That Sweden’s dockworkers’ union staged a week-long protest against Israel in the wake of the Turkish flotilla incident is hardly surprising. But the response of a 2,500-strong student union that supports Sweden’s leading Moderate Party is worth noting. Last month, the student union showed Israel some welcome support by offering to load and unload Israeli cargo themselves. The students slammed the longshoremen in a press release and declared that “It is Hamas’s fault that people are suffering in Gaza, not Israel’s.”
Their statement contains more clarity on Palestinian-Israeli relations than most anything we’ve heard lately from Europe’s grown-ups. Stockholm has been particularly vociferous in denouncing Israel’s efforts to defend itself, with Swedish Foreign Minister and Moderate Party elder statesman Carl Bildt having called for an investigation into Israel, and telling the Swedish press that Israel’s Palestinian policy is “catastrophic” and “leads to one problem after another.” All of which is pro-Israel compared to statements from Mr. Bildt’s colleagues on the left.
Gustaf Dymov, 24, who chairs the contrarian student union, stressed in a phone interview that the offer to scab on the boycotting dockworkers was almost entirely for show—but then, so was the “boycott” itself, since very little cargo actually passes between Israel and Sweden by sea. Mr. Dymov says that’s what outrages him the most: “It’s very obvious [the dockworkers] did this not out of a will to support the Palestinians but to show hatred toward Israel.”
So Mr. Dymov and his compatriots decided to show the love: “We view this as a conflict between Israel, a democratic and free country that deserves our support; and Hamas, a terror organization that has an explicit aim to destroy and kill other people,” he tells us.
Given the political mores of contemporary European youth culture, this stance defines courageous rebellion. Too bad, then, that a Moderate Party spokesman was quick to distance his party from the students’ cause, telling us over the phone that Mr. Dymov’s group is not their official student faction and is “totally separate from the party.” Mr. Dymov confirms this, though he notes that his group generally supports the Moderates in other matters, and that Mr. Bildt once chaired the “quite libertarian” student union himself. “That was a long time ago,” Mr. Dymov adds.
The Swedish students’ dissent has gotten little press, but Mr. Dymov said that what feedback he has gotten has been mostly positive. For anyone who agrees with Mr. Dymov’s code to “always stand on the side of free countries and democracies,” this student movement comes not a moment too soon.
Wall Street Journal, 2010-07-07