www.ilyameyer.com – English

Swedish dockworkers have instituted a week-long boycott on the handling of cargo to and from Israel to mark their support for terrorist organisation Hamas.

Hamas is most noted for two things: for firing more than 10,000 rockets at civilians in Israel, and for kidnapping an Israeli teenager, Gilad Schalit, four years ago and illegally holding him without meeting his fundamental human rights in the form of contact with his parents, contact with a lawyer or visits by the Red Cross. In fact, Hamas verifies that Schalit will never be allowed visits by the Red Cross. June 25 marks the fourth anniversary of the day Schalit was abducted from Israel.

Sweden’s radical left-wing Port Workers Union has no opinion on the illegality of Hamas firing 10,000 missiles at Israeli kindergartens, schools, hospitals, apartments and factories. It has no opinion on the illegality of Hamas contravening the most basic human rights of an illegally abducted Israeli youngster.

Sweden’s radical left-wing Port Workers Union does however have an opinion on Israel’s denial of free transportation rights for war materiel to Hamas. The union feels Israel has no right to blockade the import of such materials and has therefore instituted a week-long boycott of all shipping to and from Israel in order to voice its displeasure over Israel’s constraints on Hamas’s missile-firing capacity.

Like many countries around the world, Sweden is only just emerging from a global recession. The past two years of economic decline have seen thousands of jobs lost in key export industries bearing such household names as Volvo, Saab, H&M and IKEA.

Now the radical Port Workers Union is being aided in its vendetta against the Jewish state by state-employed Swedish Radio reporter Cecilia Uddén, commonly known here as “Red Cecilia”, who contacted the IKEA store in Netanya, Israel, to get the store to verify that it would not deliver furniture to Ramallah and Bethlehem.

Unsurprisingly, Swedish furniture giant IKEA will not deliver goods from Israel to the neighbouring Palestinian Authority. IKEA in Sweden will also not deliver goods to neighbouring Denmark or Norway. IKEA in Germany will not deliver to neighbouring France. And so on and so forth. It is a non-story.

Except insofar as Swedish Islamist Cecilia Uddén wishes to distort the obvious by subtly blending fact with implied claims of racism. There is a clear reason why no Israeli store will deliver goods to the Ramallah or Bethlehem in the Palestinian Authority: it’s the very same reason why no Palestinian store in Ramallah or Bethlehem will deliver goods to Israel – it’s illegal to cross the agreed separation lines. In both directions. That’s the way the Palestinian Authority wants it to be – no Israeli Jewish presence in its territory for any reason whatsoever. It’s what is known as ethnic cleansing, racist separation, apartheid. In Uddén’s mindset, however, this indicates Israeli intransigence.

Of course, there is another reason why no company in Israel will deliver goods to the PA: Israelis have taken a strange dislike to being lynched. Lynching Jews is a particular penchant of the Palestinian Arabs in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Not surprising, really, bearing in mind the culture of hatred and racism into which Palestinian society is immersed from tender childhood onward. Visit this link and watch the video evidence of how children are made to glorify “martyrdom” on TV.

Cargo between Sweden and Israel is not only about Swedish exports to Israel, it is equally about Swedish imports from the Jewish state. It will be interesting to see how the Swedish Port Workers Union explains to Swedish hospitals that they will not be getting their deliveries of Israeli dialysis machines, how they inform Sweden’s mobile phone users that every single mobile phone in this vast country is going to go off the air because of their decision to boycott the Israeli suppliers of both the hardware and the software, and of course we’re all really keen to see which businesses in Sweden’s immensely wired-up commercial and industrial economy will survive the Swedish Port Workers Union’s decision to prevent all PC and mainframe operation because both the hardware and the software were developed in Israel. Of course, all this may be irrelevant in any case following the decision to ban the shipment of Israeli anti-virus programs to Sweden, so this nation may face a media blackout sooner than expected. Which would keep Red Cecilia off the air – always something.

Civic-minded people here in Sweden are most concerned about all those people at Volvo, Saab, H&M and IKEA who are once again going to lose their jobs because 1500 communists manning Sweden’s ports have decided that Hamas needs more rockets to fire at Israeli kindergartens, schools, old-age homes, supermarkets and hairdressing salons.

And that’s before normal Swedes even begin to consider the sinister echoes of the call to boycott the Jewish state, bringing to mind Hitler’s identical pronouncement back in 1939 and the events that pronouncement sparked.

An inability to learn from history condemns one to repeat past mistakes.