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Pour diffusion immédiate

Lettre ouverte du Centre Wiesenthal au peuple de Norvège dans le quotidien Aftenposten (Oslo)

Paris, le 8 août 2006

Le directeur des relations internationales du Centre Simon Wiesenthal, M. Shimon Samuels, a adressé une "Lettre ouverte à la Norvège" en réponse à la tribune publiée le 5 août par le quotidien d’Oslo, Aftenposten, de Jostein Gaarder, sous le titre "Le peuple élu de Dieu" [God’s Chosen People]

In fine, la traduction anglaise de l’article de Gaarder.

LETTRE OUVERTE DU CENTRE SIMON WIESENTHAL À LA NORVÈGE.

Jostein Gaarder, auteur du chef-d’œuvre littéraire "Le Monde de Sophie" est tombé sérieusement malade, soit de malveillance, soit, peut-être de la maladie d’Alzheimer, voire des deux à la fois.

Bien que fort des traductions de son best-seller en 53 langues, et ses 26 millions d’exemplaires vendus, beaucoup de ses lecteurs vont regretter la perte de clairvoyance, de cohérence dont souffre actuellement Gaarder, mais, sans doute plus encore, le fait qu’il ait été recruté par les forces de l’obscurité.

Son article publié par votre quotidien le 5 août a étalé sa connaissance superficielle de la Bible et la paranoïa judéophobique qui hante ses cauchemars. Nous appelons le peuple norvégien à fustiger son message. Obsédé par les Juifs, en leur qualité de "peuple élu", Gaarder régurgite la définition antisémite classique de cette population en la présentant comme "arrogante et dominatrice".

Je me souviens de ce dicton, dans mon enfance : "Quelle idée, de la part de Dieu, de choisir les Juifs!", et de sa réplique: "Pas si étonnant que ça, que les Juifs aient choisi Dieu". Cette auto-affirmation est certes dérangeante pour les tyrans - comme écho de liberté, diversité et conscience – le Juif, comme témoin, ayant été "le phare des nations" au cours des âges. Non pas en prétendant détenir la vérité absolue, mais en tant que système d’alarme important, ou précoce, car ce qui commence avec les Juifs est souvent un baromètre pour la condition humaine.

Quand les autres ne voient pas clair, comme en 1933 avec l’hitlérisme, et aujourd’hui avec le terrorisme fanatique djihadiste, le fléau nous entraîne – tous - dans les abîmes.

L’antisémite croit que le salut viendra de l’extinction de cette lumière juive. Pour Gaarder, le "Bon Samaritain" n’est pas le "Pharisien" (nom de code pour Juif) mais le "Palestinien", de même que, pour d’autres, le terrorisme du Hezbollah fait partie intégrante de l’éventail politique libanais.

Gaarder va plus loin qu’aucun antisémite contemporain : "Sans défense, sans peau ... Si la nation israélienne toute entière tombait et qu’une partie de la population était obligée de fuir vers une autre diaspora, alors nous disons: que leur entourage reste calme et leur témoigne de la pitié. C’est un crime éternel de porter la main sur des réfugiés et un peuple sans Etat. Pour les populations civiles évacuées désormais non protégées par un Etat, paix et libre passage. Ne tirez pas sur les fugitifs ! Ne les prenez pas pour cibles ! Ils sont maintenant vulnérables, comme des escargots sans coquille ! ... Donnez asile aux réfugiés israéliens, donnez leur du lait et du miel!"

Gaarder désire ardemment l’extinction de la flamme de la souveraineté juive et l’errance juive éternelle pour vivre, une fois encore, dans la tolérance européenne, la marche vers la mort – cette fois, avec du "lait et du miel".

La Norvège ne cherche certainement pas à se rendre complice de ce remake du "Crépuscule des Dieux".

Gaarder prétend que "les Israélites ont acclamé ... les plaies du Seigneur comme 'punition adaptée' au peuple égyptien." Il ignore tout de la liturgie juive. Nos prières quotidiennes rappellent la tristesse de la noyade dans la Mer rouge des troupes du Pharaon qui poursuivaient les Hébreux afin de les égorger.

De même, nous nous affligeons des victimes libanaises du Hezbollah, brutalement utilisées comme boucliers humains et nous déplorons une guerre imposée à Israël par un plan iranien.

Gaarder conclut, "Qu’aucun enfant israélien ne paie de sa vie" ce même article où il dresse le décor en vue de l’extermination de tous les enfants israéliens.

Nous ne ferons pas ce plaisir à Gaarder ni à ceux qu’il veut apaiser. La souveraineté juive a fait son retour dans l’Histoire. Le Juif errant appartient au passé, tout comme Gaarder et ses semblables.

Nous attendons que les Norvégiens honnêtes élèvent la voix pour condamner bruyamment Gaarder, en prenant conscience que le sort des Juifs est un signal d’alarme pour l’ensemble l’humanité.

Salutations distinguées,

Dr. Shimon Samuels,
Directeur des relations internationales

God's Chosen People

By Jostein Gaarder, Aftenposten 05.08.06

Israel is now history. We no longer recognize the State of Israel. There is no way back. The State of Israel has raped the world’s recognition and will not achieve peace until it lays down its arms. The State of Israel, in its present form is history, writes Jostein Gaarder.

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

We don’t believe in the notion of God's Chosen People. We laugh at this people's capriciousness and weep at its misdeeds. To act as God's Chosen People is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.

Limits to tolerance
There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance. We do not believe in divine promises as a justification for occupation and apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind. We laugh uneasily at those who still believe that the god of flora, fauna and the galaxies has selected one people in particular as his favorite and given it silly, stone tablets, burning bushes and a license to kill.

We call baby killers “baby killers” and will never accept that people such as these have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages. We just say: Shame on all apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing and shame on every terrorist strike against civilians whether carried out by Hamas, the Hezbollah or the State of Israel!

Unscrupulous art of war
We acknowledge, and pay heed to, Europe's deep responsibility for the plight of the Jews, for the disgraceful harassment, the pogroms and the Holocaust. It was historically and morally necessary for the Jews to get their own home. However, the State of Israel, with its unscrupulous art of war and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically flaunted International Law, international conventions, and countless UN resolutions and can no longer expect protection from the same. It has carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The Tribulation will soon be over. The State of Israel has seen its Soweto.

We are now at the watershed. There’s no turning back. The State of Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until it lays down its arms.

Without defense, without skin
May the spirit and the word blow the apartheid walls of Israel down. The State of Israel does not exist. It is now without defense, without skin. May the world therefore have mercy upon the civilian population; for our prophecies of doom are not aimed at the civilian individuals.

We wish the people of Israel well, nothing but wellness, but we reserve the right to not eat Jaffa oranges as long as they are foul tasting and poisonous. It was endurable for some years to live without eating the blue grapes of apartheid.

They celebrate their triumphs
We don’t believe that Israel grieves any more for the forty killed Lebanese children than it has wailed over the forty years spent in the desert three thousand years ago. We note that many Israelis celebrate such triumphs in the same manner they once cheered the plagues of the Lord as "fitting punishment" for the people of Egypt. (In that tale, the Lord God of Israel appears as an insatiable sadist.) We ask ourselves if most Israelis think that one Israeli life is worth more than the forty Palestinian or Lebanese lives.

For we’ve seen pictures of little Israeli girls writing hateful greetings on the bombs about to be dropped on the civilian populations of Lebanon and Palestine. The little Israeli girls are not cute when they strut with glee at the death and torment on the other side of the fronts.

The retribution of blood vengeance
We do not recognize the rhetoric of the State of Israel. We do not recognize the spiral of retribution and blood vengeance that comes with "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." We do not recognize the principle of ten or a thousand Arab eyes for one Israeli eye. We do not recognize collective punishment or population thinning out as a political weapon. Two thousand years have passed since a Jewish rabbi criticized the ancient doctrine of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

He said: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." We do not recognize a state founded on anti-humanistic principles and on the ruins of an archaic national and warlike religion. Or, as Albert Schweitzer expressed it: "Humanitarianism consists of never sacrificing a human being for a cause."

Compassion and forgiveness
We do not recognize the old Kingdom of David as a model for the 21st century map of the Middle East. The Jewish rabbi claimed two thousand years ago that the Kingdom of God is not a martial restoration of the Kingdom of David; the Kingdom of God is within us and amongst us. The Kingdom of God is compassion and forgiveness.

Two thousand years have passed since the Jewish rabbi disarmed and thoroughly humanized the old rhetoric of war. Even in his time, the first Zionist terrorists were operating.

Israel doesn’t listen
For two thousand years, we have rehearsed the syllabus of humanism, but Israel doesn’t listen. It wasn’t the Pharisee who helped the man who lay by the wayside, having fallen prey to robbers. It was a Samaritan; today we would say, a Palestinian. We are humans firstly - then Christian, Muslim, or Jew. Or as the Jewish rabbi said: "And if you greet your brethren only, what more do you do than others?" We do not accept the kidnapping of soldiers. But neither 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. ‘The Palestinians have so many other countries’, certain Israeli politicians have argued; we have only one.

The U.S. or the world?
Or as the foremost protector of the State of Israel puts it: "May God continue to bless America." A little child took note of that. She turned to her mother, saying: "Why does the President always end his speeches with 'God bless America'? Why not, 'God bless the world'?"

Then there was a Norwegian poet who let out this childlike sigh of the heart: "Why doth Humanity so slowly progress?" It was he who wrote so beautifully of the Jew and the Jewess. But he rejected the notion of God's Chosen People. He personally liked to call himself a Muslim.

Calmness and mercy
We do not recognize the State of Israel. Not today, not as of this writing, not in the hour of grief and wrath. If the entire Israeli nation should fall to its own devices and parts of the population has to flee their occupied areas into another Diaspora, then we say: May their surroundings stay calm and show them mercy. It is an eternal crime, without mitigating circumstances, to lay hand on refugees and a stateless people.

Peace and free passage for the evacuating, civilian population no longer protected by a State. Shoot not at the fugitives! Take not aim at them! They are vulnerable now -- like snails without shells, vulnerable as slow caravans of the Palestinian and Lebanese refugees, defenseless as the women, children and elderly of Qana, Gaza, Sabra and Shatilla. Give the Israeli refugees shelter; give them milk and honey!

Let not one Israeli child pay with his life. Far too many children and civilians have already been murdered.

Pour plus d’informations, veuillez contacter Shimon Samuels au +33 6 09 77 01 58.