They come thick and fast the revelations about tie ups between fascists and far-right racists in Europe and senior Israeli politicians. First we had an Israeli Deputy Minister Ayoob Kara breaking bread with a German neo- Patrik Brinkmann then came Anders Breivik, mass murder of socialist youth and anti-Muslim racist come neo-Nazi than we learn of his 1500 page manifesto, which is full of his love for Israel. A love which has not been unrequited, it has to be said.

Breivik is acknowledged as having had close links with the EDL. He he says he had 600 EDL friends on Facebook. He claimed that Paul Ray, founder of the EDL, is his mentor, something Ray has since admitted , and likewise Alan Lake, a millionaire funder of the EDL, is likewise claimed as his mentor and ‘perfect knight’ according to another EDL supporter. .

24. Oslo criminals paid. [Hitler used to refer to the November criminals, i.e. German revolutionaries like Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebnicht]

26. It’s stupid and evil not to desire death for those who call to boycott Israel.

41. Hitler Youth members killed in the bombing of Germany were also innocent. Let us all cry about the terrible evil bombardment carried out by the Allies… We have a bunch of haters of Israel meeting in a country that hates Israel in a conference that endorses the boycott.. So it’s not okay, not nice, really a tragedy for families, and we condemn the act itself, but to cry about it? Come on. We Jews are not Christians. In the Jewish religion there is no obligation to love or mourn for the enemy.

An article ‘Unholy Alliances’ in Ha’aretz 29th July 2011, reminds us that Israeli right-wingers have applauded a fellow neo-Nazi. Hatred of Islam is their main guiding principle. As Tom Segev noted:

“One could not ignore the fact that many Israelis did not entirely dismiss the Norwegian murderer’s affinity for Israel.”

I took an ordinary commercial flight from Bergen to Oslo about a year ago. A moment before the doors closed, a young man with a plastic earpiece boarded the plane. He was followed by two women; the younger one helped the older one place her bags in the luggage compartment. They sat in the first row – the older woman took the window seat, and the young man sat in the aisle seat. I was sitting in the row behind them.

Before takeoff, the captain said, in Norwegian and English: “Your Majesty, ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome aboard.” The passenger sitting next to me explained that Her Majesty Queen Sonja, wife of King Harald V, was the elderly woman sitting in front of us. During the flight she was given coffee in a paper cup, just like the other passengers. When we landed she took her own luggage, disembarked and headed for a green Cadillac waiting by the side of the plane. She placed her bag in the car trunk, got in the car and was driven away.

This reminded me of a long-ago era in Israel when President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi would stroll Jerusalem’s streets accompanied by just one policeman. Norway certainly won’t be the same in the wake of the Utoya island massacre, but contrary to the assessment repeated in the Israeli media this week, there is no guarantee the Norwegians will now “identify with Israel as a country plagued by terrorism.”

A few hours before Anders Behring Breivik entered the Labor Party youth camp and murdered some 70 campers, some of them were waving signs demanding a boycott of Israel. As an enemy of Islam, Breivik considers himself a friend of Israel. Hatred of Muslims has been flourishing on European neo-Nazi websites, which are popular in Norway as well. The place where Norway’s World War II-era, pro-Nazi Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling was executed is unmarked so that it cannot become a pilgrimage site.

The call to boycott Israel by the Norwegian Labor Party’s younger generation does not necessarily reflect the political sophistication of their education at Utoya. Yet it is hard to decide which is more embarrassing: the fact that Israel has turned itself into a universal symbol of evil, or that people like Breivik and various fundamentalist Christians – racist and often anti-Semitic – associate Israel with Divine grace.

Shamefully enough, there are Kahane-style websites no less racist than Breivik’s, written in Hebrew. True, they are often written by fanatic Americans in garbled Hebrew and draw no more than a few thousand hits. But those following the reader comments on Yedioth Ahronoth’s online news site Ynet this week could not ignore the fact that many Israelis did not entirely dismiss the Norwegian murderer’s affinity for Israel; many, like him, are worried about the Muslim presence in Europe.

“Actually he has something there,” wrote one commentator from Herzliya. Another wrote: “The ideas are good. Too bad he implemented them the way he did.” Which brings us back to history.

Islam gave Europe a good deal of enlightenment and cultural riches, but today’s racism looks back not to that golden era, but rather to the dark ages of the Crusades. Breivik’s website is full of portraits of Crusaders, their eyes lit with zealous belief. Apparently Breivik particularly admired England’s Richard the Lionheart; paradoxically, he may have identified Israel with the Crusaders’ Kingdom of Jerusalem. Muslim historians share this view, though they consider it a source of hope that Israel, like the Crusaders’ Kingdom, shall not endure. In the time of Richard I, violent pogroms against Jews rocked England; the Crusaders’ passion swept through Europe and led to the murder of thousands of Jews in other countries, too. The knights of the Middle Ages fired the imagination of the Nazis, too, receiving ample space in their mythology.

Breivik considered Richard the Lionheart his hero since Richard led his army to the Holy Land to liberate Jerusalem from the hands of Saladin. His soldiers conquered only Acre and Jaffa, murdering 3,000 Muslims in the process. They did not succeed in conquering Jerusalem.

Richard the Lionheart now seems like quite the fool, yet England also regarded him as a hero, mostly during the Victorian era. During the reign of Queen Victoria, a bronze statue honoring Richard was erected in front of the Palace of Westminster in London, where it stands to this day. In Jerusalem, by contrast, a central thoroughfare is named after Saladin.

[In fact ‘The First Crusade ignited a long tradition of organized violence against Jews in European culture.’ of which Richard was very much a part.

Ayoob Kara meets Patrik Brinmann, former member of German neo-Nazi party and far right anti-Islamic party activist, in Berlin. Kara: His part is irrelevant to me
Eldad Beck

BERLIN – Deputy Minister Ayoob Kara met with Swedish-German millionaire Patrik Brinkmann who has ties with German neo-Nazi groups in Berlin over the weekend, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

Brinkmann, who is trying to establish a far-right anti-Islamic party in Germany claims he is not an anti-Semite, however his previous close contacts with the German neo-Nazi party (NPD) and his past membership in another neo-Nazi party raise questions regarding his ideology.

Brinkmann, 44, made his fortune in the Swedish real estate business in the 1980s before becoming mixed in tax problems in his home country. As legal battles were going on he used the majority of his finances for the establishment of two research foundations which became closely affiliated with far-right and neo-Nazi elements in Germany.

One of the foundations published a study on the Nuremburg Trials examining whether justice or revenge had been achieved. The German secret service said former senior members of the NPD and other neo-Nazis were members of another foundation created by Brinkmann.

The millionaire later began supporting the Pro NRW movement, Germany’s far-right and anti-Islamic party. He declared he fears that Sharia law will be introduced in the country and has pledged to establish a strong German right-wing party. He left the party last year in protest of its anti-Semitism, but resumed membership earlier this year. He now heads the party’s Berlin branch.

Challenging foreign policy
Brinkman visited Israel several months ago where he met Kara and announced his intention to promote one of his foundations in Israel. He met the deputy minister again in Berlin over the weekend as part of Kara’s private visit to the city’s World Culture Festival. Several months ago, Kara met with Austrian Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache who was once active in neo-Nazi groups.

Meetings with such elements challenge Israel’s official foreign policy. Israel’s embassies in Berlin and Vienna have warned against such contacts.

“Even if this is an alleged attempt to create an anti-Islamic European front, some of these elements seek to obtain an Israeli seal of approval without altering their anti-Semitic views,” an Israeli state official said.

Kara confirmed he had met with Brinkmann. “I know Patrik from a visit he held in Israel. I met all sorts of people at the festival with the purpose of promoting Israel’s foreign relations and peace.”

The deputy minister said he was unaware of Brinkmann’s problematic connections with Germany’s neo-Nazi far-right movement, claiming this was “irrelevant.”