Norway's soccer coach joins boycott movement
Norway's soccer coach joins boycott movementIsrael news photo montage

Norway’s elite, who have led one of the world’s most intense anti-Israeli campaigns, now has attracted its national soccer coach to call for a boycott.

National soccer team coach Egil Drillo Olsen recently wrote in Norway’s popular Aftenposten newspaper 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."

He joined 100 other famous Norwegians who have signed a petition for a cultural and academic boycott of Israel, which they accuse of ”apartheid.”

The government of Norway officially opposes boycott efforts but the government’s foreign minister last year wrote for a book in which he accused Israeli soldiers of intentionally killing Gaza women and children. He also compared the Operation Cast Lead counterterrorist campaign with Nazi operations.

Last week, Israel charged that the Norwegian foreign ministry funded a play called “Gaza Monologues,” in which pictures were displayed of a blood-soaked Israel flag and of dead Arab children.

Responding to the play and a documentary and book that Israel says “demonize” the Jewish State, Norwegian authorities stated that it does not interfere with artistic freedom of speech.

The background of Norway’s strong anti-Israel campaign is the country’s domination by “a political, media and cultural elite with deep-rooted anti-Israeli attitudes stemming from their political world view," according to researcher Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, quoted by the French news agency AFP.

He added that the anti-Israel effort in Norway “poses a threat to Israel because it may be the place where precedents are set in the campaign to delegitimize Israel."