Online Petition Urges Israelis to Boycott IKEA 
Seriously? In one of the more incomprehensible political statements I’ve seen (and that’s saying a LOT), thousands of Israelis have signed an online petition to boycott Swedish furniture retailer IKEA in response to an article in the daily Swedish newspaper, Aftonbladet.
The article by Donald Böstrom reports on New Yorker Levy Izhak Rosenbaum’s alleged arrangement of sales of organs illegally harvested from abducted Palestinian soldiers by Israeli Defense Forces troops, and intimates that the Israeli government is complicit in sanctioning the illegal organ harvesting. Which is horrible. But what does it have to do with IKEA?
Israel called the article “anti-semitic ‘blood libel’,” and demanded that the Swedish government issue an official condemnation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the story was, ”reminiscent of medieval libels that Jews killed Christian children for their blood,” and although he didn’t expect the Swedish government to apologize, he did expect them to take a stand. Wow, drama.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has already rejected Israeli calls for an official condemnation, however in a personal blog entry he expressed personal reservations about the article. He also states that the ‘basic values of society are best preserved through debate’ and that the Swedish Constitution defends freedom of the press. Bildt is scheduled to visit Israel on September 10.
IKEA’s response was to issue a statement saying that IKEA is a non-political commercial entity that has and will continue to have an excellent relationship with Israeli customers. A new IKEA store is set to open in Rishon Letzion in 2010.
Apparently, there has been no significant impact on Israeli travel to Sweden. So it’s fine to visit, just don’t buy the furniture (or the meatballs). And this makes sense, how? To whom? I saw other suggestions on various blogs and forums to boycott everything from Volvo to Swedish vodka. And this is supposed to accomplish what?
Maybe I’m just not that politically saavy. Yeah, that’s it.
Tags: IKEA boycott, IKEA Israel, Swedish Meatballs
1. The reason that travel to Sweden isn’t affected is that nobody is travelling to Sweden this time of the year anyway.
2. The newspaper can publish whatever it wants. Equally we can buy what we want (or not as it may be the case).
3. It transpired that the blood libel “research” was funded by the government of Sweden in the first place.
4. Swedish ambassador to Israel condemned the article. She was then censored by the Swedish government. Is that Swedish freedom of speech? Only anti-Semites can talk?
Does that make total sense to you, Sir?
Having said this, I am not for boycotting IKEA. I am for boycotting anything that has links to the Government of Sweden. IKEA is a private company.
First, IKEA is a DUTCH company, NOT a Swedish company. Most of the items are manufactured in Asia and marketed by the Dutch. (By the way, every company that has “b.v.” after its name is Dutch-owned.)
Israel is an apartheid state and it is the state that should be boycotted. Its many documented racist crimes (documented by Jewish human rights groups within Israel as well as mainstream human rights organizations like Amnesty and Humans Rights Watch) go unpunished because it is politically incorrect. As Jimmy Carter et al. found out, if you criticize Israeli racism then you get smeared as an anti-Semite. As what the Nazis did 60 years ago somehow justifies uprooting and ethnically cleansing the Palestinians with whacko fundamentalist “God gave us this land 2 trillion years ago” logic…and then we call the Palestinians the religious fundamentalists!
miss yoka – IKEA is a Swedish company incorporated under Dutch law primarily to protect the company’s assets. It’s a foundation actually. Reference http://www.ikeafans.com/ikea/ikea-corporate/ikea-corporate-structure.html for more info.
The most despicable attitude here is that of the Swedish PM – when the cartoons depicted Mohammed as a terrorist, he did intervene and even closed the Swedish internet site that published them, but now, since the affected are Jews and Israelis, he suddenly remembers that this is about “Freedom of Speech” – what better example do you need to understand the double standards of the Swedish people? It seems like Freedom of Speech is only important when it fabricates blood libels against the Jews – did I miss something, or have we taken a time machine back to the dark Middle Ages?
Matrices :
Do list all the common characteristics of South Africa’s apartheid system (the word specially coined for this country) and make a comparison with Israel’s “apartheid system”.
As for “ethnically cleansing the Palestinians”, do state the capital of the country of these people and the currency they use.
Maybe the article is right. I wouldn’t put it past the IDF to harvest organs. First, they are already known as war criminals throughout the world for targeting innocents in war. Second, you know how Jews are they are always looking to make a buck.
It makes me think of American Francophobia after France decided not to go to Irak and their french fries + wine boycott. That’s just so lol.