The city council in Iceland's capital, Reykjavík, has voted to boycott Israeli goods as long as the nation continues its illegal occupation of Palestine.
The Israeli government responded by claiming it was victim of a “volcano of hatred” after the capital of Iceland decided to boycott Israeli products due to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the ongoing atrocities committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon told the Jerusalem Post that “a volcano of hate exploded in the building of the Reykjavik municipality”.
“Without any reason or justification, except for pure hatred, calls were heard to boycott the state of Israel. We hope that someone in Iceland will wake up and put an end to this blindness and one-sidedness that is demonstrated toward Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.”
The city council in Iceland’s capital Reykjavík voted Tuesday by a 9-5 majority to bar Israeli products from official purchases.
Björk Vilhelmsdóttir, a member of the left-leaning Social Democratic Alliance who sponsored the motion told The Electronic Intifada: “The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement all over the world is becoming stronger because we know how boycotting goods has influenced other states like South Africa.”
Israel, as expected, hinted that the move was motivated by anti-Semitism. But Palestinian activists hailed the move.
The Electronic Intifada reported that Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian human rights campaigner and co-founder of the BDS — boycott, divestment and sanctions — movement, sent a “warm salute to all Palestine solidarity and BDS movement partners in Iceland who contributed to writing this piece of the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality.”
He also predicted that “Israel, with its powerful tools in Washington and Brussels, will certainly pull out its entire bullying arsenal to try to reverse this precedent-setting, historic victory for the boycott movement against its regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.”
[Reprinted from TeleSUR English.]
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