ABSTRACT
This chapter asks why Norwegian social democrats abandoned their previously anti-Zionist position and adopted a pro-Zionist position in 1947. A consensual answer to this question asserts that knowledge of the genocide committed against the Jews gave rise to empathy for Jews, which in turn led to support for the creation of a Jewish state. The first section of this chapter tests this explanation by tracing how Norwegian social democrats learned about the genocide and how and when their attitudes towards Zionism and Palestine changed. It finds that the chronology cannot support the traditional explanation for the rise of pro-Zionism. The second section shows that the culture of the early post-war years was characterised by intense anxiety about the viability of civilisation after the wartime genocide. The third and final section argues that when it became apparent antisemitism had not perished along with Nazism, but survived in liberated Europe, anxieties about the viability of civilisation began to form the basis of a social democratic pro-Zionist position: In order to defend civilisation, Europeans needed to ensure the survival of Jewry by supporting Zionism.
