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Swedish dockers launch Israeli goods blockade

The Swedish Dock Workers Union (Hamnarbetarförbundet) on Wednesday launched a blockade of Israeli cargo in protest against the deadly raid on the Gaza-bound freedom flotilla last month, union representatives have confirmed.

Published: 23 June 2010 12:12 CEST

The blockade, which also applies to Israeli ships, was launched “because of

the assault on the Ship to Gaza (flotilla), that we supported before they took

off … and the blockade of the Gaza strip, which affects the civilian population,” union spokesman Rolf Axelsson said.

The dock workers’ protest is set to take place in all unionised Swedish ports, and is scheduled to and ends at midnight on June 29th.

Union chairman Björn A. Borg added the union called for an international investigation into the May 31st raid that killed nine pro-Palestinian activists.

He told AFP the dock workers believed Israel’s easing of its Gaza blockade, announced on Sunday, was insufficient.

Eleven Swedes, including crime writer Henning Mankell, took part in the flotilla and were briefly taken into Israeli custody.

The Swedish Dock Workers Union original announced their intended blockade on June 2nd to take place from June 15th-24th but later announced an amendment to the dates in a statement dated June 11th.

representative told AFP.

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ISRAEL

Former Israeli soldier attacked on Berlin street

A former Israeli soldier was attacked in the German capital Berlin, police said Saturday, with one or several unknown assailants spraying him with an irritant and throwing him to the ground.

Published: 10 October 2021 09:26 CEST
Former Israeli soldier attacked on Berlin street
Israeli soldiers on operation near the Gaza Strip. Photo: dpa | Ilia Yefimovich

The 29-year-old was wearing a top with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) logo when the attackers started harassing him on Friday about his religion, the police added, calling it “an anti-Semitic attack”.

Officers are seeking the assailants, who fled immediately after the attack, on suspicion of a politically-motivated crime.

Saturday is the second anniversary of an attack by a far-right gunman on a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle, who killed two in a rampage when he failed to break into the house of worship.

It was one of a string of incidents that led authorities to declare the far right and neo-Nazis Germany’s top security threat.

Also this week, a musician claimed he was turned away from a hotel in eastern city Leipzig for wearing a Star-of-David pendant.

While the allegations prompted a fierce response from a Jewish community unsettled by increasing anti-Semitic crimes, several investigations have been mounted into contradictory accounts of the incident.

In 2019, police recorded 2,032 anti-Semitic crimes, an increase of 13 percent year-on-year.

“The threat is complex and comes from different directions” from jihadists to the far right, the federal government’s commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism Felix Klein said recently.

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