From 2005 to 2013, writes Manfred Gerstenfeld, Norway’s government was the most hostile toward Israel in all of Europe, and both hostility toward Israel and outright anti-Semitism were on the rise in the country as a whole. The situation has improved since 2013, when the Norwegian Conservative party won an electoral victory, ending eight years of the Labor party’s rule. Against most predictions, the recent elections returned the Conservatives to office. Gerstenfeld comments:

[If] the Labor leader, Jonas Gahr Stoere, would have become prime minister, . . . it is likely that Norway would have joined Sweden sooner or later in recognizing a [Palestinian state]. . . .

[The previous Labor prime minister] was not so much an anti-Israeli inciter himself as he was tolerant of such incitement by his party and allies. At several venues where he spoke, there were brutal verbal attacks on Israel while he remained silent. By not confronting these attacks he condoned them. As for his successor Stoere, his anti-Israelism reached an extreme point when he wrote a blurb legitimizing a book by two Norwegian Hamas supporters [who] claimed that Israel entered the Gaza Strip in 2009 to kill women and children.

[But] Stoere always played both sides. In January 2009, the most anti-Semitic riots that ever took place in Norway happened in Oslo. Muslims attacked pro-Israel demonstrators with potentially lethal projectiles. Stoere visited the Oslo synagogue afterward to express his solidarity with the Jewish community. . . .

Many often underestimate the importance of Norway because the country is not a member of the European Union and has only about 5 million inhabitants. Yet its huge gas and oil income has enabled it to make important donations abroad, including to Palestinian causes.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.