Mr. Foreign Minister, your statement seems to fly in the face of both your training as a military officer and your country’s own World War II history.
By SHIMON SAMUELS
Your June 7 condemnation of Israel’s defense of its border with Syria was most disquieting. To distract attention from its own atrocities, the Damascus tyrant recruited Syrian and Palestinian demonstrators to penetrate the frontier on the pretext of protesting the anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War.You described the IDF reaction as the “most serious incident on the Golan since 1973.”Had you stated “since 1967,” your comment would have reflected the true situation, with Syria’s artillery bombarding Galilean farmers from its Golan redoubts intermittently since 1948.Indeed, it was those farmers who called for action during the Six Day War to still those guns until Damascus accepted peace with its neighbor. Thus has the Golan been held, until today, as a buffer in the face of the triple Arab response of “no peace, no negotiation, no relations.”Mr. Foreign Minister, your statement seems to fly in the face of both your training as a military officer and your country’s own World War II history.Norway’s neutrality was impugned by a surprise German invasion on April 9, 1940.Your king and parliament fled to Britain, followed by 80,000 Norwegians, many joining the Allied armies.At home, Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling took the premiership, 15,000 Norwegians volunteered to serve in the SS, and 765 Jews (over one-third of the community) perished in the death camps.The Norwegian resistance showed great courage – even thankfully destroying a German experimental nuclear project – yet it required US, British and Soviet troops to liberate you. Upon liberation, you used German POWs to clear minefields, reportedly resulting in hundreds of casualties, yet post-war Norway refused to submit to a Geneva Convention investigation.Since then, Oslo’s declared policy has been “to maintain adequate armed forces to defend its borders.”
As a military man and a known humanitarian, Mr. Støre, should you not sympathize with Israel’s predicament? IF DEFEATED by a combination of protester penetration, terrorist infiltration and surprise military invasion, should the Israeli government seek refuge in Norway? Some Israelis – whose organizations may even be financed by the Norwegian government – may naively hope to join the invader as collaborators in a one-state solution.But, like their German Jewish forebears decorated with the Iron Cross, they, too, would be marked for a new Final Solution.Who would liberate an Arab-occupied Israel? Would there be any survivors to liberate? Hence, Jerusalem, like Oslo, is determined “to maintain adequate armed forces to defend its borders and its citizens” – a policy that any trained Norwegian officer should endorse. Indeed, after studying the resistance operation against the Nazi nuclear plan, one would expect a healthy understanding of Iran’s genocidal threat to Israel.Mr. Minister, you are quoted as having said, perhaps whimsically, that you hope for a Norwegian society “where we can live side by side with hijab and bikini, and celebrate Christmas and Eid.”Most Israelis would yearn for the same, but would discover the danger in your argument along the way: The missing Jewish component in your Norwegian dream means suicide for Israel.The writer is director for international relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.