I have never been to Norway, and I have generally held a very positive opinion of that country. I also understand that opposition to the policies of Israel is not necessarily anti-semitic.
A Zionist righty professor and a Zionist righty blogger define “antisemitic” as anything that goes against the current policy of the Israeli government, particularly Palestinian issues. If you’re pro a Palestinian state or even just moderate on Arab-Israeli issues then because you’re not completetly aligned with current Israeli policy you’re called antisemitic. Dershowitz and the blogger are just bashing Norway because Norway are the strongest western supporters of the Palestinians, thus they’re “antisemitic.”
Jewish kids get grief from Muslim kids in schools all over europe, with the Palestinian issue being the main cause. But that’s mainly immigrant kids from outside europe and has zero refelection on europeans. Have you got any idea what norway is like? Imagine America with Dennis Kucinich or Bernie Sanders as president, and with similar presidents for the last half century. It’s the most liberal country you could imagine with the rights of everybody respected like American minorities like gays etc. could only dream of. The idea that they respect every single group yet single out jews is just silly.
Norway are increasingly speaking out in favour of a Palestinian state and criticising Israel for their actions so they’ve become a target of Israel-allied media, bloggers and assorted organisations. That’s all this is.
Meh, that’s pure drivel. An uber zionist lawyer doesnt get Norwegian universities’ endorsement for his crusade, and all of a sudden Norway has become clearly antisemitic, with a rewritten past to fit. These guys dont fight antisemitism, they breathe new life into it.
France got the same treatment in the 2000s, where we were supposed to be a massively antisemitic country. Apparently, it is Norway’s turn this year.
You really dont have much ground to be afraid of antisemitism in Western Europe (not that it doesnt exist but it is dimensions away from such projected fears).
I don’t get painting the whole country that way based on Dershowitz’s limited examples, but he may have a legitimate point about unwillingness of Norwegian universities to invite pro-Israel speakers while anti-Israel lecturers are welcome.
The Norweigans are pefectly within their right to support the Palestinian side of the conflict; however, I’d respect them more if their opinions were informed by exposure to oppossing viewpoints. If their faith in their position were strong enogh, they wouldn’t feel the need to shut people up.
Yes, except of course people who are bigots don’t think of themselves as such or as being irrational.
People who say “Jews can’t be trusted,” “black people are less intelligent than whites” and “homosexuals suffer from a mental disorder” don’t think they’re being irrational or bigoted.
On another note I nearly pissed myself laughing that anyone would think that a country can’t have a problem with bigotry if it’s leader is a left-winger or that somehow Muslims are treated better in Norway than “American minorities” in the US.
Anyone remotely familiar with Europe would certainly find such a statement laughably ignorant.
The argument isn’t that you cannot say anything bad about Israel, but when criticism of a single country is blown out of proportion in comparison to other country. It’s pretty absurd to see Israel singled out and countries like Syria, Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, etc. passed by – or even praised. It leaves you with absolutely zero credibility. It isn’t anti-Semitism though, as much as some left-over anti-colonial, anti-Western positions from the Cold-War.
I’ll certainly agree that anti-Semitism in France isn’t remotely as bad as anti-Arab racism, but while claiming France is “massively antisemitic” would be an overstatement, it clearly is an issue.
To deny that it’s an issue when 38% of all French citizens claim that French Jews are more loyal to Israel than the French government and when 33% of all French citizens think Jews have too much power in the business world is absurd.
:dubious: Wikipedia is a nice, convenient, consensus-reality thing to link to. Please never object to it again, here or anywhere. But I formed my opinion of his politics re Israel from things I’ve seen and read over the years.
It’s horrendously unreliable for a number of reasons and that’s especially true when it comes to controversial people and controversial subjects.
Moreover it’s not only foolish but hypocritical as well to attack the use of Alan Dershowitz, a distinguished Harvard Law Professor, as a source but insist that one should “never object” to wikipedia.
There’s a reason many colleges don’t allow wikipedia citations in their papers while none, that I’m aware of forbid students from citing Dershowitz.
Now if you wish to argue that he’s a partisan who’s opinion should be taken with a grain of salt that’s true of him and many other public intellectuals, but linking to wikipedia doesn’t bolster your case.
That said, if you can show me instances of him deliberately lying and falsifying information I’m all ears and I’d be happy to help you get him disciplined by the Harvard Board responsible for that.
Bullshit. Wikipedia’s unreliability is an inevitable result of its open-source format, but the same format, with a certain level of editing, makes it a good reflection of consensus reality; crank-theories will also be reflected, but their sources clearly indicated. And any controversy is clearly indicated, with a big “Neutrality Disputed” warning at the top of the page and a link to the talk page for the same article. It would be hard to design a better self-correcting iterative system for a wiki. Can you think of one? Lately I trust Wikipedia more than I would a print encyclopedia published in the 1960s – I’ll even trust the same copied-from-that-encyclopedia article more if I see it in Wikipedia, it has had more critical eyes on it now than when it was written.
IME – not here, but on other boards – only RW idiots trying to pass off ULs as facts ever object to Wikipedia. (They also object to Snopes.)
Lying? I said only that he has a well-known political bias. One can do a lot of dishonesty with such, much of it self-deception, without actually lying.