The Norwegian daily newspaper Dagbladet said Jewish reactions to its caricature on circumcision “are similar” to riots that erupted over cartoons mocking Mohammed eight years ago.

Referencing Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten caricatures of Mohammed in 2005, Dagbladet wrote in a statement, “We now have similar reactions to a cartoon that Dagbladet printed last week.”

Several people died in what The New York Times termed “a wave of violent protests by Muslims” in the Middle East and Europe over the caricatures mocking Mohammed.

Last week, several Jewish organizations condemned the Dagbladet caricature, which showed two people, who were widely perceived to be Jewish because of their clothing, maiming a child with a fork and bolt cutter while holding a book and professing their faith.

Dagbladet has justified itself and criticized the Jewish reaction by simply re-defining anti-Semitism as love for Jews. The caricature was not at all against Jews, said the paper, which went on to claim it actually is champion of snuffing out anti-Semitism.

Not only that. It seems to understand that the anger of Jews is a camouflage for some kind of evil intentions.

“The groups which said the circumcision caricature was anti-Semitic “leave little room for nuances and reflections,” the paper wrote in a statement published this week on its website.

“They claim that this is proof of Dagbladet’s anti-Semitic views. We come from a different angle and have a different interpretation of the cartoon,” the statement read. “It is important to distinguish between friend and foe when considering this question of values. Dagbladet has a long and consistent history of fighting anti-Semitism.”

The JTA contributed to this report.

The leading Norwegian daily Dagbladet published a caricature of what appeared to be Jews torturing a baby during a circumcision, and the European Jewish Congress said it may sue it for committing a hate crime.

The caricature that appeared in Tuesday’s newspaper, the country’s third largest in terms of circulation – showed police officers looking on as a bearded man wearing a black hat and black coat sticks a three-tooth pitchfork into the head of a blood-soaked baby while holding a book.

Another unseen person cuts off the baby’s foot with a bolt cutter as a woman in a long-sleeve shirt and a hat shows the officers another blood-spattered book and tells them: “Abuse? No, this tradition is central to our belief.” The police officers apologize “for interrupting.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Copper, said the cartoon was “so virulently anti-Semitic it would make Hitler and Himmler weep tears of joy.”

Manfred Gerstenfeld, a scholar of anti-Semitism and former chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said the caricature “cannot be viewed separately from centuries of libels in Christian circles that try to establish a link between the ritual abuse of blood and the Jewish faith.”

But in an email sent to MIFF, a Norwegian pro-Israel organization, Dagbladet cartoon artist Tomas Drefvelin said he did not mean to draw Jews in his caricature, which he meant “not as criticism of either a specific religion or a nation [but] as a general criticism of religions,” Drefvelin wrote.

He added, “I gave the people in the picture hats, and the man beard, because this gives them a more religious character … Jew-hatred is reprehensible. I would never draw to create hatred of a people, or against individuals.”

Ervin Kohn, the president of Norway’s Jewish community, told JTA that in Norway, “it is not uncommon to compare brit mila with cutting off limbs and calling it mutilation. This is a form of lying, propaganda.”

European Jewish Congress president Dr. Moshe Kantor stated, “This cartoon has crossed all lines of decency and is dripping with hate and anti-Semitism. We are now studying the possibility that this legally constitutes incitement to hatred and even a hate-crime and will require legal action if this proves to be the case.

“This obviously falls outside the boundaries of freedom of speech as no one has the freedom to incite hatred against a particular people.

“The reason we have laws against hate is because modern society understands the connection between incitement and violence.

“This is a violent cartoon which is meant to inspire hate and contempt against one particular people. This type of hate, reminiscent of Nazi propaganda, cannot be left unanswered, and it is exactly this type of incitement which is contributing to a very troubling period for minorities in Europe at this time, especially with the rise of the far-Right.”

On November 26, 70 years after the rounding up and deportation of over 500 Jewish Norwegians to Auschwitz, the Norwegian Police Service issued an apology for taking part in the murder of Jews.  The request for forgiveness came from Norwegian Police Chieff Odd Reidar Humlegaard.

On the same date in 1942, Norwegian police herded 532 Jewish citizens aboard the German ship SS Donau en route to Auschwitz.

This year, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg issued a formal apology for the Norwegian government’s role in deporting Jews to Auschwitz.

Only a few dozen of the 770 Jews deported from Nazi-occupied Norway survived the war.  Hitler invaded Norway on April 9, 1940 and remained in the country until May 1945.

Norwegian police have increased security around Oslo’s main synagogue after an Islamist extremist threatened to “protect” the Jewish community with an “AK-47 assault rifle and a hunting permit.”

Police on Oct. 27 recommended indicting Ubaydullah Hussain, the 27-year-old leader of the radical Islamic organization Profetens Ummah. He was arrested last week after Norwegian media reported on a comment that appeared on his Facebook account:  “I will give them protection … as soon as I have received a hunting license and get hold of an AK47.”

Hussain, a former soccer referee who was born and raised in Norway, also lamented the absence of fatalities in a 2006 shooting outside the synagogue. Hussain, who participated in recent protests outside the U.S. embassy in Norway in connection with the film “The Innocence of Muslims,” later told Norwegian television he “could not confirm or deny” that his statements were a threat.

The comment was made in reaction to an interview with Ervin Kohn, head of Norway’s Jewish community, which recently appeared in the daily VG newspaper. Kohn said police were not providing protection outside the synagogue on Oslo’s Hanshaugen Street during services and were not proactive enough in their approach.

“We felt like we had been neglected, and this made us uneasy in light of what happened in Toulouse and in Malmo,” Kohn told JTA

In March, Mohammed Merah, a radical Islamist, killed three children and a rabbi in a Jewish school in the French city of Toulouse. Last month, an explosive charge was detonated outside the only synagogue in the Swedish city of Malmo.

Kohn said that since last week, there has been police protection outside the main synagogue of Oslo, the capital city, which is home to most members of Norway’s Jewish community of approximately 700.

Norway’s ombudsman for children’s rights has proposed that Jews and Muslim replace male circumcision with a symbolic, non-surgical ritual.

Dr. Anne Lindboe told the newspaper Vart Land that circumcision in boys was a violation of a person’s right to decide over his own body.

“Muslim and Jewish children are entitled to the same protection as all other children,“ she said, adding that the practice caused unnecessary pain and was medically not beneficial.

Lindboe, a pediatrician, was appointed ombudsman in June. Her predecessor, Reidar Hjermann, proposed setting 15 as the minimum age for circumcision. According to Jewish religious law, Jewish babies must be circumcised when they are eight days old, unless there are medical grounds to delay the rite.

The children’s ombudsman is an independent governmental institution entrusted with safeguarding the rights of minors.

Ervin Kohn, president of the Jewish Community of Oslo, said that Norwegian Jews “will not be able to live in a society where circumcision is forbidden.” He noted that the mandate of Norway’s children’s ombudsman did not extend to devising Jewish rituals. Norway has a Jewish community of about 700.

In June, a spokesperson for Norway’s Centre Party, which has 11 out of 169 seats in parliament, proposed a ban on circumcising babies.

Last month, two court-appointed forensic psychiatrists concluded that ideological mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik — who killed 77 Norwegians in July — is insane. Other experts disagree. One poll found that 48 percent of Norwegians believe he has no severe psychiatric disorder. Breivik himself was insulted that anyone would question his sanity.

But if Breivik is declared schizophrenic, can anyone who commits extreme violent acts based on ideology be considered normal? There are answers to this question: The Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez – better known as Carlos the Jackal – is serving a life sentence in a French jail. Mohammed Bouyeri’s Muslim worldview led him to murder Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004. He received a life sentence.

The question regarding the sanity of terrorists should be posed primarily in the Muslim world. How many of those who killed and mutilated thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan are normal? The same question is valid concerning the tens of millions of jihadi Muslims and their spiritual guides who support suicide bombings. How normal are Palestinian leaders who glorify the murderers of Israeli children and women?

Some observers suspect that declaring Breivik insane is Norway’s way of trying to absolve itself from his acts. The argument then becomes, “A real Norwegian would never commit such murderous acts and as Breivik is insane, he is nothing like us.” Thus the country can perpetuate the myth of the “Good Norwegians.”

The focus, of course, should be directed on far more important issues than Breivik’s sanity. His murders have been used by the Norwegian left and others of similar conviction elsewhere to attack some of those quoted in Breivik’s lengthy “ideological” treatise as if they were enablers of his acts. These include people like the author Bat Yeor who wrote about Eurabia, the Dutch Freedom Party Leader Geert Wilders and the American author Bruce Bawer, who lives in Norway.

“The bullets came from the right” was the message, while it should have been “The bullets came from the insane.” Bawer has announced that his book The New Quislings, about the “Norwegian left’s exploitation” of the Breivik murders, will soon be published.

A few days before Breivik was declared insane, Norwegian Deputy Minister of Defense Roger Ingebrigtsen spoke at the University of Ottawa on strategic military issues. He strayed from his topic, however, and discussed Breivik’s manifesto, which he called “a lengthy and incoherent document drawing upon influences of cultural conservatism, right wing populism, ultra-nationalism, Islamophobia and right-wing Zionism.”

Many members of the Norwegian political and cultural elite excel in demonizing others. Israel has become their favorite target. The Labor party youth movement teaches children as young as fourteen to hate Israel. That was the case at its Utoya camp where Breivik committed his despicable crimes. When the murderer started shooting, some youngsters thought they were being shown a demonstration of how Israeli soldiers shoot at Palestinian civilians.

One master of anti-Israel hatemongering is Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere. This Labor Party politician recently accused Israel of “water-boarding” torture because it withheld funds from the Palestinians.

Norway’s largest publisher, Cappellen Damm, recently published a book for small children that  incites against Israel, which is falsely accused of withholding water from the people of Gaza. The Cultural Council of Procurement has approved the book’s distribution to Norwegian libraries.

This week Norwegian Church Minister Rigmor Aasrud (Labor) will visit an exhibition in East Jerusalem showcasing Norwegian artist Hakon Gullvag, who is well known for his anti-Israel paintings. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry sponsored an exhibition last year of Hakon’s artwork in Damascus, Beirut and Amman. Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Labor) has commended Gullvag for his Israel-hate paintings. remarking that they put the plight of the Palestinian children on the agenda.

The widespread demonization of Israel by Norwegian government leaders and social elites has helped create an atmosphere in Oslo where a third of Jewish children in high schools are verbally or physically attacked at least two or three times a month.

After the Breivik murders, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said that Norway’s answer to the murders would be more openness and more democracy. But the authorities have done nothing to foster this. On the contrary, there is now even more intimidation of politically incorrect spokespeople than was the case before the Breivik murders.

All of which confirms that Norway would greatly benefit from comment and critique on the part of fair-minded foreigners who will not be intimidated by the country’s “progressive” establishment.

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. His book “Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel and the Jews,” can be downloaded free of charge at  http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/showpage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=84&FID=726&PID=0.

The two despicable terror attacks in Oslo and on the island of Utoya carried out by Anders Breivik propelled Norway onto center stage.

Norway is a country that normally draws little attention – even Swedes and Danes who can read Norwegian are generally uninterested in what happens there. The only annual event that regularly generates publicity for Norway is the awarding of the Noble Peace prize.

Due to this lack of attention, the international image of Norwegian society is mostly superficial and differs from the reality.

What is currently being reported about Norway in the international media gives the impression that the country’s population of nearly 5 million represents much of what is good in the world. Statistics seemingly prove this. Norway is ranked the ninth most peaceful country in the world; second in the Press Freedom Index; tenth among the least corrupt countries in the world; and fourth in a survey that “rates 21 rich countries on how much they help poor countries build prosperity, good government and security.”

Its major oil and gas earnings make Norway a wealthy country. In fact, according to the United Nations Development Program, which ranks countries based on factors such as income, education, and life expectancy, it is the best country in the world in which to live.

All of this supports the image the Norwegian elites want to present to the world – that of a progressive paradise, open-minded, tolerant, moral, democratic, fair and humanitarian.

But upon closer scrutiny, Norway reflects a different picture. It is difficult to analyze complex entities like nation-states. Sometimes, therefore, it helps to observe a country through a smaller lens in order to better perceive the reality behind the myths. Often, a country’s attitude toward Jews and Israel is a useful indicator.

This is happens to be the case with Norway, however surprising that news might come to some. After all, the number of Jews in Norway is miniscule – under 2,000, of whom 800 belong to the two existing Jewish communities in Oslo and Trondheim. And Israel is, of course, a small and distant country.

Nonetheless, a recent survey published by the Oslo municipality found that 33 percent of Jewish high school students are physically threatened or abused at least two to three times a month. One Jewish girl declared that all Jewish students she knows have been harassed at school.

This phenomenon has been known for at least the past ten years, yet authorities have chosen to ignore it.

The major Norwegian media are characterized by shallowness, political correctness, and a conspicuous lack of self-criticism. Norway’s elites include in their ranks major purveyors of hatred toward Israel. Several ministers in the Labor-left socialist government are at least nominal anti-Semites while the state TV and radio company NRK has its anti-Israel bias officially approved by the Broadcasting Council. There is a dominant strain of anti-Israel feeling in the Norwegian media and a significant anti-Israel stance in its academic circles.

Trade unions in Norway are much better described as hate unions. Some Norwegian Lutheran bishops are major hate inciters. Because the tragedy of the recent terror attacks is so huge, no one was paying much attention to the fact that before the shootings at the youth camp, participants were incited against Israel by their leaders from the Labor Party youth movement and visiting lecturers, including Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Störe. Signs reading “Boycott Israel” were clearly visible in press photographs from the site.

Fortunately, there are many true and politically active friends of Israel in Norway. One finds them mainly among opposition politicians and parties and pro-Zionist Christians. They cannot, however, compensate for the evil continuously inflicted by the cultural elites. If one were to challenge Norwegian Jews in a debate, they would have no choice but to admit they are rarely – if ever – considered an integral part of Norway, and are only “tolerated” by society. Even several Norwegian Jews in Israel who helped me with my research wish to remain anonymous.

As stated above, attitudes toward Jews and Israel provide a lens on Norwegian society. Thereafter, one can see similar phenomena concerning others more easily. Non-Jewish academics with dissenting views have told me how they are discriminated against in universities. Christians, particularly evangelicals, complain about how the elites despise and marginalize them. The Christian weekly Norge Idag – the only paper that dares take a critical look at the Norwegian elites – is hampered in many ways. It’s clear the intolerance of those currently in power runs quite deep.

OSLO – Norway has just 1,500 Jews, but to hear Avi Ring tell it, the country is reacting to last Friday’s bombing of a government office building and massacre at a political summer camp, which authorities say left at least 76 people dead, in a traditionally Jewish way.

“As soon as people speak about it, they start to cry,” said Ring, a neuroscientist and former board member of Norway’s official Jewish community organization, called the Mosaic Religious Community and known by its Norwegian acronym, DMT. “It’s like a country sitting shiva.”

A sea of flower bouquets, candles, photographs and handwritten notes line not just major Oslo memorials – like the fence of the exclusion zone around the blast site or the central Domkirke Cathedral – but far-flung fountains, parks and statues with no connection to the violence.

“We’ll be together in the grief,” said Ervin Kohn, the leader of DMT, which is also the country’s main synagogue and counts about half the country’s Jews as members. No Jews are known to have been injured in the attacks.

Yet even as they mourn along with their fellow countrymen, some Jews here are quietly expressing concern that the attack by a right-wing xenophobe who apparently sympathized with Israel may further mute pro-Israel voices in Norway, where anti-Zionist sentiment already runs strong.

In the rambling 1,500-page manifesto attributed to the alleged perpetrator of the attacks, Andres Behring Breivik, anti-Muslim diatribes are punctuated at times with expressions of admiration for Israel and its fight against Islamic terrorism.

And on Utoya island, the young Labor Party activists who were holding a retreat when Breivik ambushed them, had spent part of the day before discussing the organization of a boycott against Israel and pressing the country’s foreign minister, who was visiting the camp, to recognize a Palestinian state.

If the Norwegian public is looking for a larger villain than Breivik, Jews here are worried that Zionism and pro-Israel organizations may be singled out.

“Can the average Norwegian accept that this is the one random act of one confused ethnic Norwegian?” Ring asked. “What I’m worried about is that in the Norwegian mind it will slowly attach an antagonism to Israel.”

Joakim Plavnik, a young Norwegian Jew who works in the financial sector, said he’s already worried by news reports that have focused on the seemingly pro-Zionist parts of Breivik’s writings.

“That can potentially have very negative ramifications toward the small, vulnerable Jewish community,” Plavnik said. But, he added, “We can’t be paralyzed by that fear.”

Rachel Suissa runs the Center Against Antisemitism, a pro-Israel group that counts about 23,000 supporters and 10,000 subscribers to a quarterly journal. She said the Norwegian government’s general pro-Palestinian stance – Norway’s foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Store, recently said that Oslo soon would announce its support for an independent Palestinian state – makes Zionism difficult to promote here.

“Anyone who dares support Israel is demonized,” said Suissa, a professor of medical chemistry. “The Jews need to know that they have a lot of friends in Norway, but the Norwegian politicians are not our friends.”

In an interview published Tuesday by the Israeli daily Maariv, Norway’s ambassador to Israel, Svein Sevje, said it was important to recognize the distinctions between the Norwegian attacks and terrorism in Israel.

“We Norwegians consider the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel,” he said. “Those who believe this will not change their mind because of the attack in Oslo.”

Norway, like practically every country in Europe, has a spotty history when it comes to the Jews. Jews were first allowed into Norway after the Inquisition, but were banned from 1687 to 1851. The first synagogue in Oslo was established in 1892. Some 800 Jews were killed during the Nazi occupation of the country, and many who fled to seek asylum in Sweden did not return after the war.

David Katzenelson, an Israeli transplant who has lived in Norway for 15 years, said Norway is not known as a particularly hospitable place for Jews. A high school math and science teacher who also runs the small Society for Progressive Judaism here, Katzenelson said he has had a swastika spray-painted on his mailbox and that Jewish students of his have been afraid to publicly disclose their faith.

In the wake of last Friday’s attacks, however, the prevailing mood among Norwegian Jews has been solidarity – as it has for all Norwegians.

(JTA)