"Peaceful" Sweden stocks up on Israeli weapons & More News Here

Last week, Jenny Ohlsson, Sweden’s worldwide improvement minister, paid a go to to Israel and the occupied West Bank.

While in Hebron, she posed for a photo-op with Palestinian youngsters, and claimed that they’d requested her the “toughest question” she had confronted all week.

“Why are not all countries and people treated equally in global affairs when it comes to attention and support?” the youngsters requested, she mentioned in a tweet.

“I replied it’s a fair question and promised to fight that tendency. Always,” Ohlsson mentioned. She added that she would “raise their concern when I can. Voilà!”

The reply to the query isn’t tough: Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Yemenis and others are handled in another way by Sweden than, say, Ukrainians, as a result of Sweden, like the remainder of Europe, is a vassal of the United States. They do kind of as they’re instructed.

There can be a powerful dose of racism of their international insurance policies: White lives are simply extra beneficial to them.

Ohlsson’s promise to boost the youngsters’s “concern” is furthermore an evasion and an try to cowl up Sweden’s direct complicity within the Israeli apartheid regime’s occupation, persecution, colonization and killing of Palestinians.

This complicity consists of Sweden’s booming purchases of Israeli weapons and up to date determination to supply a house to a infamous Israeli arms maker.

While Ohlsson was in Palestine, Israeli occupation forces killed 16-year-old Sanad Abu Atiya throughout a raid on Jenin.

According to an eyewitness, Sanad was fatally shot as he tried to render assist to Yazid al-Saadi, a 22-year-old who had simply been shot behind the top by the Israeli attackers.

This newest killing of a Palestinian youngster elicited no remark, not to mention outrage or condemnation, from Ohlsson, or some other European official, so far as this author may decide.

Sadly, that tacit approval for Israeli crimes is the norm.

Sweden rewards Gaza bloodbath

In May, Israel bombarded the Gaza Strip for 11 days, killing greater than 250 Palestinians, amongst them virtually 70 youngsters.

Multiple generations of greater than a dozen households had been worn out in Israeli assaults just like the al-Wihda avenue bloodbath on 16 May 2021.

That explicit Israeli bombardment of residential buildings in Gaza City killed greater than 40 Palestinians of their properties, virtually half of them youngsters.

Although the so-called worldwide group – the United States and its Euro-Atlantic purchasers – continued to help Israel because it focused civilian infrastructure and killed civilians, there was a global outpouring of solidarity with Palestinians.

Israel, because it habitually does, introduced it might refuse to cooperate with an unbiased battle crimes probe ordered by the UN Human Rights Council.

Not happy with doing nothing as Israel as soon as once more slaughtered defenseless civilians in a besieged, occupied territory, some nations made positive to reward Israel and maybe incentivize future massacres.

Within months, the UK and the Netherlands each signed accords with Israel to extend navy cooperation.

Sweden too, which markets itself as a champion of human rights and peace – it even claims to have a “feminist foreign policy” – bought in on the act.

Soon after the newest mass slaughter in Gaza, the Nordic nation was bragging that it was warming up its ties with the apartheid state.

But Swedish ministers didn’t trumpet one explicit improvement.

In June 2021 – not even two months after the Gaza bloodbath – Sweden allowed Elbit Systems, considered one of Israel’s greatest arms producers, to open a Swedish department.

“Sweden is an important market for Elbit Systems and a cornerstone for further expansion in Europe,” Haim Delmar, the chair of Elbit Systems Sweden, said.

The weapons offers rapidly adopted. In January, the Swedish navy signed a $27 million contract with Elbit for “combat management systems.”

Last month, the Swedish military signed one other $27 million contract with the Israeli firm, this time to buy 120mm tank shells.

“I believe that this selection by Sweden underscores the growing recognition by Western armies of the unique quality of our portfolio of products,” Elbit’s Yehuda Vered mentioned.

Palestinians in Gaza can testify to the horrifically damaging results of Elbit’s “products” – that are routinely examined on them.

It is notable that Sweden is providing Elbit Systems a brand new base simply as direct motion protests within the UK are forcing the Israeli firm to close down amenities there.

Ironically, the Swedish authorities pension fund has since 2010 barred investments in Elbit Systems as a result of it makes tools that’s utilized by Israel to “violate international law.”

Booming weapons commerce

Although it markets itself as a drive for peace, Sweden is the world’s thirteenth greatest arms exporter, in keeping with the newest information from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Indeed, in keeping with SIPRI, nations in North America and Europe accounted for 87 % of the world’s arms exports in 2017-21.

In that interval Israel was the world’s tenth greatest arms exporter. From its new base in Sweden, Elbit will maybe be capable to broaden that market share much more.

Sweden’s ostensibly left-wing Social Democratic authorities has been pushing for the harshest attainable sanctions in opposition to Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

It has additionally despatched huge portions of weapons to Ukraine to battle Russia.

Russia “will be held responsible for its brutal and international law-violating aggression against Ukraine,” Swedish international minister Ann Linde declared.

Meanwhile, Stockholm is making certain that Israel is rewarded for its brutal, decades-long and international-law violating aggression in Palestine.

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