From Bjorn Staerk's blog:
NRK and European anti-semitism 23:48 CET by Bjørn Stærk
There's been increased focus here on Jewish claims that anti-semitism is on the return in Europe, but judging from today's debate on NRK Standpunkt we're nowhere near a serious response to it. It was unsettling to watch the gap between what the guests wanted to focus on. On one hand you had Norwegian Jews telling real life stories about anti-semitism, which was after all the topic of the debate: A father told how Muslim pupils had picked on and threatened to kill his kids for being Jewish. Another Jew showed newspaper cartoons with clear anti-semitic undertones, (in one Arafat had been crucified with a Star of David on his head). There were claims of increasing violence against Jews elsewhere in Europe, stories of Jews who considered "escaping" from Europe, etc. Most of it very specific: Here is a case of anti-semitism, and here, and here.
And all the other side wanted to talk about was Israel and its evil ways, its responsibility for its own demonization, and even for European anti-semitism. These people weren't dragged in from the fringe, they are among the most influential Israel critics in Norway. Kåre Willoch was there, the prominent anti-Israeli and former P.M. He refused to acknowledge any rational connection between criticism of Israel and anti-semitism, and left it at that. When the Jewish father identified Muslim kids as the ones who had threatened to kill his children, Willoch warned against a demonization of Muslims. It's the "you too" style of debating - those who warn that demonization of Israel encourages anti-semitism are themselves the demonizers, are themselves the ones blurring the line between criticism of Israel and anti-semitism. He made that last point repeatedly: The Israeli inability to tolerate criticism is itself a cause of anti-semitism. And anti-semitism is a European disease anyway, so why are we dragging the Muslims into this?
The most surreal moment was reserved Lars Sigurd Sunnanå, NRK's former Middle East correspondent. When accused of underreporting Israeli suffering in the conflict, he feigned regret for a moment, and admitted that yes, he had underreported suffering. Palestinian suffering. Unfortunately the military activities of the Israeli had prevented him from doing enough to cover the Palestinian side of the story. He explained that contrary to accusations he had reported a lot of Israeli suffering. The proof could be found in NRK's archives, which he encouraged critics to explore. That's funny. Odd Sverre Hove did just that - wade through hours of NRK recordings from the early months of the second intifada. Wrote a book about it. His conclusion is worth repeating:
1. In 29 news reports, NRK failed to mention that the Israeli shooting was a return of fire directed against terrorists who had first shot at the Israeli soldiers from inside groups of children and teenagers, and claimed instead that Israeli was shooting at children and teenagers who were merely protesting and throwing rocks.
2. NRK kept silent about the systematic planning of the intifada, with summer camps for children, bussing of children to about a 100 selected Intifada-places, transport of stone baskets and molotov cocktails, etc, and instead presented the intifada as a spontaneous, unorganized grassroot rebellion by the people.
3. In practice, NRK adjusted itself completely to Arafat's media strategy, and became a pure microphone service for the face Arafat wished to show to people in Norway.
4. NRK lied about, defended and excused the terrible lynching in Ramallah, 12.10.00.
5. NRK defended and excused the terrorist bomb against school children in a bus from Kfar Darom 20.11.00.
6. NRK systematically mixed reports and opinions, and presented judgments that were not supported by nuanced "pro and contra" information.
7. NRK did not separate self defense from terrorism in its judgments.
Sunnanå was NRK's correspondent in the area at the time. This, as one guest pointed out, is the man who once used the phrase "the Jewish war machine is crushing the Oslo process" on air. The Jewish war machine. Ah yes, this is a debate about European anti-semitism, and that is close to the real thing. It got closer: Sunnanå speculated that Israelis have exaggerated the prevalence of anti-semitism in Europe to get sympathy, and to shift attention from their own war crimes against the Palestinians. Like the way they exaggerated the Holocaust to blackmail guilt-ridden post-war Europe? Yes, I've heard that theory.
What all these people agreed on, in as few words as possible, before returning to what they really wanted to talk about, was that anti-semitism is very bad. (And like so many bad things it's caused by Israel.) But where do you go from there? If it is bad, and is a problem, how do you go about to solve it? Nobody would even begin to speculate, and if they had we can be sure that the answer would have involved .. Israel.
It's not a very complex issue this, but it's still too complex for Norwegian TV. What we lack is an attempt to understand the area where anti-Israelism and anti-semitism overlaps. In the eyes of the anti-Israelis, criticism of Israel is legitimate, and it isn't anti-semitism. In a sense they're right. Honest criticism, which they clearly believe they're providing, is legitimate, and these aren't modern Hitlers, these aren't Jew haters. And yet Jews all over Europe do experience anti-semitism, and whenever they do there's a connection to Israel somehow. So there's a discrepancy here that needs to be worked out. I've written before about the difference between anti-Israelism and anti-semitism, and I don't think anti-semitism has become mainstream in Europe again, at least not among the natives. I think that anti-Israelism has, and that it has elements or traces of anti-semitism in it.
And that's what I see in Willoch and Sunnanå, anti-Israelism with traces of anti-semitism. We can't hope to understand the problem until we realize that there is an area where anti-Israelism and anti-semitism overlaps, where the irrationality of anti-Israelism hook up with the conspiracy thinking of anti-semitism and create little baby myths: The Zionist influence in Washington, the revival of dead evil ideologies in Israel, the almost supernatural wickedness of Sharon. Once we understand that, it's not so difficult to see the connection with purer anti-semitism. Some people just take one more step in the same direction. We saw it in the NRK debate, a young Palestinian girl who seemed to think that the Norwegian press had recently escaped from Israeli control. She used that word, control. Now that's nutty. And yet - she was only a little nutty, a few steps away from Sunnanå's respectable nuttiness. That's the connection, and it's hidden in the last place anyone will want to look.
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