Norwegian youth leader seen encouraging anti-Semitic speech

JTA — Aspiring Norwegian politician Khalid Haji Ahmed said he was only joking when he wished “best of luck eight times over” to activists who wrote on Facebook that they wished Adolf Hitler could kill more Jews.

Screen shots made by Hamar Arbeiderblad, a local newspaper, show Ahmed responding on Facebook to a post that read “Damn Jew whores, wish Hitler could come back and shower you some more.”

The Facebook conversation took place last week between members of the Workers’ Youth League, Norway’s largest youth movement, which is affiliated with the country’s ruling Labor Party.

Ahmed, the youth movement’s regional secretary in southeast Norway, is quoted as telling the news site Nettavisen that his comment was “ironic.”

Ahmed, whose family came to Norway from Yemen, is quoted as telling the New York Times last year that he decided to join the youth movement and become politically active to “fight racism” after his brother, also a member of the youth movement, was killed in 2011 by Anders Behring Breivik on the island of Utoya.

Breivik, an ultranationalist who is believed to have acted alone, arrived by boat to the campsite of members of the Workers’ Youth League and gunned down 69 people. Another eight people died of gunshot wounds he caused.