[Speech by Carl I Hagen held at the congregation Levende Ord in Bergen, on July 13, 2004. Translated from the original Norwegian. Back to blog entry: Hagen in trouble for "anti-Muslim" remarks.]

Thank you for the warm words of welcome. Thank you for the invitation to come and visit Levende Ord, and to be allowed to say a few words about Israel and a few other issues I'm concerned with, and on which I'd like to share some of my views.

I would like to begin by congratulating pastor Enevald Flåten and all the employees of the congragation Levende Ord. Not everyone congratulates Enevald Flåten. [laughter] In that respect he and I have a lot in common. [laughter] I choose to congratulate him because in Norway, it ought to be so that when people launch good, positive initiatives, when they gather together people who they can inspire to achieve something, then we should be grateful for that, and we should congratulate and honor them, not tear them down like so many others do. [applause]

From what I've been told, when pastor Enevald Flåten and his family came here twelve years ago, this building was an empty shell, a storage building. Now it is filled with positive activities. There is a kindergarden here, an elementary school, a high school, and they're all founded in Christian values. They're also founded in traditional pedagogy, in which children are taught to become good citizens who take responsibility for their own and other people's lives, and are taught that before they can make demands they must fulfill their duties. That is what fills this house, and that is something positive. I only wish there was a little more of that in the Norwegian public school. [applause]

Pastor Enevald Flåten and I have another thing in common. We have both been made victims of the journalistic tactic that if something negative can be said, if there is one sentence that can be taken out of context, then it is done. I have experienced this, I will experience it again, and so will you. But I believe that someone must have the courage to stand up against what is politically acceptable, academically acceptable, theologically acceptable. Someone must dare to hold their own against the massive majority in Norway who obeys the emperor's new clothes. There are many who are afraid to speak their minds. [applause]

Many have asked me: Why such a strong involvement with Israel. Some say I'm just trying to gather votes, that it's a typical cynical Hagen trick to get voters in Christian communities. [laughter] But my involvement follows naturally from simply being an active citizen, from seeing how a small country has given democracy a chance, even though it is surrounded by enemies, who in their programs and manifests declare their intent to remove Israel from the face of the earth. Despite all this, Israel has stuck with a democratic government. You might think that what they need is one strong man with total power. But no - they have accepted the risks of democracy. Trusted their own citizens.

Israel has fought many wars. In my opinion, all those wars were wars of defense, and a war of defense is nothing like a war of offense. Yassir Arafat has never fought anything but wars of offense, and that is the big difference between them. Israel had no choice but to win these wars. The other countries didn't have to win any wars. But if Israel had just lost one single war, there would have been no further wars, for Israel would have been gone, and there would have been another Holocaust. Afterwards, many would say: Why didn't we realize this would happen? The popular view in Norway is that if only Israel would give in to all demands and be kind and good, all would go them well. But from their long experience they know that unless they are capable of defending themselves, they will no longer have a country to defend, nor a people to defend. That is why I'm so concerned about Israel. It's the core of my values. We must defend democracy.

We face may challenges. Some people take democracy for granted, and believe that once it is there, it's there for good. I once met the foreign minister of a country in Northern Africa. They were fighting a group of Islamists, and those Islamists waged a campaign of war and subversion, and became over time quite popular. He said: "All they talk about is democracy, 'one man, one vote'. But what they really mean is what we saw in Germany in 1933: One man, one vote, one time." Hitler was elected democratically. But after he won, there were no more elections.

That is what we must learn from history. When I grew up in the 50's, I asked my parents: Why did nobody stop Hitler before he went to war in 1939? And they, well, they were regular people, they didn't understand it either. But the fact that heads of states, politicians and elected leaders didn't see what was going on, that is to me unfathomable. Hitler made his plans for the future clear in Mein Kampf. He didn't hide his goals, not even about the Jews. The people of Europe closed their eyes and their ears. Churchill tried. Chamberlain went to Munchen, he got a signature, and he believed in it. He was wrong. How could this happen? My generation must say: We will not repeat that mistake, we will not ignore it when someone say they plan to destroy Israel. We take those threats seriously. [applause]

I believe in what Yassir Arafat says, in what Hamas and Islamic Jihad says. Throughout his entire life, Yassir Arafat has fought with one goal in mind, at least politically, (though he may have had pecuniary motives as well): To destroy Israel. And what methods have he used? I keep reading about how this country or that country, often the US or Great Britain, has violated the Geneva convention for warfare. They should not do that. I will not defend it. But I do not hear any conventions brought up concerning the way Yassir Arafat has used terrorism as his primary weapon, all throughout his long life as a terrorist. That is what should be condemned. They never obeyed any Geneva convention. They murder women and children in order to spread fear and terror and anxiety among civilians. And that triggers an instinct in me that says: they are the enemy, not the democratic state of Israel. [applause]

I have a long term perspective on this. My view on Israel is not determined by the latest events of the last two or three weeks, or the last two years. That's usually what the journalists are concerned with. They ask about the latest event, about a particular act: how can you defend that? I will make this perfectly clear: I can not and will not defend everything the Israeli army does. But I have one basic attitude. When Israel fights a war of defense, against what I call terrorist bombers, and others refer to as suicide bombers, who strike at any time, any place, preferably against women and children, then I know who I want to stand with.

Who is defending themselves? Israel is. And if Israeli forces carry out an attack in an area where they know there are terrorists and bomb factories, and they accidentally kill civilians, then that is not the intention of the Israeli defense forces. It's not their intention to murder civilians. But it is Yassir Arafat's intention to create fear by killing women and children. That is why we condemn Yassir Arafat. [applause]

I've been part of much in Norwegian politics. I would like to mention one of the achievements I'm proud of. I'm proud that it was I who convinced Progress Party representatives in Stortinget to vote in Kåre Kristiansen as a member of the Nobel Committee. It was the Progress Party, it was us, who did that, because we agreed with him on important issues, including Israel. And I am proud that when the other members of the Nobel Committee decided to award Yassir Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize, Kåre Kristiansen withdrew from the committee. We cheered for that. The other members should be ashamed. [applause]

Recently there's been a lot of debate about a new and important security fence that Israel has built, and are still building. As far as I know only 5% of this is a wall. The rest is a fence. The press constantly refers to this as "the wall", as if all of it was a concrete wall. Why can't they stick to the truth? Do they teach you in journalist school that the truth can be covered up if it serves the purpose of your story? I thought journalists were taught such principles as honesty, factual correctness, decency and justice. But it is apparently no longer so.

This wall, then .. a little of it is actual wall. Some have said that the Israelis have now become just as bad as communist East Germany, and communist East Berlin, when they built a wall through Berlin, that they have become as bad as the border guards of other Warszaw Pact countries. Those borders were heavily guarded. And now, supposedly, Israel is doing the same. I must ask: Where has the ability for analytical thinking gone? What happened to the ability to see what really ought to be obvious for anyone who wants to see? What was the purpose of the borders of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, and the wall of Berlin? To prevent citizens from escaping the country and city. That was the purpose of the Berlin Wall, not to keep the Western powers out, but to keep the East Berliners in East Berlin! [laughter] It was to keep the Czechs in Czechoslovakia, the Poles in Poland, when they would rather move to countries in the West.

What Israel does is the complete opposite of this. They've put up a security fence to protect their own people, their own women and children, so they are no longer easy targets for terrorist bombers. It is to keep the enemy out that they're building this wall. This is something also Kåre Willoch ought to recognize - although I doubt he will. [laughter, applause]

And from what I understand, after discussing it over lunch with Ulf Ekmann, who now lives there, this fence works. There's been a massive decrease in successful terrorist attacks in those areas where the fence has been built. More terrorist bombers are being discovered long before they come close enough to civilians to trigger their bombs. It really works! And this people condemns.

I was asked by the press just now: But Hagen, a UN court has ruled that the wall violates international law. From what I understand, this court only evaluated the fence, and not the terror. There have been 8000 terrorist attacks against Israel over the last four years. Terrorist attacks in Israel, that is. This is so common it never makes the evening news. That's just the normal state of things, it's not newsworthy. But for the people in this small geographical area of Israel, the effect on society, on families, on women and children, on the young generation, on those who want to create things and make a good society for all to live in, for them the effect is devastating. These terrorists, these bombers, destroy all that.

But now the fence seems to work, and we should say it's a good idea. Instead, the official, political Norway is strongly opposed to it. This UN court, it didn't consider what reasons Israel might have for wanting to protect itself. That is somehow irrelevant to the issue. All that matters is that it is illegal, according to international law, to divide a country in two with a fence.

I will tell you what I told those journalists: I don't like to say this, but the mere act of placing two letters in front of a presumably reasonable group of people, who one expects has the ability to weigh both sides of an issue, the mere act of putting the word UN there, does not by itself make whatever they say an objective truth, in front of which we must all kneel and worship. [applause]

Nordahl Grieg [actually Arnulf Øverland -bs] wrote: You must not so eagerly tolerate that injustice which does not affect yourself. It is so easy for us in Norway, Sweden, and other countries, to lecture Israel on how it should solve its problems. And then if they do follow our advise, and Israel is destroyed, we will have the luxury of saying: "We were wrong. How very, very sad." The Israelis cannot do that. They've learned a painful lesson from all their wars and from all that they've experienced over the last 50 years. They have learned never to trust a paper and a signature, when there are terrorists on the other side, ready to carry out attacks against you.

I'd like to follow up on something Ulf Ekmann said: I agree entirely with what he said about respecting the Koran and Islam, about respecting Muslims as human beings. This is one of the good things Christianity tells us, that we all have equal worth, even though we're sinners. One of the good things about Christianity is forgiveness. But that doesn't mean that we must automatically give in to others, or that we should hold the Koran and the Bible in equal esteem. Because the content of those books is different in many ways. We Christians are deeply concerned with children. Jesus said, 'let the small children come to me.' I can't imagine that Muhammed could have said the same thing. [laughter] If he had, it would have been 'Let the small children come to me, so I can exploit them in my struggle to Islamify the world.'

Because that is what is happening. Children are being actively used. When you send twelve or fourteen year olds into the Intifada to throw rocks, you're almost begging for one of them to be shot, so you can show it on CNN and NRK. They're using these children, and what kind of morality, what kind of religion, is it that tells parents that it is a great honor to have their children killed by Israelis? They become martyrs, and the parents receive great honor, for they have sacrificed their children to the struggle.

I can't see that this has anything in common with those concepts of justice and morality we have in Christianity. There's a tendency to equalize. We see that Islamic mosques are in growth - and this is fine. But that doesn't mean we can't say there's no longer an element of religious competition here. There's one thing I can't understand about some church leaders who for years have talked about missionary work. These Norwegian congregations and organizations have sent missionaries to other countries to convert them to Christianity. Now there are Muslims coming to Norway. We must respect freedom of religion. But we send missionaries to Pakistan and Turkey to convert them to Christianity, and when Muslims come to Norway, we do nothing at all to convert them. Then there's a kind of equivalence at work. When you listen to [bishop] Gunnar Stålsett, the former Center Party leader, it's almost like he places these religions on equal footing. Even though they differ in all aspects. They differ on family life, on the rights of women, on indoctrination, on some of the cultural aspects that follow along.

And that makes me worried about what will happen in the long term. When I talk about Islamification, I'm referring to the fundamentalists. There are many good, decent people who are Muslims, the same way there are Christians here who don't go to church every Sunday. It's just their basic religion. It's the extremists I refer to, the fundamentalists. And they made clear long ago, just like Hitler did, that their long term goal is the total Islamification of the world. They're well on their way. They've reached far into Africa, and are making progress in Europe - and that means we must be allowed to raise our voice.

We must remember our own values. We must show tolerance, we must accept, and we must forgive. But some times we also need to draw a few borders, and I believe those borders in Norway should say: Norway is founded in Christian values. [applause] We respect our ancestors. One of our values is that we must care for our children. But we should also show respect for our parents and grand parents, for the country they built, the country we have inherited, or at least borrowed for our lifetime. And we should say that when it comes to those Christian values our country is founded in, those must also apply to those who come to our country, even if they believe in another religion. That belongs in the private sphere. When it comes to society and the laws of society, they must respect the country they've moved to, and if they're not happy with that they should move back home. [applause]

That is why I'm so glad to see that more and more Christian leaders, from different congregations and organizations, have opened their eyes to the long term changes that may happen to our country and to Europe if we focus exclusively on tolerance and on accepting that they do whatever they like.

And here's another interesting observation, which was mentioned earlier today: How many churches are being built in Pakistan, in Saudi Arabia, and other countries? How are Christian congregations treated in Muslim countries? Are they welcomed, given good land to build on, and given help and support? In some places, they are accepted, but in most places, they are obstructed at every step. In some countries it is even punishable by death to make an attempt at all. What we must be allowed is to say that when it comes to certain aspects of Norway, there is a significant difference in views, and we must stand up for those basic views we have in Norway.

Israel is almost a symbolic issue here. If we passively, (or almost actively in the case of song left-wing politicians), allow those who use terrorism to succeed, and if Israels loses that one, final war, then surely there can't be much hope for Europe either. So I say: Israel must be defended. Not by defending everything they do, but in more a basic sense, and with a long perspective in mind. I am proud that I have been allowed to be a member of Friends of Israel on Stortinget, and I intend to remain so for as long as I'm there.

Thank you for your invitation, and thank you for letting me speak to you.