July 26, 2011

Zionists and the Norway massacre

The first emails I got on the mass killings in Norway on the weekend were to do with how the first reports assumed an islamist attack. Next up came the reports on blogs (Liberal Conspiracy, Tony Greenstein's blog) that the killer, Anders Behring Breivik, claimed inspiration for his worldview from, among others, the likes of the UK's Melanie Phillips and Jeremy Clarkson. And now there's a Jerusalem Post editorial which comes so close to suggesting that the killings should be used to highlight "the abject failure of multiculturalism", the Editor-in-chief appears to have been panicked into issuing the following disclaimer:
 As a newspaper, The Jerusalem Post strongly denounces all acts of violence against innocent civilians. This editorial is not aimed at deflecting attention from the horrific massacre perpetuated in Norway, nor the need to take greater precautions against extremists from all sides.
So what was it saying?

In the Forward, JJ Goldberg has a very thoughtful piece on the schadenfreude being expressed in both Hebrew and English on the Israeli internet:
The Norway massacre has touched off a nasty war of words on the Israeli Internet over the meaning of the event and its implications for Israel. And I do mean nasty: Judging by the comments sections on the main Hebrew websites, the main questions under debate seem to be whether Norwegians deserve any sympathy from Israelis given the country’s pro-Palestinian policies, whether the killer deserves any sympathy given his self-declared intention of fighting Islamic extremism and, perhaps ironically, whether calling attention to this debate is in itself an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic act.
The comments largely prove the point being made in the article.

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