Israel Hayom..
01 September '16..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=17065
One of the world's northernmost inhabited places is Longyearbyen, a small town of about 2,000 people in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.
Svalbard is a place of indescribable beauty, filled with an untouched arctic wilderness that will leave you in constant awe, simply grateful to be alive to witness such staggering wonders: untouched arctic landscapes, blueish glaciers and frozen tundra, which is home to an arctic wildlife that includes polar bears.
Indeed, the most dangerous neighbors a human being can come across in Svalbard are polar bears, which is why it is prohibited to venture outside Longyearbyen without a weapon.
Longyearbyen's residents come from all over the world and the place feels as far removed from any kind of international politics as you could possibly imagine.
Ever since my husband and I visited this place, we have spoken about going back, and my husband has even taken to reading Svalbardposten -- the world's northernmost newspaper.
It was during the perusal of this usually apolitical source of news -- it is not uncommon for nine out of 10 headlines to include polar bears in some form or other -- that my husband jumped from his chair, pointing to the computer screen in horror. I looked at the headline, which said, "Boycott Israel!"
So there it was: the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement had made its way to the northernmost inhabited place on earth. The text was a letter to the editor, written last summer by a local priest, Leif Magne Helgesen, in which he was peddling the most outlandish claims, including that Israel is "a military regime" and encouraging his fellow Longyearbyen residents to boycott Israel. The priest had spent his summer vacation in a Palestinian Arab village and had returned a full-fledged BDS warrior, ready to go against Israel, which he continued throughout his lengthy diatribe to describe as a "regime."
There is something deeply ironic, tragicomically so, about a priest who does his business in the northernmost spot on earth, surrounded only by the Creator's beauty and the occasional scare from a polar bear, isolated from the rest of the world and certainly from the issues of the Middle East, venting his anti-Semitic fury and rage at a country that could not possibly be further removed from him than Israel. It is also telling that this man is, of all things, a priest.
Unfortunately, it should not surprise us. Svalbard belongs to Norway, which according to a recent report by watchdog group NGO Monitor, has recently joined Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands in contributing funds to an organization funding NGOs that promote a boycott of Israel. According to the Norwegian Foreign Ministry's website, 5 million Norwegian kroner (over $600,000) was allocated to the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (HR/IHL) Secretariat in the second half of 2016. According to the NGO Monitor report, the "HR/IHL Secretariat is an intermediary that distributes funds to nongovernmental organizations ... active in BDS ... campaigns and other forms of demonization against Israel. It is managed by the Institute of Law at Birzeit University (IoL-BZU) in Ramallah and the NIRAS consulting firm, based in Sweden."
Also according to the report, "80% of the HR/IHL Secretariat's distributions are allocated to core NGO funding. NGO Monitor research shows that out of 24 core recipients, 13 support BDS, receiving $5.78 million (more than half) out of an operating budget of $10.38 million over the course of four years. Some grantees have also promoted anti-Semitic rhetoric and have apparent links to the PFLP terrorist organization. Core group members receiving funding include BADIL, Al-Haq, Addameer and MIFTAH, all vehemently anti-Israel NGOs at the forefront of BDS campaigns."
How surprising is it, then, that a Norwegian citizen, even in such a remote and apolitical place such as Longyearbyen, joins the BDS bandwagon? It is not surprising at all.
Official Norway, naturally, denies all wrongdoing. This was the response of the Norwegian Embassy in Israel to the findings of NGO Monitor: "We do not find their characterizations to be representative of the work that these organizations are doing. Norway does not tolerate hate speech, efforts to delegitimize Israel, or anti-Semitism and have close dialogue with all our partners to make sure this is understood. ... Norway does not provide financial support to organizations whose main goal is to promote the BDS campaign."
How lovely it would be if Norwegians could just stick to looking out for polar bears instead of pathetically attempting to meddle in Israel's business and then not even having the backbone to admit it.
Judith Bergman is a writer and political analyst living in Israel.
Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blog
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