Celebrating Hamas in Norway

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The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), which is located in Trondheim, is considered the second-best institution of higher education in Norway, excelled only by the University of Oslo itself. It should be no surprise, then, that like the universities that are purportedly America’s very best, it has a high level of tolerance – or perhaps the correct word is admiration – for expressions of sympathy with Islamic terrorism. One of the most esteemed members of its faculty, if awards and other forms of recognition are to be taken seriously, is one Bassam Hussein, who was supposedly born in Gaza, hired by NTNU in 2001, and named a full professor in 2023. On January 31, Hussein participated in a public tribute to the late Yahya Sinwar, who was supposedly the brains behind the October 7 attacks on Israel.

When the editors of the alternative (i.e. non-leftist) Norwegian news website Document became aware of Hussein’s involvement in this event, which was hosted by Norway’s notorious Palestine Committee, they emailed the president of NTNU, Tor Grande, asking whether he considered Hussein’s conduct appropriate for an NTNU professor. After waiting a week, they received this reply from one of Grande’s flunkies: “Freedom of speech is strong in Norway, and it is only the law that sets the limits. The question of whether a statement violates the law is one for the police or the judiciary.” As Bente Haarstad of Document noted, this broad view of freedom of speech did not seem to be in effect in 2018 when a member of NTNU’s psychology faculty submitted to an interview by another alternative Norwegian website, Resett, and was accused without evidence of posting a racist comment on Facebook. “NTNU tried to fire Eikren twice,” recalled Haarstad; the effort ended in a settlement. But a professor who endorsed the mastermind of October 7? No problem. Not surprising in a country where the political and academic establishments tried to use the 2011 terrorist actions of Anders Breivik to criminalize all criticism of Islam.

Hussein, as it turns out, wasn’t through celebrating October 7. On April 21, at another event – this one organized by the Socialist Forum, supported by Fritt Ord (Free Word), a foundation that is purportedly devoted to free expression, and hosted by Trondheim’s Litteraturhuset – Hassan described the atrocities of October 7 as “the most beautiful thing that has happened in our century.” (A full video of the event can be found on YouTube.) When Atle Hansson of Document asked him how he could say such a thing, he answered that October 7 was “the most important turning point in our history in Palestine and in the Levant.” As Hansson pointed out in his May 1 article about Hussein’s statements, Litteraturhuset “is mainly financed by tax money,” as channeled through the Ministry of Culture, Arts Council Norway, the city of Trondheim, and the county of Trøndelag. Hansson further noted in a follow-up article that Hussein’s field is not Middle Eastern history or anything like it; he teaches in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.

Grande, the valiant president of NTNU, refused to condemn Hussein’s latest remark, writing to NRK that Hussein had spoken in his capacity as a private individual, at an event that was not organized by NTNU, and on a subject that is unrelated to his work at NTNU.

So there. But while NTNU isn’t troubled by Hussein’s public statements, at least one national politician is. On Monday, Joel Ystebø, a 24-year-old member of the Norwegian Parliament who belongs to the Christian Democratic Party and represents a constituency on Norway’s west coast, submitted a written question to Sigrun Aasland, the Minister of Higher Education in the current Labor Party government. What, he asked, does she have to say about Hussein? Her answer, according to the Parliament’s website, “is expected, at the earliest, on May 13,” given that the schedule for Aasland’s May 6 “question time,” which occurs weekly, was already full. At Document, Hansson noted that at the time when Ystebø submitted his question, Aasland was attending a dinner at a mosque in Oslo.

A Norwegian university president’s refusal to criticize an employee for applauding the butchery of children is hardly surprising, of course. The hostility of Norway’s academic and cultural elites toward Israel and Jews, and their sympathy for Islamic terrorists, is an old story. Twenty years ago, Jostein Gaarder, author of the beloved novel Sophie’s World, published an op-ed entitled “God’s Chosen People” (Guds utvalgte folk), an expression of sheer Jew-hatred that was praised by many of Norway’s high and mighty. Over the years, it has been followed by any number of equally vile outbursts of antisemitism by prominent Norwegians. In August 2024, in response to Norway’s recognition of a Hamas-led Palestinian state, Israel expelled eight Norwegian diplomats; just a few days ago, Israel’s ambassador to Norway called on the Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities (HL-Senteret) to cancel a coming lecture that will draw moral equivalency between the Holocaust and the so-called Nakba (the removal of Arabs in 1948 from the newly formed state of Israel). It’s not the first time that the taxpayer-funded Center, which was founded to keep alive the memory of the Holocaust, has made clear that it’s more interested in demonizing Israel than in paying tribute to the memories of the six million.

Nor is it a surprise that it took Document, a website devoted largely on honest reporting about Islam, to break the news about Hussein’s remarks at Litteraturhuset. NRK, the government-run TV and radio network; VG, Norway’s largest newspaper; and Aftenposten, the traditional newspaper of record, didn’t get around to reporting on the Hussein story until May 4 or 5, and seemed to cover it only because by then the Jerusalem Post had run a May 3 account of Hussein’s remarks that was widely read in the U.S.

While Norway’s mainstream media were ignoring Bassam Hussein, whom were they preoccupied with? Answer: Hårek Hansen, an adviser for the Progress Party (FrP). Last weekend, having drinks at a downtown Oslo bar with FrP colleagues, Hansen referred to Pakistanis as “minus variants” (minusvarianter, a term, new to me, that’s apparently drawn from eugenics), said that ethnic Norwegians should be having more children and that non-ethnic Norwegians should be having fewer, and lamented that Western Europe “is going to hell anyway.” Hansen later admitted to having been inebriated at the time. The reason that this barroom conversation made the news is that two reporters for TV2 were present. TV2 didn’t hesitate to run with the story, which included a sound recording of Hansen’s comments, and the other major media quickly snapped up the story, treating it as if it were the biggest news in years. The angle everywhere was that Hansen’s drunken comments revealed that the FrP has a profound racism problem. (This smear on FrP, which dares to criticize Islam, is as old as the hills.) On Monday evening, the only topic discussed on NRK’s prime-time Debatten program was the “FrP racism scandal.”

Which is uglier: a professor at Norway’s #2 university who, in a set of prepared remarks delivered in a public forum, cheered the murder of babies, or an obscure party hack who, while getting drunk with colleagues, dared to suggest that if ethnic Norwegian couples want to preserve the country they love, they should produce more babies than the one or two (or none) that they have nowadays, while Pakistani-Norwegians, who traditionally produce large broods, should have fewer? Well, if you’re in the Norwegian media or academy or cultural elite, the answer is that the latter remark was far worse. Which goes to show that Hansen, intoxicated or not, was only speaking a painfully obvious truth when he said that Western Europe is going to hell.