European Jewish Press reports:
One hundred famous Norwegians, led by the country’s national football coach, have signed a petition demanding a cultural and academic boycott of Israel, accusing its educational institutions of “playing a key role in the occupation” and equating it with apartheid.
A Norwegian ex-premier denounced their boycott call.
Egil Drillo Olsen, coach for the national Norwegian football team, recently wrote in Aftenposten, the country’s second largest paper, that the call to boycott Israel was “in line with what 90 percent of the world’s population believes. There cannot be many other opinions.”
I’d be interested to see the data which support this assertion, but never mind. Does this mean Olsen would refuse to coach the Norwegian team against the Israeli national team (which includes Arabs and Jews)?
The petition is the last item in a string of similar and high-profile initiatives to have taken place in Norway over the past two years. It was signed by coach Olsen and 99 other public figures from the arts and culture, who stated that a boycott is “necessary” not only to help Palestinians, but also to “support Israelis opposing the occupation.”
Unless one of the other 99 is Liv Ullmann (and I doubt that), I’m sure I’ve never heard of any of them. And other than a vocal few, did “Israelis opposing the occupation” ask for this “support”?
Norwegian former Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik called the boycott call “unhelpful” and “not representative” of the current government’s policy.
