The Northern Affront : Perspective on Scandinavian Attitudes to Israel

When Jeremiah prophesized, twenty-seven centuries ago, that “Evil shall come forth from the North” (Jeremiah, 1:14), he meant Syria. In today’s bizarre world, this prophecy surely would apply to Scandinavia.

On the face of it, Scandinavians should count their blessings: great bodies, safe cars, pristine views, and a generous welfare state. Norwegians even have oil wells, whose revenues are safely kept away from the EU’s subsidies for farmers and industrial champions. Beneath the iceberg’s tip, however, lies a murkier reality.

In Woody Allen’s New York Stories, a New Yorker is asked if he is not afraid to walk around his city at night (this was before Giuliani). “No, New York doesn’t scare me” the actor answers. “Other places do. Sweden scares me.” And for a good reason too. French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg had a premonitory joke about Nordic anti-Semitism: “The Titanic was drowned by Iceberg: a Jew.”

A couple of months ago, Israelis were horrified to learn that Sweden’s largest daily newspaper Aftonbladet accused Israeli soldiers of abducting Palestinians in order to steal their organs. When Israel demanded an apology from the Swedish Government, the latter replied that publicly condemning Aftonbladet‘s article would be tantamount of infringing upon the freedom of speech. Yet, when another Swedish newspaper published an anti-Muslim cartoon in 2006, both the newspaper and the Swedish government published apologies for hurting Muslim sensitivities. In other words, publishing anti-Semitic blood libels is acceptable, but deriding Islam is not. You are allowed to lie, but not to laugh -just like in the secluded, medieval monastery of Umberto Eco’s Il Nome della Rosa.

Nor did the Swedish Government feel the need to apologize for a Swedish art exhibit that implicitly justified Palestinian suicide bombings. In January 2004, an art show in Stockholm displayed a large exhibit glorifying the Palestinian terrorist who murdered 21 Israelis at Haifa’s Maxim restaurant three months before. Dubbed “Snow White and the Madness of Truth,” the exhibit showed a tiny sailboat floating on a pool of red water. Attached to the boat was a smiling photo of the female bomber, Hanadi Jaradat. Juxtaposing the “beauty” of the red pool of blood against the moral “snow-whiteness” of the terrorist, the piece displayed the following text: “If our nation cannot realize its dream and the goals of the victims, and live in freedom and dignity, then let the whole world be erased… Run away, then, you poor child… and the red looked beautiful upon the white.”

Sweden should be pitied for its blood-libels, hypocrisy, and artistic bad taste. But it should also be prevented from translating its adoption of dhimmitude into diplomatic nuisance.

Last week, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt announced his country’s support for the Goldstone’s Commission report. Since Sweden is currently holding the rotating six-month presidency of the EU, this move does not augur well for Israel’s effort to gather a coalition of Western democracies against the Goldstone report. Worse, the decision of the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama further indicates that Israel cannot count on the West (certainly not on Sweden and Norway) for moral clarity and steadfastness.

Obama, of course, has brokered no peace agreement and has not ended any conflict. Rather, he was thanked by European wimps for giving in to Russian bullying, for having second thoughts about sending more troops to Afghanistan, and for rewarding Iran for its deception (my translation of the Committee’s statement that “dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts”).

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Obama’s diplomacy for being “founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.” What on earth are those values and attitudes? And how do you assess what that “majority” is? Are we talking about the UN General Assembly’s majority that elected Sudan, Libya and China to the Human Rights Council? Besides, how are we supposed to know what values are cherished by the Chinese and the Russians, who have no free elections and no free media? If a majority of the world’s population prefers autocracy to freedom, should the rest of us bow to that majority?

The Norwegian Nobel Committee is mistakenly assuming that national legitimacy can be applied to the international system. In a democratic country, power derives from the decisions of the majority. This system can only work when people agree on fundamental principles -principles that are canonized in a Constitution or at least in basic laws. Kant’s dream of achieving such a system on a global scale is just that: a dream (even though his idea of a Perpetual Peace somewhat materialized on a regional scale in Europe after democracy was imposed by force upon his bellicose country). In fact, the very concept of “international community” is an oxymoron: a community, by definition, agrees on basic principles and values. As long as a majority of the world is not free, the free world should defend its freedom and its values, and refrain from granting legitimacy to the autocratic regimes and human rights violators that dominate and manipulate the UN.

When French Premier Édouard Dalladier landed at Le Bourget airport after signing the Munich Agreements with Hitler, he was greeted by a cheering crowd that thanked him for preserving peace. Looking at the crowd, Dalladier said: “Ah, les cons!” (“Morons!”). He knew that he had not preserved peace, and that his people was being delusional and naïve. I did not expect Barack Obama to call the members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee morons. But the fact that he does not seem to think that they deserve the compliment is in itself a cause for concern.

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