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Hypocrisy!


Dear Ms. Trine Lilleng,

You were an unknown Norwegian diplomat till this month.

No longer.

As first secretary in the Norwegian Embassy in Saudi Arabia, you recently sent out an email on your office account in which you declared: "The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors from World War II are doing to the Palestinians exactly what was done to them by Nazi Germany."

Accompanying your text were photos, with an emphasis on children, seeking to juxtapose the Holocaust with the recent Israeli military operation in Gaza.

Clearly, you are miscast in your role as a diplomat, all the more so of a nation that has sought to play a mediating role in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In fact, you're desperately in need of some education.

Let's begin with your current posting. You've been in Riyadh since 2007.

If you're so anguished by human rights violations, perhaps you could have begun by devoting some of your attention - and email blasts - to what surrounds you.

Or were your eyes diplomatically shut?

Have you failed to notice the many legal executions, including beheadings, going on in your assigned country?

Have you ignored the often abysmal treatment of foreign workers, many from Asia, who also happen to be disproportionately counted among the victims of Saudi capital punishment?

Have you neglected the gender apartheid that surrounds you? Did you ever look out of your car to notice that Saudi women are proscribed from driving, and that's hardly the worst of it?

Have you checked the skyline of Riyadh or Jeddah lately to count the number of church spires or other non-Muslim houses of worship?

Have you bothered to inquire about the fate of homosexuals?

Okay, you were AWOL on those issues. Maybe you just didn't want to offend your hosts by speaking the truth, or maybe you're suffering from that diplomatic disease known as "localitis" or "clientitis."

But surely a woman like you, with such capacity for empathy for those in far-away places, and especially for children in danger, couldn't remain silent about other human rights transgressions, could she?

After all, could an individual so deeply moved by the plight of Palestinians in Gaza remain silent about what a New York Times columnist earlier this month described as "hell on earth" - Zimbabwe? Could a person so anguished by the fate of Palestinian children stay mum about a country where a girl's life expectancy at birth is 34, much less than half that of her Norwegian counterpart, and where the health care sector has vaporized, all thanks to the one-man rule of Robert Mugabe?

Could such a dedicated humanist possibly avert her eyes from the deadliest conflict since the Second World War, which has killed over five million people, many of them children, in the Congo in the past decade - not to mention the documented and widespread use of torture, rape, and arbitrary detention?

An observer of such acute sensitivity could hardly hold her tongue while Afghan girls attempting to go to school have been doused with acid by those who wish to deny young women access to education, reminiscent of the five years of Taliban rule, could she?

In neighboring Pakistan, where you served in the Norwegian embassy for three years, the beleaguered human rights community must have been fortunate to have such an impassioned voice for all that's wrong in this failing state. Or was that voice, perhaps, on mute?

The children of Sderot, the Israeli town near the Gaza border, have been in desperate need of just such a spokesperson as you for the past eight years.

After all, their town has been in the crosshairs of literally thousands of missiles and mortars fired from Gaza. Those Israeli children live with all the signs of trauma, knowing that, with only 15 seconds warning, they could be hit at any time in their schools, their parks, or their beds. Yet, during my visit there last week, for some reason, those children and their parents had yet to hear you speak out for them. What a pity!

And the children of Iran could use your help as well. According to human rights groups, Iran has no compunction about executing children or those who were children when their crimes were allegedly committed.

Oh, and by the way, your compassionate help would also undoubtedly be welcomed by others under the gun in Iran, including women's rights activists, union organizers, student protesters, independent journalists, reformist politicians, and religious minorities. And let's not forget, once again, the children of Israel, who, according to the Iranian president, don't have a right to live.

But wait! A Google search about you reveals nothing, not a single word, regarding your views on Zimbabwe, Congo, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sderot, or Iran. Or, for that matter, Burma, Darfur, Syria. Shall I go on?

Only Israel, faced with those who wish to destroy it, manages to prompt your impassioned correspondence and righteous indignation. Why?

No less, your stunning lack of education extends beyond the contemporary world to 20th century history, specifically the Holocaust.

Your invocation of the Holocaust to describe what's taken place in Gaza is, frankly, nothing short of obscene.

Your claim that the grandchildren of the survivors are doing to the Palestinians exactly what was done to them goes beyond any norm of decency, much less honesty.

Approve or disapprove of the Israeli military operation, but there is no basis whatsoever for such a comparison.

When Israel entered Gaza in a war of self-defense in 1967, the population was 360,000. After Israel withdrew totally from Gaza in 2005, it was estimated at 1.4 million.

Would that the Jewish population under Nazi rule had quadrupled!

When Israel entered Gaza in 1967, life expectancy for women was 46. When it left Gaza, it was 73.

Shall we even bother to discuss life expectancy for Jews under Nazi occupation?

The Second World War in Europe lasted from September 1, 1939 to May 8, 1945 - 68 months in all. That means an average monthly extermination rate of nearly 90,000 Jews.

Compare that to the total number of victims in Gaza over three weeks - roughly guesstimated at more or less 1,000 - and recall that the majority were armed fighters committed to Israel's destruction, who used civilians, including children, as human shields, mosques as arms depots, and hospitals as sanctuaries.

Believe me, Ms. Lilleng, if the "grandchildren of the Holocaust survivors" had wanted to do exactly what the Nazis did to their grandparents, they would have unleashed their full air, land, and sea power. They would have thrown the Israel Defense Forces' ethical guidelines to the wind, kicked out the UN and Red Cross personnel on the ground, stopped humanitarian transports of food, fuel, and medicine, prevented media reporting, and left absolutely nothing - and no one - standing.

Unless, of course, they needed slave labor, in which case they would have carted off the able-bodied to work in Auschwitz replicas until they dropped. Or material for ghoulish medical experimentation, in which case, in the spirit of Mengele, they would have kept Palestinian twins alive temporarily.

But Israel didn't do any of these things. It's a peace-seeking democracy dedicated to the rule of law - unlike so many of the countries whose horrific sins you blithely choose to overlook.

What are we to make of your selective moral outrage and rank hypocrisy?

You ought to take a look in the mirror and ask yourself why Israel, and only Israel, makes your blood boil and leads you to speak out, even at the risk of grossly distorting both reality and history.

The answer, Ms. Lilleng, should be painfully obvious.


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Dear Franita, If I may take a moment to comment: It must be said that Denmark is one of the two European countries which never expelled Jews. In the early 17th century Jews were invited to Denmark, as a means of entering certain commerce routes. In defense of Scandinavians as such, I have to report that in WW2, Danes were heroic in defense and protection of Jews, by and large. Huge sums of money were passed to persons unknown to them, to save Jewish lives by those who demanded money to bring them over the straits between Sweden and Denmark. Swedes housed all these Danish Jews after Oct., 1943 until the end of the war, and have always been open toward Jews and Jewish culture. As such, only circa 500 Jews were caught here and sent to primarily Theresiesnstadt, one of the more lenient death camps. Norway has always been very open towards Jews as well, and fought bravely against fascism. Yet, I think you are right in one sense. Having made the mistake of signing various conventions forcing the import of quotas of refugees, Scandinavian saw a large group of Arabic and Slavic Muslim refugee import (with a great deal of outright commercial ‘asylum speculation’ throughout the Middle East) and have since realized how costly it has become. Here, I think of the huge juvenile crime rates (up to 71% of youth crime is Muslim, and they comprise 5-8% of population), rape and sexual assault (68% of all rape in Denmark and Norway is perpetrated by Muslims) as well as nearly all street gangs, drug trafficking, school violence, jail violence, nearly all family violence, as well as a large and growing economic criminality as Muslims dominate many cash businesses. But as well, at least in Denmark, they represent the single highest public finance item, in terms of transport income toward unemployment, child support, etc. Even in terms of health, while 11% of the Danish population is considered "overweight," 17-23% or about the double of the Muslim population in Denmark is overweight - with what that represents in health costs. Moreover, as that group becomes increasingly loud, demonstrative, and indeed violent as their relative population rate grows, and in fact outnumber Jews today by circa 90-100 to 1 (Denmark has 400.000 Muslims of which 23.000 are "Palestinian" alongside perhaps 5000 Jews), it"s far less dangerous to turn one"s anger and growing dislike of immigrant behavior against Jews. Add to that a very traditional left of center political leaning, one then sees the tendency to a somewhat blind support of the "underdog" or socioeconomically underprivileged. In this case, Palestinians are seen as the weaker part. Sub-par behavior, terrorism, criminal aggression, oppression and abuse of women and children and a generally fascist religious ideology is somehow tolerated from a misguided identification and sympathy, due these deep social democratic underpinnings. One has less sympathy for the highly educated and the middle class. They don’t seem to need our sympathy! It"s an odd and completely incongruous, but from Israel is demanded a completely different standard of behavior. And, without doubt, when it truly comes to it, deep rooted European mistrust and basic anti-Semitism of Jews (which rightly should include all ‘Semitic’ groups like Arabs) is a tenet of Christian attitudes, as far back as we can remember. Our small numbers, along with a Torah taught desire to segregate, and look different, have stigmatized Jews. In tough economic times, and in moments of socio-political insecurity, people tend to look for scapegoats. When we then notice that Jews tend to do better (even in the Great Plague, Jews were less effected due kashrus imposed hygienic laws) simple envy plays a role. Hell, we’re G-d chosen people! Who can live with that? In the very homogenous cultures of Scandinavia, individuation and ‘differences’ are not always appreciated. So, outnumbered 99 to 1 by Muslims on a global plan, and even more so by Christians, it makes a lot of sense to pick on Jews as the root of all evil, wouldn"t you say? So it is. Yet, at the end of the day, I think your point is well taken.

Posted by Brian on 2009-01-29 13:06:58 GMT


Could it be that the populations of Scandinavia have major problems with their muslim populations and have been forced into self imposed dhimmitude. The muslims in their midst will have exposed them to their unique brand of islamic antisemitism, so, when the Scandinavians are unable to direct their anger at the real source of their problems, the muslims, they deflect to a soft option, in this case Jews/Israelis. Just a thought!

Posted by Franita on 2009-01-29 05:26:12 GMT


The official e-mail address of Ms. Lilleng is: emb.riyadh@mfa.no. I suggest you write her directly. Her boss, Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre can be written to as well: post@mfa.no. You might want to provide him with your thoughts, in a sober and serious manner. There are many people who have honest emotional reactions to what they see on TV and in newspapers. They cannot be fully blamed for lacking a deeper historic or cultural insight in the political or ideological dynamics that shaped what is going on. As an "unguided missile," I don"t think Ms. Lilleng can be accused of anythig other than simple ignorance, and lacking credentials for the job she has. But we are many who lack understanding what"s at work in the Middle East, and therefore I am less than condemning when I hear people"s opinions and emotional reactions to reports of mass slaughter of innocent bystanders. In that regard, I think the following video is an eye opener for all to see. It"s very important in this regard(paste the following into your browser): http://multimedia.heritage.org/content/wm/Lehrman-092706a.wvx . Thanks.

Posted by Brian Burr on 2009-01-28 13:12:00 GMT


A wonderful and richly deserved blast directed at a woman who is either a Saudi whore a fool writing with a loaded gun at her head by some Islamic nutcase Or a congenital liar who simply enjoys spread falsehoods.

Posted on 2009-01-28 06:47:12 GMT