Norway's finance minister announced today that the Israeli company Elbit Systems Ltd has been dropped from the national oil fund due to ethical concerns - namely the company's involvement the construction of the Wall on the West Bank. The minister told the press: "We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law."
Selling shares in a company isn't exactly a strong economic sanction, but this is still a pretty powerful statement coming from a European government official. I eagerly await the response from Avigdor Lieberman and all those pundits who has been making claims like this recently: "behind the humanitarian mask that has been has been assiduously nurtured by the Nordic and Scandinavian countries, are a group of society elites, leftist journalists, clergy, employees of non-governmental agencies (NGOs), and politicans, particularly in Sweden and Norway, who have been regularly demonizing Israel and Jews, using classic themes of antisemitism, which have morphed into anti-Israel motifs."
Those who make those claims rarely (correction: never) bother to provide any proof, of course, and I strongly suspect most of them could hardly even point out Sweden or Norway on a world map.
Update: (via Ali Esbati): The decision to disinvest in Elbit was apparently taken already on June 30 this year, but made public only today, which should kill all speculation that this is somehow a revenge for Israel's criticism last month of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of novelist Knut Hamsun - a celebrated novelist who won the Nobel prize in the 20's but later became infamous and widely condemned for his Nazi sympathies.
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