Finnish retail chain S Group is ceasing the purchase of Israeli products in response to the Israel-Hamas War, it announced.
Pre-existing long-term contracts will continue until their completion in the spring, but items such as dates and fruits will no longer be sold in stores.
S Group affiliates don’t stock many Israeli products, according to the retailer, which, it said, made the decision to end the procurement of Israeli products “easy to implement.”
The group said in its announcement on Thursday that it would reverse the situation if the “human rights” situation in Israel were to “materially change.”
“The decision was based on a long-standing public debate on the situation in Gaza, serious human rights violations in the region, increased customer feedback from our owners, and increasingly brutal military actions against civilians in Gaza,” said S Group sustainability vice president Nina Elomaa. “At the same time, both the UN and the European Commission made their policy towards Israel more stringent, and this ultimately led to our decision.”
S Group said that it had outlined the possible cessation of Israeli product purchases in September, and the issue had been raised again that week by subsidiary cooperative HOK-Elanto.
46-9 vote in favour of boycott on Israeli products
Helsinki MP Veronika Honkasalo said on her Instagram on Wednesday that HOK-Elanto’s representative council had voted 46-9 in favor of a proposal to call for S Group to end the sale of Israeli products.
“That’s how you change the world a little better,” said Honkasalo, explaining that products would have been coming “from a country that is actively practicing genocide, maintains the apartheid system, and establishes illegal colonies.”
BDS Finland welcomed HOK-Elanto’s vote in an Instagram post.
“Let’s continue the boycott and keep up the pressure until we have supermarkets in Finland free of apartheid products.”