Norway’s Center Against Racism announced plans to hold a Kristallnacht memorial event on Sunday under the banner of “fighting racism,” with one central topic being the Middle East situation, specifically focusing on the Palestinian situation in Gaza. The taxpayer-funded organization claims Zionism equals racism and that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and according to reports, Norway’s prime minister confirmed his attendance at the event rather than the Jewish community ceremony at Oslo’s community institutions.
Center director Omar Ashraf labeled one of the community’s senior members, Erwin Kohn, as an “extremist voice” after Kohn accused Amnesty International of antisemitism following the organization’s one-sided stance against Israel. Event organizers invited Jonathan Shapira, a peace activist in an international anti-Israel organization known for his accusatory statements against Israel before and after October 7, to speak.
“While the Jewish community holds a memorial event for the horrific event that occurred on Kristallnacht, a non-Jewish organization that opposes Zionism and the State of Israel, which recently released a report examining racism against Palestinians in Norway with almost complete disregard for Jewish suffering in the country, will hold a ‘memorial event’ where it takes the disaster that befell the Jewish people and exploits it for the false narrative it builds against the State of the Jews – as if Israelis and Jews who support Israel are the new Nazis. It’s simply unbelievable,” a source in Norway’s Jewish community said.