A Norwegian-language test administered to over 40,000 high-school students across Norway, included blatant anti-Israel propaganda. One of the questions presented a photo of a graffiti drawing by a British street artist on Israel’s security barrier and an SMS sent by Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert from Gaza during the Cast Lead counter-terror offensive in 2009, and asked to analyze the drawing and text.

Gilbert’s SMS says: “They bombed the central vegetable market in Gaza city two hours ago. 80 injured, 20 killed. All came here to Shifa. We wade in death, blood and amputees… Many children. Pregnant woman. I have never experienced anything this horrible. Now we hear tanks. Tell it, pass it on, shout it. Anything. DO SOMETHING! DO MORE! We’re living in the history books now, all of us!”

The text next to the photo of the graffiti explains: “This graffiti is painted on the wall that the Israeli authorities built in the West Bank. The wall is 8 meters high and surrounds the city of Bethlehem, among other things.”

The Israel-based Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism claimed that the exam is biased against Israel. There is no explanation of why Israel felt it necessary to build a wall, it noted, or why it attacked Gaza.

Gilbert was presented as a doctor – but as British columnist Melanie Phillips has noted in the past, he “appears not to be just an ordinary doctor. He is a political activist and member of the Norwegian Maoist ‘Red’ party. Not only is he viscerally hostile to Israel and a long-standing activist in the Palestinian ‘solidarity’ movement, but he even supported the 9/11 attacks.”

In his response to Gilbert’s anti-Israel claims, at the time they were originally made, Israeli spokesman Yigal Palmor noted that “Dr. Gilbert is notorious for his radical far left opinions and his systematic demonization of Israel. He has already accused Israel of almost every nightmarish crime in the book only to ignore the refutation of every one of his allegations.

“His stories are worthy of Dante’s imagination but have been proved time and again to be far removed from reality. It is a pity that serious members of the medical profession should allow themselves to be dragged into an excessive of mad Mads,” said Palmor.

Pro-Israel Christian Swedish group MIFF informed its Facebook followers that the exam contained inaccuracies and encouraged them to submit complaints to the Education Directorate.