During a Fritt Ord-supported event in Trondheim, the Palestinian professor at NTNU, Bassam Hussein, described the 7 October terror in Israel as the “most beautiful thing that has happened in our century”.
The statement was made during an event organised by Sosialistisk Forum on 21 April, at the book café “Sellanraa” in connection with Litteraturhuset in Trondheim.
A video recording was recently published on Steigan.no:
The two invited to give lectures from a respectively “Norwegian and Palestinian perspective” were editor and former politician Pål Steigan, and professor of project management at the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at NTNU and board member of Palestinakomiteen i Trøndelag, Bassam Hussein.
The topic was “The situation in the Middle East and its consequences for Europe”.
While Steigan began by stating that it is a major problem in the West, not only in Norway, that people have an almost “programmatic ignorance” and a total lack of respect for other cultures, the professor from NTNU chose a different approach.
After working his way through the history of the Middle East and Iran, he arrives at 2023.
– And then we come to 7 October. [The] most beautiful thing that has happened in our century.
Hussein, who is originally from Gaza, believes that 7 October showed that “Israeli superiority” is merely a myth and that Hamas’ terror massacres were “a needle in the backside” of the Israeli “dragon”.
– 7 October has shown that no matter how strong you are, you have vulnerabilities. And an intelligent, smart, Palestinian military leader, with 400 individuals, can in fact hurt you greatly.
Praised deceased terrorist leader
Document asked Hussein how he justifies calling massacres of innocent civilians beautiful.
– My very brief answer is: 7 October is the most important turning point in our history in Palestine and in the Levant, for a great many reasons which I would be happy to elaborate on at another occasion. I do not regard 7 October as either a victory or a triumph, taking into account the number of killed, innocent people – not only on 7 October, but also after 7 October, Hussein replies by e-mail.
It is not the first time the professor has praised terrorists. On 31 January this year, he was organiser and centrally present with a megaphone during a tribute to the architect of the 7 October terror, the former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed in an Israeli attack.
Hussein was also central in denying Document’s journalist Bente Haarstad coverage of a demonstration in support of Iran in March this year, and in threatening to sue her and others who were present.
The professor’s activism in favour of Hamas is also reflected on NTNU’s website, where Hussein’s staff photograph bears the inscription “Never again is right now”. In this case, it is a reference to the BDS movement’s motto regarding Israel’s military response to the Hamas terror.
Facsimile from NTNU’s staff pages, where political activism in image form is permitted.
Elsewhere in the lecture, Hussein states that the manner in which the Iranians have responded to American and Israeli attacks is “fantastic and must be included in school textbooks”.
There were also “many good messages in these rockets that rained down on American bases” in the Middle East, in the sense that they showed the United States’ allies in the region that “the Americans are not even capable of protecting their own bases” – and that only idiots could come to believe that they are also capable of protecting the allied Gulf states.
Believes Israel has great-power ambitions
He also stated that he fears that Israel has ambitions to shift its role from being “a functionary of the United States” to becoming the one that “runs the show” and takes over the Western empire to become “a global power”.
– Remember that the state of Israel is essentially a continuation of European colonialism. It is the same mentality, the same peoples. White Europeans came to a country and took it over. That is the United States, Australia, Canada and Israel.
The 62-year-old also reveals that he was beaten in schools in Gaza and in Egypt, where he attended during his upbringing, if he did not memorise mathematical formulas.
– If Iran wins this battle, we can begin to count on our fingers when Israel disappears, Hussein said in conclusion.
Hug and chocolate
Sosialistisk Forum has as one of its principal purposes to work “for peace, against war and oppression”. Compère Eli Wæhre from the organisation stated that Norway’s political leaders are too preoccupied with rearmament and war, and forget the victims.
– There are many of us here who are very much together now in order to stand united about (sic) the brutal acts of war that have taken place, she concluded.
However, despite the contradiction between her message of peace and Hussein’s praise of terror, she presented Hussein with a monetary gift for a water project in Gaza, for which Hussein, according to his own statement, has so far raised 1.49 million kroner.
Sosialistisk Forum has contributed at least 100,000 of these, according to Hussein.
There was also chocolate and a hug from Wæhre.
Litteraturhuset in Trondheim is primarily funded by taxpayers’ money, from the Ministry of Culture, Trondheim municipality and Trøndelag county municipality, and receives programme support from the Arts Council (Kulturrådet) and the Fritt Ord Foundation (Stiftelsen Fritt Ord).