On Friday, November 12, activists from the Danish Communist Youth (DKU) organized Palestine solidarity actions in universities, including University of Copenhagen (KU) and Aalborg University (AAU), protesting the occupation of Palestinian lands by the apartheid state of Israel. The DKU activists also protested the Danish universities’ investments in companies that actively supply materials to the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Danish communist publication Dagbladet Arbejderen had earlier reported that universities including KU, AAU and Technical University of Denmark (DTU) have invested in companies that have operations in the illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine.
Dagbladet Arbejderen reported that DTU has invested DKK 224,840 (USD 34,378) in 17 companies, including Motorola, Volvo, Paypal Holdings Inc, Siemens Healthineers AG, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA, and others. Motorola Solutions Israel develops and provides advanced communication and security services, such as the virtual fence MotoEagle which has been used for a decade in 47 Israeli settlements and along the wall between Israel and the West Bank. This fence is also in use at the wall around Gaza and in several Israeli military bases.
It was reported that KU has invested DKK 2.1 million (USD 320,880) in four companies in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. These include Dutch company Altice which has built 121 antennas and installed cable TV and telephone lines in the illegal settlements.
The AAU has invested DKK 869,000 (USD 132,783) in 12 companies involved in the Israeli settlements, including Delek Logistics which sells fuel and oil in the occupied territories.
Following the protests on Friday, the DKU stated “that Danish companies have a history of spraying money in war machines around the world, and that Denmark is active as a branch in the American war machine. However, cases like these are extremely problematic in the educational institutions for the youth, and are turned into active players in the imperialist war machine, that’s why DKU was on the streets.”
Jonathan Zacho Bruun from the Communist Party (KP) in Denmark and a leading candidate for the party in the upcoming local elections in Aalborg said that the AAU supports war crimes in the occupied West Bank by funding the illegal settlements. The university “simply has to clean up. The fact that large public institutions invest blindly without thought for ethical reasons is nothing new. It illustrates the cynicism of capitalism,” he said.
