The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest Palestinian civil society coalition and the leadership of the global BDS movement, urgently calls on the delegates and leadership of Kommunal, Sweden’s largest trade union, ahead of its upcoming congress, to adopt ending complicity as its highest priority to express meaningful solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation, self-determination, and the return and reparations for our refugees.
As Indigenous Palestinians are facing and resisting Israel’s ongoing genocide, culminating its 77 years of settler-colonialism and apartheid, the BNC stresses the critical role that trade unions like Kommunal must play in ending complicity in Israeli crimes.
The livestreamed genocidal horror of rolling massacres and induced starvation inflicted by apartheid Israel on millions of Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip has reached a breaking point.
For the first time ever, even complicit governments, including Sweden, are being forced to publicly consider accountability measures against Israel, shattering the decades-long taboo of holding it to different standards than the rest of the world. This is a result of collective people power and is another clear sign that BDS pressure works.
But grassroots movements and civil society, including trade unions, need to show governments across the globe now that posturing and throwing empty rhetoric around to appease enraged publics will not cut it.
The BNC calls on Kommunal to join in by endorsing the BDS call, as LO Norway, COSATU (South Africa), TUC (UK), CUT (Brazil), ICTU (Ireland), and many more have done. Kommunal is called upon to escalate pressure on the Swedish government to fulfill its legal and ethical obligations by ending its shameful complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Kommunal delegates recently expressed their solidarity with the Palestinian people, especially Palestinian trade unions, by demanding the leadership to support and endorse the BDS call, including economic sanctions and boycotts against apartheid Israel, as reflected in motions J3 to J8.
Kommunal has stood by the historic struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, representing the spirit and principles of trade union organizing. Now is the time to build on this tradition, empower the internationalist spirit of trade union organizing and express concrete solidarity, particularly at this time of Israel’s livestreamed genocide that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, which include thousands of health workers, doctors, nurses and ambulance staff murdered by Israel- from the same sector of workers Kommunal represents in its constituency. The BNC is urging Kommunal’s delegates and its leadership to:
- Support immediate sanctions and adopt the same positions and endorse the same boycotts, divestment and sanctions measures against apartheid Israel that Kommunal adopted against apartheid South Africa, and to transform them into action with the urgency demanded by Israel’s ongoing genocide;
- Call on the Swedish government to vote for the termination of the EU-Israel Association agreement and impose a comprehensive military embargo on Israel, including military parts and dual-use items and ensuring end-user compliance with international law.
- Follow the example of LO Norway’s Congress BDS resolution that passed with a landslide vote, and the Public Services International’s endorsement of BDS.
These measures constitute the Swedish government’s legal obligations following the ICJ rulings of 2024 and as stated by UN human rights experts. We strongly urge Kommunal to recognize its duty to meet these obligations and to call on the Swedish government and institutions to also comply with them.
The BNC reiterates the demands of the Palestinian trade unions’ May 1st statement in full and wishes to emphasize the 5 most urgent priorities:
- Pressure the Swedish pension funds and institutions to divest entirely from corporations that are complicit in aiding or assisting Israel’s illegal occupation (including settlements) and apartheid, starting, as a top priority, with military corporations that arm Israel’s genocide.
- Pressure the Swedish government to uphold its legal obligations following the ICJ rulings of 2024, as stated above, starting with imposing a comprehensive military embargo on Israel, including military parts and dual-use items and ensuring end-user compliance with international law.
- Adopt ethical procurement and ethical investment policies that exclude dealing with corporations that are implicated in grave human rights violations (particularly atrocity crimes) anywhere, including in Palestine.
- Escalate economic, academic, cultural, and sports BDS campaigns to end Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide.
- Cut all ties with the Histadrut and support expelling it from all international fora.