GERMANY'S DOUBLE STANDARDS WITH IRAN, AND VIKING MENTALITY IN SCANDANAVIA

Two items of note here: First, P. David Hornik reports about Germany's still entrenched anti-semitism, and besides the disturbing poll taken recently, there's also the government's willingness to allow business with Iran to continue without opposition:

Whatever the case, it would be pleasant to report that, despite popular antipathy to the Jewish state and the Jews, the current conservative government of Angela Merkel is doing much better. But its record, too, at least toward Israel, is fraught with problems.

Much of this concerns a Hamburg-based entity called the European-Iranian Trade Bank, or EIH. As Fox News reported last month, the U.S. Treasury Department states that “EIH has acted as a key financial lifeline for Iran as one of Iran’s few remaining access points to the European financial system.” Earlier in February, eleven U.S. senators wrote to the German foreign minister “asking that he stop EIH from doing business with Iran” and expressing concern about EIH’s “continued financial support of Iran’s nuclear proliferation activities.” To no avail.

Iran’s geopolitical aggression and nuclear program are recognized by now as a threat to the West and not just to Israel — hence the U.S. effort to coordinate sanctions against Iran. But, considering that Tehran has often boasted of its imminent annihilation of Israel and is sponsoring terrorist activity on its borders, the threat to Israel is most acute — making Germany’s abetting of that threat all the more striking.

Indeed, Fox News also reports that Treasury says “EIH facilitated the sale of more than $3 million in materials for Iran’s missile programs.” And it goes beyond EIH, since “Germany is Iran’s biggest European trade partner. German exports to Iran totaled $4.7 billion from January through November of last year. This was a 5 percent increase over the same period in 2009.”

Israelis could be forgiven for wondering if, the more things seemingly change, the more they stay the same.

And on the diplomatic front, too, Germany — Holocaust remembrance and education events notwithstanding — has been doing Israel harm. Late last month, the United Nations Security Council voted on a resolution that would have condemned all Israeli building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as “illegal.” The resolution originated with the Palestinian Authority as part of an effort to eventually force Israel out of the West Bank without a peace agreement ensuring Israel’s security and rights. It was sponsored by Lebanon, a country dominated by Hezbollah — an Iranian-backed terrorist organization also sworn to Israel’s destruction.

Only a U.S. veto — reluctant, and under pressure from Congress — stopped the resolution. Israel, however, was reportedly under the impression that Germany, too, would oppose it, and dismayed when Germany voted in favor. Branding Israeli communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as “illegal” is not only false but intensifies the atmosphere of delegitimization surrounding them. It was within that context of delegitimization that earlier this month an Israeli family of five, including three young children, were butchered on the West Bank.

And I ask myself, why exactly are Israelis for some still willing to buy German products when the public mindset is so disturbing, and their businesses so willing to do anything for money, putting higher value over that than human life? See, this is why I would very much appreciate it if the Israeli/Jewish public were to call it quits on German imports/exports. Stop buying Volkswagens, Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs, for example; we don't need their junk littering up our streets.

Then, we've got the case of Norway and Sweden's vicious anti-semitism, which Giulio Miotti writes about over here:

During the Second World War, the German universities banned many famous Jewish intellectuals such as T.W. Adorno and Albert Einstein. Now, three universities in Norway turned down the Jewish lawyer and author Alan Dershowitz, who had offered free lectures on Israel and international law.

Jews in Norway are just 0.003 percent of the total population, but Oslo is a bulwark of global anti-Semitism and Israel- slandering. What is the root of the Nordic hatred? Norway is the paradise of political correctness, multiculturalism and anti-war feelings. It's the country that, according to the Global Peace Index, for years has topped the list of the most “peaceful” places in the world. Oslo is, after all, the capital of the "Israeli-Palestinian Peace Accord".

But last year, the Norwegian government divested from two Israeli economic giants who work in Judea and Samaria. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund (that administers the oil profits) divested from the Israeli company Elbit, because it has worked on the Israeli fence that blocked the suicide bombers.

The author of the global literary phenomenon “Sophie’s World”, the national hero Jostein Gaarder, wished for the disappearance of Israel.

For years, anti-Semitic cartoons featured in the largest Norwegian newspapers. In the daily Dagbladet, the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appeared as the leader of a Nazi death camp.

Socialist leader Kristin Halvorsen is leading the campaigns to boycott Israel.

The state owned TV NRK has announced that it will screen the movie “Tears over Gaza”. The film’s director, Vibeke Løkkeberg, said in an interview, “I cannot see any difference between the Israeli warfare in Gaza and the massacres Qaddafi is conducting against Libyan insurgents”.

The hatred against Israel is spreading also in Sweden, another Scandinavian utopia, the ultra-secularized, ultra-liberal and anti-nationalistic beacon (the Danes are detested there as “chauvinists”), proud of its “lack of prejudice”.

Sweden handled its Soviet neighbour with kid gloves, despite the lack of civil rights there. This is the country that the Guardian described as “the greatest success the world has known”. Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are the dark side of the “folkhemmet”, which in Swedish means “the house of all the people”. It’s the multicultural ideology on which Stockholm has built its model of integration.

Sweden is a country that liked to call herself a “moral superpower” and where the welfare state pays for equipment for women who decide to change gender.

Sweden not only ranked among the world’s handful of richest countries, but also provided the world’s most lavish welfare state. It married solidarity to prosperity. But in the suburbs of the largest cities there are now “intifada against the police”.

Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, the capital of the prosperous province of Scania, has 270.000 inhabitants. But the city has a population that is almost 40 percent foreign and the Jews are leaving the city.

The Israeli national team of Taekwondo was forced to cancel its trip to Sweden due to “security reasons”.

If the burgeoning of anti-Semitism in Norway has a long tradition, in the twentieth century Sweden was one of the most welcoming lands to Jews. Many Jews took refuge in Sweden fleeing the Third Reich and almost all the Danish Jews found a safe haven in Sweden.

Now the slandering of the Jews and Israel is part of the national consensus. The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet has even suggested that Israeli soldiers are transplanting organs from dead Palestinians.

In the Swedish streets we hear again “Jävla jude”, whch means “damn Jew”. Meanwhile, the most famous Swedish writer, Henning Mankell, who spends much of his time working to fight AIDS and illiteracy in Mozambique, sailed to Gaza aboard the ship of Turkish terrorists.

In all due honesty, who knows if Sweden ever had any common sense to begin with? Raoul Wallenberg was a wonderful man, but he was but one person, and though Jews in Scandanavia during WW2 may have found a lucky place to live thanks in part to his efforts, it's possible that long term, the public mindset wasn't entirely to their favor.

I call this whole case "Viking mentality", because, let us consider, Scandanavia was the part of Europe where the Viking barbarians came from, including Iceland. I would wager that their vicious culture from remote times is what led to their modern anti-semitism. The Vikings were also a fairly sexist society, and if Sweden is actually going to pay for transvestism operations, let's just say that this too could stem from that ancient culture they had.

And aside from that, I think it's high time a boycott of their imports/exports was in order too. We could do without their Volvos, Saabs and Scanias, for example. And, we could do well to avoid buying clothes at H&M, a department store chain owned in Sweden, which now operates a chain in Israel. Indeed, why are Israelis not avoiding their products too?