Heretics' almanac

So today...

... at the last moment in their annual meeting, the Norwegian Socialist Left party got together on some business they could all agree about. Of course, it was on Israel:

• First of all, they reached a principled agreement that the Palestinians's righteous rage about their terrible plight by definition can not be interpreted as antisemitism, and that for two reasons: as an oppressed people engaged in a struggle for liberation, their cause is inherently righteous; and also because they as Semitic people can not be anti-themselves.
• Second, they agreed that Zionists have forever lost any moral standing to invoke the Holocaust or indeed any persecution of Jews through history. No matter how much Jews have been persecuted, there is simply no excuse for the racist, colonialist Zionist enterprise.

Apparently, it had been a tough meeting, and the delegates were glad that at least this dual resolution went through without much debate. They also agreed to exempt from the academic boycott of Israelis those Israeli academicians who advocated the boycott. "Nothing should prevent the free exchange of ideas among enlightened individuals," the resolution read. The famous radical professor Lirpa Loof was in attendance for this resolution, having been invited by the foreign affairs committee.

There was a bit more disagreement on resolutions regarding immigrants to Norway. A minority of the meeting held that immigrants who are considered unfamiliar with Norwegian society should enjoy a period of immunity from criminal prosecution for certain crimes; instead of punishment they should be referred to counseling by their own spiritual leaders.  The majority felt that cultural alienation rather should be a mitigating factor, especially if the accused came from a culture that was frequently maligned by Western cultural imperialists. There was an agreement that an ad hoc committee would look further into this issue.

Disclosing biases on April 1

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.