Saturday, July 22, 2006

POV Denmark, Israel-Lebanon conflict

Politics
About the Israel-Lebanon conflict, the Danish Foreign Minister, Per Stig Møller has said the usual litany:

"It's crucial, that the world community now make it clear for all the invovled parties, that further military actions are unacceptable, and that permanent solutions only can be achieved through negotiations"


But there has been no real statement from the government about this conflict. Some days ago I watched Per Stig Møller in an interview by one of the national Danish TV stations; Per Stig Møller was discontented with Israel, and said that it was unacceptable with the bombings of the infrastructure in Lebanon, and arrest of Hamas ministers. But I can't find any news that confirming (or rejecting) this.

Today there has been a meeting about the conflict but nothing from that meeting as been published (yet). However, two major critics, Villy Søvndal from SF and Jeppe Kofod from Social Democrats, who are very anti-Israel, was content with the meeting and said that for now "we have to look forward". They criticized the Danish government for being "too militaristic".

The good old concrete communist party, Enhedslisten, show their true anti-Semitic colors in this statement (from Rune Lund, the foreign spokesman):

"God's chosen people apparently has a divine right to make their own double standard logic and decide over other peoples lives."


Media
One thing that the Danish media really care about is the "biggest evacuation since WW2" of the mostly Danish Palestinian-Lebanese. There has been over 5000 evacuated, and this number keeps rising. A particular person being brought home is the head of the Danish Imams Ahmed Akkari that left Denmark during the cartoon controversy. Now he's coming back, and want to fight Israel from comfortable Denmark.

Dansk Folkeparti (anti-immigrant party) has proposed to control if any of these evacuated persons cheat on the Danish welfare system, which, by the left-winged and media especially, has been an outrageous statement. While you might get pretty suspicious to this large number of evacuated people, DF doesn't seam to have any kind of documentation for this. They actually states themselves that it is a myth. Sheesh.

Edit: I might be wrong on this. The State Department at first only had count on 1000 people (the media was good to assure that they were DANISH DANES). This has rising to over 5 times the original. Most of the evacuated are palestinian refugees. And most likely many of these are getting assistance from the state. Further being Danish is extended to even include people that has residence permit. The myth part was probably just so the media and leftists would swallow it easier. Also, one of the evacuated has been arrested. He has kidnapped his daughter to Lebanon, but with this conflict he returned to Denmark. I guess it's a pretty good idea to check this. After all, Danes (and not the muslim ones) are being treated worse than dirt when it comes to these kind of things.

Citizens
In the average population I'm having a hard time to find people who actually have a grip of what is going on. At least people doesn't seams to condemn Israel right away. In the Danish blog world it is mostly the statement from DF that is discussed lately.

Demonstrations
There was demostrations yesterday. 2 against and 1 for Israel. Here's an image from the pro-Israeli demonstration (it's the Danish Chief Rabbi, Bent Lexner that speaks in the image).



It was estimated to about 200 people. See more here.

Then there was a demonstration supporting Hizbollah.



I can't find much information about this particular demonstration but they probably aren't much different from the other demonstration: A great Hizb-ut Tahrir demonstration, under the parole "Stop the jewstate's terror against Lebanon and Palestine".



Estimated to 500-1000 people. More photos on the demonstration here.

They seams to have remembered most; Nasrallah glorification, gender dividing, anti-Semitic and anti-Western statements, prodaganda images (one stating "Bush: Jews has a right for self-defense !!" [The one far right]).

Personally I can't see that the Danes has fully decided which side to stand on. I'm waiting for a response from the government on this conflict.

Edit: I thought a little about this. Actually I think most Danes just not care anymore. There might be much anti-semitism, and general acknowledgment that Israel is not really a good state (sadly), but Danes surely can't stand the arabs anymore.

2 comments:

Esther said...

How do you know the Danish-Lebanese are Palestinian? Can you give a source, please?

I have been looking all over, trying to find a source telling whether the thousands of foreign nationality holding refugees from Lebanon are Muslims or Christians.

Esther said...

DS,

Thanks for the extensive reply!

I wrote up a reply, but it got erased, so I'll just give the short version.

I went to the Danish statistics site you gave and found out that there are 22,000 Lebanese in Denmark. Around 18,000 hold Danish passports, and are divided half immigrants, half 2nd generation+. This fits in with another link I found which said there are 4,000 Lebanese in Denmark. I suppose this means there are about 4,000 Lebanese in Denmark who do not hold Danish citizenship.