Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel and the Jews

Description

In the past decades many pioneering efforts to demonize Israel have come from elites of the Nordic countries. The motifs of this anti-Israelism are similar to those of classic anti-Semitism of which it is a new mutation. Such highly discriminatory prejudices are in particular expressed in Norway and Sweden by leading socialist and extreme?¬ leftist politicians as well as journalists, clergy, and so-called humanitarians. Behind the Nordic countries' appearance and oft-proclaimed concern for human rights lurk darker attitudes. This book deals mainly with lifting the humanitarian mask as far as Israel and Jews are concerned. This disguise hides many ugly characteristics such as false morality, a pretense of superiority, as well as profound humanitarian racism. The best-known Swedish statesman of the postwar period, Olof Palme was one of Europe's first prominent Holocaust inverters. He was at the origin of the permeation of anti-Israelism in segments of the Social Democrats, Sweden's classic government party. In recent years major anti-Semitic incidents have taken place in Norway even though there are very few Jews there. The country is a European leader of anti-Semitic cartoons, sometimes similar to Nazi ones. Norway is one of the very few countries that forbids Jewish ritual slaughter. At the same time, it is one of only three countries in the world that permit the cruel killing of whales. In this book, thirteen essays and interviews discuss various aspects of the attitudes of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland toward Israel and the Jews.