Heretics' almanac

Jews in Norway face an uncertain future

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.

Ørnhøi's dreams and delusions

In what has to be an astonishing display of provincial ignorance, the has-been Norwegian radical socialist politician Stein Ørnhøi told Aftenposten that the foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, needs to learn more about the Middle East. He needs, Ørnhøi says, to learn the difference between the occupier and the occupied, pointing out that Hamas surely will accept Israel's right to exist when Israel accepts the Palestinian right to a state. (Hamas obviously didn't get Ørnhøi's memo).

Ørnhøi is the ignoramus, of course. But what is interesting, or discouraging, is what passes as "knowledge" in the current debate. I agree with Ørnhøi that Støre has a lot to learn, but the foreign minister is still way ahead of Ørnhøi, who seems to get his knowledge from dreams that he has after he's eaten too much too late.

Vive le Riots

I always thought Margaret Thatcher was a little crazy, but you have to give her credit for not allowing herself to be bullied into submission, even when the political costs were high; and especially so on economic issues.

Not so much with Dominique de Villepin. The Napoleon-admirer and proponent of the grandeur of France buckled and gave in to protesters against the new jobs law, thereby encouraging rioting as a political tool for the foreseeable future. De Villepin apparently felt the weight of responsibility for the damage caused by these riots.

Any economist will tell you that the proposed jobs law made a lot of sense and would improve employment prospects for people under 26 who want to work. It would not, however, have made things easier for those who want to put as little effort as possible into earning a paycheck. In other words, they kind of people who will start protesting when they don't get entitlements.

It would appear that there are a number of French politicians that give principle a back seat to convenience. They probably also exist in other countries, but de Villepin is remarkably shameless about the whole thing. "The riots are getting kind of noisy, how do we get them to stop?" seems to be the main question he cared about.

Some proposals for waking up Norway

Bruce Bawer's book While Europe Slept is an important and so far one of the best contributions to the highly unsatisfying debate in Europe on what some might euphemistically call the “Non-Western Immigrant Problem.”

But it leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and for lack of some facts, I’m struggling to fully endorse one view or another.

In his book, Bruce describes the deeply dysfunctional and ultimately destructive interplay between two misguided groups: extremist, ethnocentric immigrants who disdain the host societies they benefit from in several ways; and the elitist, cynically naïve politicians, academics, and journalists who set the tone in the very same host countries.

Bruce Bawer on narcoleptic Europe

Bruce Bawer lives in Norway, but has the benefit of an outsider's perspective on Norwegian life in general and the political discourse in particular. His latest book is While Europe Slept : How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, published very recently.

For a Norwegian like me, it's not a pleasant read. While it's easy to be disgusted by the state of affairs in politics here, there, and everywhere, I cling to an illusion that sooner or later, intellectual integrity is forced upon the politicians, that they can defer and obfuscate for a while, but things eventually catch up. Also, we live under the hope that Europe is in fact enlightened from its history, that the carnage brought up about by naivete in the face of naked aggression has made an impression.

Let's face it: it's confusing.

Harry's lack of education

Much can be said about Prince Harry's bad taste, poor sense of history, and lacking sense of responsibility, and I will in a minute.  But there's something more troubling over the glee with which the press has attached itself to this.  I can't imagine that a single editor of the tabloid press was actually unhappy about this incident.

You have to wonder whether the Royal family more regrets the publicity than the actual event, what with all the crap they have to put up with anyway.  And you also have to wonder whether the foolish prince (and his brother) will learn the right lesson from all of this.

Because for the future head of state for the United Kingdom, the legacy of World War II isn't limited to a visit to Auschwitz, no matter how much it will (and should) shake them up.  In fact, in today's climate, the princes might be tempted to categorize Nazis as someone who primarily hated Jews. 

The EU's unconvincing diplomatic show

Some time ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran is about six years away from developing its first nuclear bomb, and that current efforts focus entirely on not allowing that time to get any shorter.  Put another way: war may be inevitable in five years, but let's not bring it on ourselves sooner than necessary.

Much can be said about Iran's reasons for wanting a nuclear bomb.  Some critics of US foreign policy believe that both Iran and North Korea's WMD programs are deterrents against the kind of pre-emptive action Saddam brought on himself.  Others believe these are belligerent states that are seeking regional domination for evil reasons.  I think we can all stipulate that a) Iran is ruled by a paranoid regime; and b) WMD programs have proven to be a highly effective political tool.

Waking up xenophobia in the Low Countries

Daniel Pipes, never in doubt and sometimes right, wrote yesterday that not all countries wake up to the threat of terrorism equally fast.  In what Pipes describes as "perhaps the world's most tolerant society," the result was:

One day after the murder, 20,000 demonstrators gathered to denounce the killing, and 30 people were arrested for inciting hatred against Muslims. The interior minister, Johan Remkes, announced that he could not rule out unrest. "The climate is seriously hardened." Proving him right, the next two weeks saw more than 20 arson and bombing attacks and counterattacks on mosques, churches, and other institutions, plus some major police raids, giving the country the feel of a small-scale civil war.

Pipes quotes the Dutch immigration minister as saying: "For too long we have said we had a multicultural society and everyone would simply find each other. We were too naïve in thinking people would exist in society together."  A public opinion poll found that 40% of the Dutch want Moslems not to feel at home in the Netherlands anymore.

In his preface to the article, Pipes writes:

It took 3,000 deaths to wake up Americans, or at least to wake up the half of them who are conservative.

Pipes has repeatedly written that the problem isn't Islam but it's radical Islam; and the solution must be moderate Islam.  Most of his writing goes to great pains to show how virtually every Muslim organization you thought was moderate really is radical.

Be forewarned: several rants are on their way, so I'll number them.

The European Question

TOH to document.no for this pointer:

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe met in Berlin these last few days to discuss antisemitism and concluded that there was plenty of reason for concern. The Berlin Declaration is the document intended to make this conference historical.

I am encouraged that the OSCE takes this seriously enough to convene a conference to discuss it, and that they acknowledge that anti-Israelism is sometimes used as a cover for antisemitism. I don't want to belittle what was done.

But it still isn't enough. Here's why:

Der Norwegian Broadcasting Stürmer

In the category of "lame but disturbingly effective ways to malign Israel and Jews in general," the state-owned Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation recently aired a documentary about the pro-Israel activists in Norway, concluding - or rather precluding that it's not unlike a conspiracy of fundamentalist, end-of-day Christians run by devious, shadowy Jews at the Israeli embassy in Oslo.

I am one of the "pro-Israel" (though I rather think that peace should be of some passing interest to Palestinians as well) Norwegians, and I am not Christian nor particularly fundamentalist, and the Israeli embassy in Oslo won't respond to my e-mails even when I ask questions.

Remember Newsradio? That much admired but too little viewed TV show with Phil Hartman? Remember when he bumped into Jerry Seinfeld and interviewed him, only to edit the responses so as to distort not only what Seinfeld meant but what he actually said?