Norway's deplorable choice for Nobel Prize candidate - opinion

While numerous countries condemn the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in the Middle East, Norwegian MP Asmund Aukrust, vice chairman of Norway’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, has submitted it as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Yes, that’s right.

Ostensibly a humanitarian aid organization, UNRWA has de facto ties to Palestinian terrorism, with several of its employees actively involved in assisting Hamas during the massacre and kidnapping of Israelis on October 7.

As the number of nations declaring Hamas a terrorist organization mounts, UNRWA heads sit quietly by in anticipation of being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as if they were not party to aiding a terror group.

Hamas computers and state-of-the-art communication and intelligence systems have been uncovered beneath UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters. UNRWA members have been unmasked as terrorists who, for years, have smuggled weapons hidden inside UNRWA bags into Israel. Kalashnikov rifles, RPG warheads, weapons magazines, IEDs, and hand grenades are among the weapons found in – and confiscated from – Gaza’s UNRWA warehouses.

This is the same UNRWA that has been put forward as a Nobel Peace Prize candidate for its “70 years of service for Palestine refugees.”

The heights of shame and insolence have been reached.

Norway legitimizing UNRWA

To its eternal shame, Norway is bestowing legitimacy upon UNRWA, an organization that should have been dismantled long ago, allowing it to continue committing its crimes.

This ignoble idea originates from Norway’s parliament. A country that maintains diplomatic relations with Israel has not even bothered to condemn the criminal and barbaric massacre of October 7, in defiance of dozens of countries that, shocked by the brutal attack, have issued condemnations of Hamas.

For more than 70 years, UNRWA teachers have equipped the children that they have been educating with a weapon as deadly as any other: a burning hatred of Jews, inculcating them with the notion that Jews are the “children of death.” This weapon is the ideology in the name of which they embodied that hatred, translating it into actions on October 7. That is UNRWA, and that is its aim.

Now, Norway is taking yet another step against the Jewish state, boldly warning Israel not to enter Rafah and the Philadelphi Corridor, where the heads of the Hamas snake are likely hiding. Thus, Norway may be allowing the creation of an escape route for terrorists.

Instead of protecting the Jews in Norway from Arab lawbreakers, the Norwegian government pointedly blames the local harassment of Jews on the war in Israel.

The deterioration of relations between Norway and Israel, which had seen ups and downs, reached a low point following the IDF’s invasion of Lebanon.

In 2017, Norway’s Confederation of Trade Unions voted for a full economic, cultural, and academic boycott of Israel against the backdrop of Norway’s demand for the establishment of a Palestinian state. During World War II, Norway adopted a policy of neutrality, and today it is one of the only two countries where Nazi war criminals can no longer be prosecuted.

Norway persists in this neutrality by sitting on the fence when, in Israel, more than 1,200 men, women, and children were brutally massacred by a Nazi-like terrorist organization that currently still holds some 134 people hostage, whose lives are in danger every day. 

Norway is turning a blind eye to war crimes, trampling international humanitarian law, and behaving in a manner that contravenes every international treaty. And all of this as the State of Israel fights for its life against the same radical Islam that is slowly overtaking Norway and other European countries. This is not “neutrality.” This is complicity.

By the time the Norwegians awake from their stupor, the Norway they knew will no longer be the same. One wonders whom they will blame.

The writer is CEO of Radios 100fm, honorary consul, deputy dean of the Diplomatic Consular Corps, and vice president of the Ambassadors Club of Israel.