Press Statement by: David Parsons, ICEJ Vice President & Senior Spokesman

Christian leaders in Ireland and Norway affiliated with the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem rejected their respective governments’ decisions on Tuesday to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, denouncing it as a grave mistake and a ‘reward for terrorism’ that will not contribute to peace in the region.

As anticipated, the governments of Ireland, Norway and Spain announced at a joint press conference in the European capital of Brussels, Belgium on Tuesday that they were officially recognizing a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital. The trilateral decision was met with strong pushback from Christians in Ireland and Norway in particular, who criticized their respective governments’ actions.

“Christian supporters of Israel in Ireland sense a deep shame regarding the actions of our government in recognizing a state of Palestine under the present circumstances,” said Paul Coulter, national director of ICEJ-Ireland. “Nothing has been achieved by this action except to reward the barbarism of Hamas, and we fear it will only encourage further attacks on Israel and political intransigence by Palestinian leaders. This is an extremely dangerous message to jihadists everywhere that violence pays.”

“We have exposed a moral bankruptcy at the heart of our Irish nation that we have not seen since our government expressed condolences to the German people on the death of Adolf Hitler in 1945,” added Coulter. “Ireland was on the wrong side of history then and we are certainly on the wrong side of history now.”

Coulter helped spearhead a rally of 1,000 supporters of Israel in front of the Parliament building in Dublin on Sunday (26 May) to protest the decision of the Irish government to recognize a Palestinian state.

Meanwhile, Norwegian Christians also spoke out today against their government’s decision to recognize Palestinian statehood.

“Many Christians in Norway find this decision indefensible, extremely dangerous, and counterproductive to peace,” said Dag Øyvind Juliussen, national director of ICEJ-Norway. “It is telling that Hamas – the world’s richest and most brutal terrorist organization – has praised Norway’s move.”

“Norway’s government has chosen to completely disrespect Israel as a fellow democracy, and ignored binding international legal agreements, including the Oslo accords, which were grounded in the core principle that a potential Palestinian state should be the result of direct negotiations between the parties and should not be imposed unilaterally upon Israel,” he continued.

Juliussen also noted that already in 2012, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had published a report on Norway that strongly criticized the growing anti-Israel attitudes in Norwegian society, warning it could soon fuel intolerable levels of antisemitism. At that time, surveys showed 38% of Norwegians believed that Israeli treatment of Palestinians was analogous to Nazi actions against Jews.

In response, the OSCE urged Norway’s leaders, and in particular its Foreign Ministry, to “promote a civil discussion of the Middle East conflict and admonish those who, in the course of debate, would demonize the State of Israel.” This was never followed up by government officials, and the anti-Israel imbalance has only grown worse in Norwegian media coverage of the region, especially in the state-owned TV channel.

“Little wonder, then, that Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, two days after the October 7 massacres by Hamas, asked our king not to send condolences to Israel. This was so ruthless and inhumane that it is difficult to comprehend,” concluded Juliussen.

ICEJ-Norway led several other pro-Israel organizations in staging a large rally in front of the national Parliament in Olso on May 12 to protest the government’s chronic lack of action to combat antisemitism and rectify its unfair treatment of Israel.

Photo credit:  ICEJ