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Israeli Ambassador, Miryam Shomrat, angered Norwegians, including the tiny Jewish community, by criticizing the popular royal family. (file)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners September 26, 2006 |
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Israel's ambassador angered Norwegians, including the tiny Jewish community, by criticizing the popular royal family for failing to express sympathy over an attack on Norway's main synagogue.
At least one gunman opened fire on the main synagogue in the Nordic country before dawn on Sept. 17, spraying the downtown Oslo building with at least a dozen bullets. No one was injured.
In an interview broadcast by the state television network NRK late Monday, Ambassador Miryam Shomrat criticized Norway's enormously popular figurehead monarch, King Harald V, and his family because they had not made a statement of sympathy with the Jewish community.
In a statement Tuesday, Shomrat said it had not been her intention to criticize the royal family in an interview broadcast by NRK late Monday.
In the interview, Shomrat said Norway's popular figurehead monarch, King Harald V, and his family should have made a statement of sympathy with the Jewish community.
"A gesture from the royal household last Friday under the Jewish New Year's celebration would have been appropriate," she said. "It would especially have been a sign of solidarity from the royal family if they had come to the synagogue after it was fired on."
The comments drew immediate and sharp reaction in Norway, where the royal family is seldom criticized.
"I think this is a very unsuitable comment from an ambassador from another country in Norway," Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said.
He said the government had expressed sympathy, and that the justice minister was at the synagogue the day after the shootings.
A Norwegian student currently studying in Israel told The Jerusalem Post that, in Norway, the royal family is perceived as "untouchable," and that the Israeli ambassador made a mistake by talking about them, let alone criticizing them.
Former Prime Minister Kaare Willoch, now seen as a senior statesman in Norway, said, "I think this is completely unreasonable, especially considering how strongly our royal family stresses the right of all people to respect and protection."
The criticism also angered members of Norway's tiny Jewish community, which only numbers about 1,300 people.
"I was furious. Now I am just saddened," said Anne Sender, a leader of the Mosaic Religious Community in Oslo. She said she spoke to the ambassador Tuesday morning.
"The ambassador has apologized. She said she went too far," Sender said on NRK. "What the ambassador said is very regrettable, and in no way was she speaking on our behalf."
In her own statement later Tuesday, Shomrat pushed part of the blame onto Norwegian media, saying they had made her answers to two questions sound like criticism.
"I want to emphasize that it was far from my intention to criticize the king," she wrote.
The AP contributed to this report.
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