Oslo Sofienberg Jewish cemetery
Oslo Sofienberg Jewish cemeteryIsrael news photo: (illustrative)

Oslo Jewish leader Anne Sender says that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are no more beneficial to the State of Israel as suicide bombings are to the Palestinian Authority's being legitimate. She also criticized Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and in a move that shocked her own community, slammed the local Chabad movement as well as being “extremist” and “anti-democratic.”

Asked to address Israel's policies in Judea and Samaria, the president of the Norway Jewish community said she was at a complete loss to explain the logic of the Jewish State and the hundreds of thousands of Jews who live in the region. 

"When it comes to settlements, I just can't understand it,” she said. “It is completely incomprehensible. It should be in Israel's favor, but this is not the situation – it's as favorable to Israel as suicide bombings are for the Palestinian side.”

The statements were made during an interview published over the weekend in the Norwegian newspaper “Dagbladet,” a paper known for its anti-Israel bent. The stunned responses from the Jewish community following the interview, however, did not faze their leader. “I did the interview, and I don't plan on addressing the remarks,” she said.

Criticism of Israel's Foreign Minister

Sender also accused Lieberman of “hitting people in the head and calling them anti-Semites.” The comment came when Sender was asked about her feelings about being a Jew in Norway.

In the past, Lieberman has accused Norway of being anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. Last September during the United Nations General Assembly in New York, he confronted the country's officials after it was revealed that Norway was holding talks with the Hamas terrorist organization. During the same discussion with his counterpart, Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store, Lieberman also criticized Norway's support for Iran. He noted that the country's representatives had not left the room during the speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly called for the annihilation of the State of Israel.

The Norwegian government had also decided to celebrate the 150th birthday of Nazi admirer and author Knut Hamsun, a Norwegian Nobel Prize winner who gave away his prize in Literature to Nazi propanganda minister Joseph Goebbels and delivered a eulogy for Adolph Hitler. Store himself had endorsed a book authored by Norwegian doctors who accused the IDF of purposely tracking down Gaza children in order to kill them during last year's counterterrorist Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

But Sender responded that she believes Lieberman has “bad advisers” and that he receives “false information.” He knew “only half of the story,” she added. “He responds emotionally and he talks with his local audience. No one can hit people in the head and call them anti-Semites just because they criticize what the State of Israel does, even if anti-Semitism is hidden undoubtedly in some of the criticism against Israel.”

Norway last week also joined the United States in slamming Israel's announcement of the next phase in its years-old plans to build 1,600 housing units in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem. “Norway deeply deplores Israel's expansion of its settlement in East Jerusalem,” wrote Norway's foreign minister in a statement to the media last week.

“The peace process is in a critical phase, and Israel decision is jeopardizing the process," Store wrote. "The entire international community regards the expansion of the Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank as illegal under international law. Norway protests against Israel's settlement expansion and its decision regarding the cultural heritage sites in the West Bank. The most important thing now is that Israel changes its policy before a two-state solution becomes impossible. Norway urges the Quartet (the U.N., the U.S., the EU and Russia), which will meet on 19 March, to protest and put pressure on Israel to stop building illegal settlements.”

Incitement Against Local Jews

The interview, which had begun with questions about Sender's opinion about Israel's counterterrorist Operation Cast Lead last year in Gaza, led her to describe the “explosive situation” in the Muslim community. Sender explained that extremism exists among Jews as well, and pointed the finger directly at the four-year-old Chabad-Lubavitch community in Norway.

“This movement mixes religious and politics,” she accused. “Plus it has anti-democratic values.” She added that women in Chabad play an “inferior role.” Chabad, she noted, also supports Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel “from Egypt in the west to ancient Babylon in the east, between today's Iraq and Iran. We are busy with democracy, with volunteering and with being socially responsible, and this conduct is completely destructive towards the environment, and as I said – very dangerous.”

For the tiny Jewish community of some 1,100 that lives in the entire country, most of whom reside in Oslo, Sender's words were outright incitement, according to Rabbi Shaul Wilhelm, director of Oslo's Chabad House. Norway is also home to 70,000 Muslims, he pointed out. “She's just endangering the security of Jews living here,” Wilhelm said bluntly. “Her remarks constitute incitement.”

A Jewish resident of Oslo quoted by Chabad.info agreed. “I think this is internal political wrestling, and it is quite dangerous,” she said.