A Norwegian professor dubbed "the father of peace studies" has attempted to link Utoya murderer Anders Breivik's massacre with Israeli intelligence.
Johan Galtung reportedly made antisemitic and anti-Israel remarks during his lecture at Oslo University, recommending that his students read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Professor Galtung, founder of the Peace Research Institute, suggested that because Breivik had alleged ties to Freemasons, he was in some way connected to Israel, Jews and Zionism.
He also mentioned the theory that the bomb attack in Oslo and gun massacre on Utoya Island, perpetrated by Breivik, were committed on July 22 – the same day as the attack on the King David Hotel in 1946. "Random? hardly," Professor Galtung observed.
A report of the lecture from journalist John Faerseth and a rebuttal by Professor Galtung were published on the website of the Norwegian periodical Humanist.
Professor Galtung later told Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz: "I consider the Mossad [link] highly unlikely, but it is illegitimate to eliminate it as a hypothesis with no evidence." Other claims he made included theories that "six Jewish companies control 96 per cent of the media" and "70 per cent of the professors at the 20 most important American universities are Jewish."
Also in the Norwegian press this week was the former head of the English Defence League's Jewish Division, criticised for expressing solidarity with Breivik's anti-Islamic motivation.
Dagbladet, one of Norway's biggest newspapers, claimed that Roberta Moore, now the self-styled "head of the Jewish Defence League UK", had posted on the Four Freedoms community website that Breivik "missed one" when he did not kill Eskil Pedersen, leader of the Norwegian Labour party's youth wing.
She told the JC: "If posing a hypothetical philosophical moral dilemma regarding a choice about who would be given escape, my opinion is that he was the least deserving of escape."
In a post on Ms Moore's website JDL UK, entitled "Breivik is not alone" written by "the JDL team", the blog said: "I personally do not think Breivik is evil."
Although the article conceded Breivik committed a "heinous crime", it continued: "There are thousands of people in this planet that think exactly like Breivik. Many people are fed up with the way our governments are ignoring the people's complaints.
"... This is what happens when animals are cornered. A cornered animal is a dangerous animal. I must remind the reader that the crimes committed by Muslims are far more gruesome than the one committed by Breivik. And that is not just my opinion, but a factual observation."