Last night, a few hours after S'lichot services presumably ended, someone shot 4-5 bullets at the synagogue in Oslo. The police are investigating. The shul is right next to the community house and a senior citizen home also owned by the Jewish community, but the bullets were aimed at the presumably empty synagogue building.
This was a warning. And after politicians, academics, and others put in the appropriate show of shock and outrage, they'll go right back to fueling the flames of antisemitism in Norway by condemning and demonizing Israel. Norway, with all of about 1400 Jews, is about to become the poster boy example of New Antisemitism.
With only 1400 Jews, it won't take long before most of them are gone. Without much (though I do have some) data to support this sad hypothesis, I'm going to guess that within 10 years, there will be less than 1000; within 20 it will be negligible. The Norwegian Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities recently opened in Oslo and will probably become a memorial by then - if it is allowed to exist. My guess is that it'll be co-opted into a center for demonizing Israel by characterizing Israel's existence as an exercise in ethnic cleansing.
For people like Kåre Willoch, Harald Stanghelle, Jostein Gaarder, Bjørgulv Braanen - just to name a very few - it's too late. It will never occur to them that shots fired against the synagogue, and a net emigration of Jews from Norway, has anything to do with their sense of reality.
But it's time for others to wake up. It's time for someone on the left, on the right, and in the center to find enough intellectual honesty to start asking the tough questions and demanding solid answers.
I've already made my move. My family and I will go to Norway on vacation, for visits, even for extended stays; but there is no way I am putting my children in a situation where they have to explain to anyone in Norway that they are Jewish. So until and unless Norwegians - and not just the government, but all so-called moral leaders - start taking responsibility, I would advise any Jew to visit Norway, but not live there unless they want to be "hidden Jews."
What is the local response to this? Norway prides itself on its humanitarian work and supposed lack of religious strife and racism. How do they rationalize this?
Posted by: lisoosh | September 17, 2006 at 12:34 PM