Gaarder on Israel

I had this urge to brush up my Norwegian last night and started reading Norwegian newspaper again when I came across Jostein Gaarder's op ed on Israel-Lebanon crisis. His harsh critics toward Israel policies titled "God's Chosen People" gain both support and criticism from in and out of Norway. As my Norwegian is not sufficient enough to do a decent translation, I put here excerpt from Sirocco's.

There is no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize the state of Israel. We could not recognize the South African apartheid regime, nor did we recognize the Afghan Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or the Serbs’ ethnic cleansing. We must now get used to the idea: The state of Israel in its current form is history.

...To act as God’s chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism...

There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance. We do not believe in divine promises as justification for occupation and apartheid...

We call child murderers ‘child murderers’ and will never accept that such have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages. We say but this: Shame on all apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on every terrorist strike against civilians, be it carried out by Hamas, Hizballah, or the state of Israel!

...For we are human first of all — then Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. Or as the Jewish rabbi said: “And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?” We do not accept the abduction of soldiers. But nor do we accept the deportation of whole populations or the abduction of legally elected parliamentarians and government ministers.

We recognize the state of Israel of 1948, but not the one of 1967. It is the state of Israel that fails to recognize, respect, or defer to the internationally lawful Israeli state of 1948. Israel wants more; more water and more villages. To obtain this, there are those who want, with God’s assistance, a final solution to the Palestinian problem...

To my understanding of this prophetic piece, Gaarder is not anti-semite, he is anti zionist policy of Israel which is a completely different thing. I think in this heartfelt appeal the author of Sophie's World uses some of his wording unwisely that can be interpreted as anti-semite. He is in fact stating an uplifting prospect of ending the apartheid in the region by saying 'But fear not! The time of trouble shall soon be over. The state of Israel has seen its Soweto.' This is refering to Soweto massacre in 1976 which was the turning point of apartheid movement in South Africa.

Today he published another op ed to clear up the misunderstanding and the translation of it can also be found at Sirocco's site. The op ed along with this article might give more insight about the intention behind his critic toward Israel's policy against Lebanon.