Israel turning into increasingly extremist society, says activist after burning her passport

Mia Sol Stoelen, an activist living in Norway who burned her Israeli passport to protest the genocide in Gaza, said Israel has become "a society made up of extremes."

The daughter of an Israeli father and a Norwegian mother, Stoelen lived in Tel Aviv for seven years as a dual citizen.

She said that during her time in Israel she initially did not see the situation as an occupation and "thought that it was like we're all kind of living together."

But she eventually realized she was "very ignorant of the West Bank and Gaza."

In 2019, she went on a tour of the West Bank organized by the civil society organization Breaking the Silence.

"I was quite shocked by what I saw."

- Apartheid state

She recalled the 1995 massacre carried out by extremist Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein at the Ibrahimi Mosque during morning prayers, as well as the subsequent establishment of areas in Hebron that were off limits to Palestinians.

"Shuhada Street is open for all foreigners and Israelis to pass, but if a Palestinian walks there they get shot by the Israeli army. So it clearly showed an apartheid," she said, describing the main road leading to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

Stoelen visited Israel most recently in August 2023 and noted that before October 7, roughly 500,000 people protested against the government every weekend.

"We were almost at the brink of civil war and everyone in the Israeli media was saying this…

"To think that it was a coincidence, that even if they wanted they could not have stopped it, you have to be very naive," Stoelen said about the Hamas attacks on Israel.

- State propaganda

She described Israeli public opinion as largely shaped by state policies and the media.

"I think they've fallen victim to state propaganda and they are very much brainwashed by their media," she added.

Stoelen highlighted the treatment of the Arab-origin population in Israel.

"When they migrated, they put the population of Arab origin closest to the border so that if an infiltration was to happen, they would be killed first. So there is a lot of racial injustice also inside the Jewish sector."

After the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who won the Nobel Peace Prize along with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, many educated and intellectual citizens left the country, replaced by Zionists.

"Who moves there now? Extreme Zionists move there and that is creating a very poisonous society. Not a more balanced society, a society made up of extremes."

- 'Proxy state for US'

On US-Israel relations, she described Israel as the US's "proxy state" in the region.

"The United States is probably the biggest threat to world peace…

"And together they are creating a very unsafe place for people in that region.

"I don't think that Israel would ever have the capability to do it on their own without the backing of the US financially, militarily and so forth," she said.

- Burning her passport

Stoelen also recalled receiving threatening messages from a person in Oslo after sharing a video of herself burning her Israeli passport.

"One of them sent me a photo with a gun and then said that he and some others were going to come and chop me into pieces."

She criticized the Norwegian police for mishandling the situation and accused Norway of being complicit in Israel's war crimes.

"Because they have invested 22.6 billion Norwegian Kroner ($2.2 billion) in occupation-linked companies and so they are directly profiting from the loss of human life… They are essentially showing that they value shareholder value above humanity," Stoelen added.

On media coverage, she said Palestinians are often portrayed as "inhuman."

"During 80 years of brutal occupation, they showed that the most humane among us were in fact them…

"So I think it is the West that must question itself and see how it allowed all of this to happen."