THEY BLOCKED HIM FROM SENDING A POST OCTOBER 7TH LETTER

Today, King Harald V of Norway 🇳🇴 passed away at the age of 89.

After the October 7 massacre, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, King Harald wanted to send a personal message of condolence to Israel and the Jewish people and his own government blocked him.

They said this empathy would show a break of their neutrality.


The Jewish people never forget those who show us kindness during these difficult times, and those who didn't.

RIP King Harald and may God bless your soul 🕯️'

Executive Summary

A critical analysis of the statement reveals that it is factually accurate regarding the core events but framed with significant emotional and political bias. The statement correctly notes that King Harald V of Norway passed away at age 89 and that his government advised against sending a formal condolence letter to Israel after October 7. However, it omits critical institutional context regarding the constitutional limitations of the Norwegian monarchy and oversimplifies the diplomatic rationale behind the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' decision. [1, 2, 3]

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Fact-Checking & Empirical Evaluation

The Death of King Harald V: True. King Harald V passed away peacefully at Oslo University Hospital at the age of 89. He was succeeded by his son, King Haakon VIII. [1, 2]
The Blocked Condolence Letter: True. Two days after the October 7 attacks, the Norwegian Royal Palace contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressing King Harald's desire to send official condolences to Israel. The ministry advised against it. [1, 2]
Government Acknowledgment: True. In April 2026, Norwegian State Secretary Andreas Kravik publicly admitted that advising the King against sending the letter was a diplomatic mistake. [1]

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Critical & Institutional Analysis

1. Constitutional Role vs. Personal Autonomy

The statement claims "his own government blocked him," which implies authoritarian suppression. In reality, this reflects constitutional practice:

Norway operates as a constitutional monarchy where the King’s public actions and official correspondence are bound by the advice of the elected government (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
The King does not dictate independent foreign policy; official communications to foreign heads of state represent the stance of the Norwegian government, not the King's personal feelings.

2. The Diplomatic Rationale (Neutrality vs. Precedent)

The statement asserts the government blocked the letter because "empathy would show a break of their neutrality."

The Standard Precedent: Traditionally, the Norwegian monarch sends condolences to nations experiencing natural disasters or mass-casualty terrorist attacks (such as the 2015 Bataclan attacks in France).
The Foreign Ministry’s Miscalculation: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs initially viewed the October 7 attack through the lens of a highly volatile, ongoing political conflict rather than a singular act of terrorism. They feared a formal letter would immediately entangle the monarchy in the complex geopolitics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Institutional Error: The government later acknowledged that treating a mass slaughter of civilians as a mere political event—rather than a humanitarian tragedy warranting standard royal condolences—was a severe error in judgment. [1]

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Logical & Rhetorical Assessment

1. Appeal to Emotion (Pathos)

The statement uses emotionally charged phrases ("worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust", "The Jewish people never forget..."). While historically accurate regarding the scale of the tragedy, the rhetoric is designed to draw a sharp moral line between "kindness" and hostility. It frames an institutional protocol error as a deliberate act of malice or a lack of empathy by the Norwegian state.

2. False Dichotomy

The narrative implies that because the government advised against the letter, the Norwegian state lacked empathy for the victims. In reality, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and the Norwegian government had already publicly condemned the Hamas attacks immediately after they occurred. The debate was strictly over whether the monarch's diplomatic channel should be utilized while hostilities were breaking out.

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Conclusion

The viral statement possesses a high degree of factual truth regarding the historical events: King Harald genuinely wished to extend his sympathies, and his government improperly blocked the gesture—a mistake the government itself later confessed to. [1]

Logically, however, the statement flattens a complex bureaucratic and constitutional protocol into a narrative of personal and political betrayal. It uses the occasion of the King's death to score a poignant geopolitical point, rightfully praising the King's intended kindness while stripping away the institutional context of how constitutional monarchies navigate foreign policy.

The statement contains substantial historical inaccuracies, logical flaws, and a factual misrepresentation regarding modern geopolitical geography. A critical breakdown of its key components reveals where it distorts facts or leans on hyperbole:

1. "The Holocaust was unprovoked" vs. "Hamas attack was a reaction"

The Imbalance: The statement presents a jarring moral and causal asymmetry. The Holocaust was a state-orchestrated genocide aiming to exterminate an entire ethnic group based on racial ideology. Saying it was "unprovoked" is a massive understatement; it was an absolute moral atrocity that had zero justification or cause. [1, 2]
The Distortion: By setting "unprovoked" next to "Hamas attack was a reaction," the statement subtly attempts to contextualize or soften the mass murder of civilians on October 7 by framing it purely as a political response to state terrorism. While historians and the United Nations note that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict did not happen in a vacuum, framing a coordinated slaughter, rape, and kidnapping of civilians as a mere "reaction" is a rhetorical tool used to minimize a terrorist atrocity. [1, 2, 3, 4]

2. "The intended plan to occupy Gaza for a canal..."

The Myth: This claim relies entirely on a geopolitical conspiracy theory surrounding the Ben Gurion Canal Project. The Ben Gurion Canal was a theoretical U.S. proposal from the 1963 classified MacCabee paper that explored using nuclear explosives to dig an alternative to the Suez Canal. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The Geography Fail: The actual historical blueprints for the Ben Gurion Canal route started at Eilat, went through the Arabah Valley, and turned north to explicitly bypass the Gaza Strip, connecting to the Mediterranean Sea near Ashkelon. Israel did not launch a military campaign in Gaza to build a canal; the territory is not geographically required for the old proposal, and the economic and environmental costs render the project entirely unviable in modern engineering. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Summary of Exaggeration

The quote mixes historical trauma with internet myths. It attempts to frame the October 7 assault through a lens of economic conspiracy ("the canal") rather than its documented ideological and military reality. While the blockade and long-standing political crisis in Gaza are real drivers of conflict, inventing a fictitious "canal invasion plan" exaggerates and misrepresents the structural drivers of the war.

.To analyze the statement comparing the October 7, 2024, Hamas attack to the Holocaust, we must examine the historical scale, systemic nature, and geopolitical context of both events.

Part A: Scale and Systemic Nature (Comparing to the Holocaust)

The description of October 7 as "the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust" is a statement of absolute casualty numbers, not an assertion that the two events are identical in total scale.

Statistical Reality: Hamas killed approximately 1,200 people on October 7. Statistically, this represents the highest number of Jewish people killed in a single day since 1945.
Difference in Scale: The Holocaust was a state-sponsored, continental bureaucracy that systematically murdered six million Jews.
Ideological Parallels: Analysts who draw comparisons point to the foundational documents of Hamas (such as its 1988 Charter), which contain explicitly antisemitic rhetoric calling for the elimination of Jews, echoing Nazi ideology.
Structural Differences: The Holocaust was executed by a major industrialized world power utilizing the full apparatus of a state. The October 7 assault was a cross-border raid by a non-state militant group.

Part B: Ideological Motivations vs. Geopolitical Context

The statement contrasts the Nazi pretext for genocide with the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Nazi Pretext: Nazi Germany utilized the Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-the-back myth), falsely blaming Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I. This was a completely fabricated conspiracy theory used to justify a racially motivated genocide against a entirely integrated, non-combatant civilian population.
The Hamas Context: The October 7 attack occurred within the context of a decades-long, violent geopolitical territory dispute. Hamas frames its actions as armed resistance against Israeli military occupation, the blockade of the Gaza Strip, and state violence.
The Counter-Argument: Critics and legal scholars argue that framing the attack purely as a "reaction" obscures the deliberate targeting, sexual violence, and hostage-taking of civilians. Under international law, documented atrocities against non-combatants cannot be legally or morally justified as a standard reaction to state policies.