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Finnish MP arrested after trying to cut through Israel-Gaza border fence

Representatives of the Jewish community of Helsinki are describing MP Kontula’s actions as anti-Semitic.

By World Israel News Staff

Finnish MP Anna Kontula and five other activists from Gaza2020: Breaking the Siege, an international movement, were arrested and released this week after attempting to cut through the Israel-Gaza border fence, reports the Helsinki Times.

According to the report, they were held for over 10 hours at the Ofakim police station in southern Israel after attempting to cut through the fence as a “symbolic gesture” to demand an immediate end to the “Israeli land, sea, and air blockade.”

Kontula defended her actions by telling the Finnish STT news agency that she wanted to draw attention to the “inhumanity” of the blockade as well as what she claimed were the consequences of Finland’s arms trade activities with Israel.

“Finland is supporting stakeholders that benefit from the continuing occupation and military activity by Israel. By acquiring weapons systems from Israel, Finland also gets to benefit from the development of weapons technology carried out in occupied areas,” said Kontula.

“Finland’s arms trade with Israel sends a political message that Israel’s ‘occupation’ of more than half a century and serious violations of international law have no consequences.

“There are issues, when the attention of the world is elsewhere, that conventional means, even those of a politician, are not enough to put them on the global agenda, but where the issue is still so important that it deserves attention,” she added.

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Representatives of the Jewish Community of Helsinki are calling Kontula’s actions a form of anti-Semitism.

“By criticizing only the Israeli embargo on Gaza, and without any criticism of or action against a similar embargo by Egypt, the MP is, according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition, quite likely guilty of anti-Semitism,” they wrote on a Facebook post.