Israeli diplomats gave the Norwegian ambassador a dressing down on Monday over his prime minister’s participation in a Holocaust commemoration event co-organized by anti-Israel activists, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
The head of the ministry’s diplomatic division, Yossi Amrani, told Ambassador Per Egil Selvaag that the policies of the Norwegian government under Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre were “fueling antisemitism,” the ministry said.
This was in response to Støre’s attendance on Nov. 8 at a ceremony that organizers said was to commemorate the Kristallnacht pogroms of 1938, in which the Nazis in Germany and Austria ransacked Jewish establishments, murdering dozens of people. Kristallnacht is widely thought of as the opening shot of the antisemitic violence that culminated in the Holocaust.
However, the event in Oslo, co-organized by a Jewish and a Palestinian anti-Israel group, was merely a vehicle for furthering the antisemitic libel of genocide against Israel, according to the ministry’s statement.
Støre set “new records of moral depravity, anti-Israel hostility, and antisemitism” by attending an event that “turned a horrific episode of the murder and persecution of Jews […] into a weapon against the Jewish state, Israelis, and Jews,” the ministry said.
The ceremony exploited the Holocaust “to fuel anti-Zionism and antisemitism,” the statement added.
Members and leaders of Norway’s Jewish community had asked Støre not to attend the event in advance but he ignored the request, according to the ministry. This sent “a dangerous message that even the memory of Holocaust victims can be used for political gain, betraying his government’s pledge to fight Holocaust distortion.”
Joav Melchior, Norway’s chief rabbi, also condemned the prime minister but disagreed with any attempt to characterize Støre himself as an antisemite.
“It was difficult to see the prime minister standing on a stage with organizations and circles that over the past two years have largely dismissed our experiences and concerns. Several of these circles have not opposed anti-Zionist rhetoric that has helped to discredit, render suspicious and at times dehumanize both Jews and Zionists in Norway. We have clearly said this,” he wrote.
Melcior nonetheless praised the prime minister for “wanting to listen” to the community.
The event’s sponsors included the Norway Centre Against Racism, which holds alternative Holocaust commemorations that the mainstream Jewish community boycotts because they platform anti-Israel voices. The event was also backed by the Norwegian Palestine Committee, which openly seeks Israel’s destruction, according to the ministry.
