Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”
Just when you think the worldwide anti-Israel brigade can’t do worse in expressing its hatred of the tiny Jewish state, someone, or some group, comes along to outdo the others. This Hanukkah, the prize goes to… the country of Norway, or rather to the Socialist Left Party in Norway. More on how it chose to celebrate Hanukkah can be found here: “Norway’s Socialist Left Party Sparks Outrage With Hanukkah Ceremony ‘For the People of Palestine,’” by Ailin Vilches Arguello, Algemeiner, December 22, 2025:
A political party in Norway sparked outrage within the local Jewish community after holding a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony “for the people of Palestine,” the latest controversy tied to the party’s long-standing anti-Israel record as the Norwegian government continues its hostile stance toward the Jewish state.
On Sunday, Norway’s Socialist Left Party, widely regarded as the most anti-Israel party in the Norwegian parliament, organized a public gathering during the holiday of Hanukkah to light a menorah. However, the party dedicated the ceremony “to the victims in Palestine,” rather than honoring the Jewish tradition, which celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, and the freedom of Jewish faith and culture.
“Today we lit candles to mark Hanukkah – together with Jewish Voices for Just Peace and The Palestinian Committee. This is what solidarity is all about. Standing up to injustice, no matter where. Standing together for human dignity, no matter who,” the party wrote in a post on Instagram.
“The marking emphasizes the struggle for the liberation of all people and against antisemitism and racism,” the statement read. “Values that know no boundaries based on religion or ethnicity, but about which we all can and must unite. No one is free until everyone is free.”
This latest controversy follows diplomatic tensions that were sparked last month when pro-Palestinian Norwegian organizations held a ceremony in Oslo to commemorate an infamous 1938 Nazi pogrom, drawing parallels between Nazi atrocities and Israel’s defensive military campaign in Gaza.
On Nov. 9, 1938, Nazi paramilitary forces launched a coordinated nationwide attack on the German Jewish community — burning synagogues, destroying homes and businesses, and deporting thousands — a violent event that has come to be remembered as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass.
The onslaught left at least 91 Jews dead and 30,000 Jewish men arrested and sent to concentration camps. Over 7,000 Jewish-owned stores were looted.
“This is not a joke. One of the parties represented in Norway’s Parliament, the Socialist Left Party, chose this week to light a public menorah in central Oslo — ‘for the people of Palestine and the victims there,’” Swedish Jewish journalist Daniel Schatz wrote in a post on X.
“A Jewish symbol, tied to the holiday of Hanukkah, was deliberately appropriated to advance an anti-Israel agenda,” Schatz continued.
“This took place the very same week Jews were massacred in Australia,” he added, referring to the deadly attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach that killed 15 people and wounded at least 40 others. “If this is where Norway’s political culture stands, then yes — Norway is lost.”…
Norway’s relationship with the Jewish state has deteriorated significantly after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which ignited the war in Gaza, with Oslo becoming one of the most outspokenly hostile countries toward Jerusalem on the global stage.
Yes, it all makes sense, in a topsy-turvical hideous sort of way. Six thousand members of Hamas, and several hundred Gazan civilians, smash into Israel, where they proceed to rape, torture, mutilate, and murder 1,200 Israelis and kidnap 253, on October 7, 2023, and since then Norway has become ever more hostile, not to Hamas, but to Israel, for daring to fight back against its tormentors who, if they could, would murder every last Jew in Israel.
Many Norwegians want to see Israel squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines, which would leave it stripped of territory vital to its defense, including the Jordan Valley, and with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea, which would allow an invasion force from the east to cut the country in two in a matter of hours. And on the land Israel would be forced to surrender, a “state of Palestine” — already recognized by Norway — would be created, that would serve, as Gaza did after 2005 when Israel pulled out of the Strip, as a launching pad for attacks on Israel.
And some Norwegians want Israel to disappear altogether, to be replaced by a 23rd Arab state.
The Socialist Left Party in Norway has just twisted the solemn Jewish ceremony of Hanukkah to celebrate, not a miracle of Jewish history, but those who would, if they could, destroy the Jewish state and most of its inhabitants. In World War II, Vidkun Quisling was the pro-Nazi traitor who ruled Norway during the German occupation. Now Norway itself, in turning so hideously on Israel, and embracing the jihadists who threaten it, has become a quisling to the entire West.
