The Holocaust is a very important event in history, but its main relevance is not to Jews but to the suffering of people today, especially the Palestinians. We simply can not expect that the Zionists hijack the Holocaust."
When asked whether this might be perceived as antisemitic, Willoch rejects the very premise.
"This is an often-repeated fallacy. Just because some of us think that Israel should never have been established, that the Jews are not a people but members of a religion, and that the so-called 'Jewish state' is the worst perpetrator of evil in the world today and possibly in world history, does not mean we have anything against Jews, just because they are Jews."
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