Subscribe to Print Edition | Mon., January 26, 2009 Shvat 1, 5769 | | Israel Time: 09:19 (EST+7)
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Oslo parties demand censure of envoy who likened Gaza op to Holocaust
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Tags: gaza, norway, Israel News 

A Norwegian diplomat who this week sent out an email equating Israel's Gaza invasion to the Holocaust has prompted several political parties in Oslo to demand the kingdom's foreign ministry publicly denounce the letter.

On Tuesday Norwegian media reported that the mail was sent from the ministry's email account belonging to Trine Lilleng, a first secretary at Norway's embassy in Saudi Arabia.

The letter contained gory images of slain children said to have been killed in the Israeli attack on Hamas in Gaza, juxtaposed with photos of Holocaust victims in seemingly correlating situations.
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One photo showed the charred remains of casualties from Gaza next to burned bodies from a Nazi death camp. Others showed Arab children behind fences next to Jewish children in ghettos, and Israeli troops next to Nazi Wehrmacht soldiers.

Lilleng apparently did not write the mail, but merely forwarded it. She did however, write: "I always wondered why they didn't learn anything from the horror during WWII. Now I see what they learnt [mistake in original text]."

MP Morten Hoglund from Norway's Progress Party, the country's second largest, told Haaretz on Thursday that the letter would not have been sent if it were not for "unrestrained verbal aggression against Israel and an uneven approach by the Norwegian government, which made the diplomat feel comfortable enough to send this hateful mail."

Hoglund, who is a member of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Enlarged Foreign Affairs Committee, added that his party is drafting a formal complaint to the foreign ministry on the matter.

In the government's only reaction to the incident, a spokesperson for the ministry told a Norwegian television station that the diplomat's actions do not represent the government's views. But Høglund says that given the "severity of the case, the ministry is not taking this case seriously."

The Norwegian embassy in Tel Aviv and the foreign ministry's media center in Oslo did not respond to Haaretz's queries on the subject.

Norway's fifth largest party, the Christian Democratic Party, has already filed a critical query with the ministry on the matter, in which it asked whether the ministry intends to reprimand the diplomat who sent the letter. The query was co-signed by members of several other large parties.
"We did it to fight against the anti-Semitism whose growth we are now seeing all over the world, and in Norway especially," Christian Democrat MP Ingebrigt S. Sørfonn told Haaretz. "We were shocked by this email, and we cannot accept it."

Erez Uriely, director of the Center Against Anti-Semitism in Norway, said that "although Norwegian media may create the impression that Israel does not have friends in Oslo, the opposite is true.
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Disturbing trend
Jewish Agency says Anti-Semitic acts in Jan. 2009 triple last year's records.
After the war
IDF gains in Gaza have softened Israel's stance on Shalit deal.
  1.   Triumph of the false analogies 18:24  |  Peter 22/01/09
  2.   Is is despicable 19:08  |  Stem Cell 22/01/09
  3.   Her blog has been finally removed. Like Der Stuermer 19:25  |  semsem 22/01/09
  4.   Her blog from Google cache 20:11  |  Steve 22/01/09
  5.   Her Blog 20:35  |  Steve 22/01/09
  6.   response to your comment 20:42  |  lisa 22/01/09
  7.   Stem Cell-let`s complete the analogies... 23:09  |  Howard 22/01/09
  8.   You can not compare 23:23  |  jaiem 22/01/09
  9.   #8 Jaiem: AND..... 01:32  |  Noach 23/01/09
  10.   OSLO KVETCHING 02:21  |  CHOSEN WORLD 23/01/09
  11.   truth is always hard to accept 02:33  |  John 23/01/09
  12.   #10 Response 04:06  |  Noach 23/01/09
  13.   Norway Responds 05:07  |  Tuvea 23/01/09
  14.   I want the world to know that God of Israel 05:50  |  Maria 23/01/09
  15.   Noach # 12 response to your 12 04:37  |  American in NY 24/01/09
  16.   Gaza OP like the Shoah? 19:16  |  Joseph 24/01/09
  17.   I`ve seen this email 02:29  |  Janice 25/01/09
  18.   Howard 06:55  |  Marilyn 26/01/09
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