Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel and the Jews

25 November 2008

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

in collaboration with

The Simon Wiesenthal Center - Israel Office

The third event of the Eighth Herbert Berman Memorial Series

Tuesday, 25 November 2008, 27 Heshvan 5769, 10:00 AM

at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 13 Tel Hai Street

Symposium

Amb. Zvi Mazel, Dr. Efraim Zuroff,

and Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

Behind the Humanitarian Mask:

The Nordic Countries, Israel and the Jews

This book edited by Dr. Gerstenfeld analyzes the attitude of the Nordic countries toward Israel and the Jews. In the past decades many pioneering efforts to demonize Israel have come from elites of the Nordic countries. The motifs of this anti-Israelism are similar to those of classic anti-Semitism, of which it is a new mutation. Such highly discriminatory prejudices are in particular expressed in Norway and Sweden by leading socialist and extreme-leftist politicians as well as journalists, clergy and so-called humanitarians. Behind the Nordic countries' appearance and oft-proclaimed concern for human rights lurk darker attitudes. This book deals mainly with lifting the humanitarian mask as far as Israel and Jews are concerned. This disguise hides many ugly characteristics such as false morality, a pretense of superiority, as well as profound humanitarian racism.