Norway’s largest trade union boycotts Israeli regime
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Palestinian protesters carry national flags and banners in support of a boycott of Israeli products
Norway’s biggest and most influential trade union has approved a boycott of Israel, as global outrage intensifies at the Tel Aviv regime’s oppression of Palestinians.
The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) voted 197 to 117 in favor of an international economic, cultural, and academic boycott of Israel on Friday.
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which campaigns for Palestinian rights, hailed the LO’s move as a necessary means to secure fundamental Palestinian rights.
“By courageously heeding the Palestinian BDS call…, LO joins some of the world’s most important trade union federations… in calling for meaningful BDS pressure on the corporations and institutions that have enabled decades of Israeli occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid,” said the BDS national committee.
It also expressed hope for close cooperation with LO to translate the new policy adopted by the trade union “into effective measures of accountability at the academic, cultural and economic levels to uphold human rights and international law.”
It further urged LO to exert pressure on the Norwegian government to cut its military ties with the usurper and brutal regime of Israel and to divest funds from all companies complicit in the regime’s occupation and settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories. However, Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende criticized the boycott, writing on Twitter that the “government strongly opposes Norw Labour Union's decision: #boycott of #Israel. We need more cooperation and dialogue, not boycott.”
EA
