The Palestinian working class can’t be free until Israeli apartheid, occupation, and settler-colonialism end — which can’t happen without resistance of Palestinian workers and international workers in solidarity.
How workers have united in and behind Palestine this past year ⬇️
In May 2021, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian workers — in multiple different industries, and across Gaza, the West Bank, and ’48 — all went on general strike to protest Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, bombing of Gaza, and military and police violence.
Their strike led to hundreds of millions of dollars of losses for the Israeli economy, demonstrating Israel’s dependence on Palestinian labor and the liberatory potential of a unified Palestinian working class.
Dockworkers from South Africa to California to Italy refused to unload cargo from Israeli ships, throwing a wrench in the Israeli economy and preventing the transport of weapons and other goods that the state of Israel uses to enact violence against Palestinians.
An unprecedented number of US unions in the sectors of roofing, journalism, hospitality, UPS driving, and more have issued statements in solidarity with Palestinians, often demanding the US to end all funding to the Israeli military.
An example from Roofers Union Local 36:
Teachers unions in San Francisco and Seattle passed resolutions endorsing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and calling for our tax dollars to fund public education, not Israeli human apartheid and war crimes.
Google and Amazon workers have put their jobs on the line to demand the companies end their $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military.
Workers make the world run, so we can leverage our labor to disrupt and change it! To more labor action in solidarity with Palestinians this year ✊🛠
Since the start of the Israeli government's genocide on Palestinians in Gaza, the BDS (“Boycott Divestment and Sanctions”) movement has gained significant global momentum, with remarkable growth and impact from July to December 2024. @BDSmovement 🧵
This surge in activism has proven that intensifying pressure to end state and corporate complicity in the Israeli military’s war crimes leads to tangible victories. Check out the slides above for key BDS victories in the United States. There are countless more global wins to celebrate.
The BDS movement, inspired by the global campaign against South African apartheid, aims to promote nonviolent economic, diplomatic, and cultural boycotts to pressure the Israeli government and military into respecting international law and Palestinian rights.
After a 10-day journey through occupied Palestine, Ta-Nehisi Coates highlights the harrowing reality of life under the Israeli government: “a world where separate and unequal is alive and well, where rule by the ballot for some and the bullet for others is policy.”
In his new book of essays, The Message, author Ta-Nehisi Coates describes confronting Israel’s regime modeled after Jim Crow enforced through a segregationist order backed by the “biggest guns [he’d] ever seen in [his] life.”🧵
Coates felt mortified by his years of ignorance to the brutal simplicity of the Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. He asked, “how could I not know?”
Coates told @nymag how astonished he was “by the plain truth of what he saw: the walls, checkpoints, and guns that everywhere hemmed in the lives of Palestinians; the clear tiers of citizenship between the first-class Jews and the second-class Palestinians; and the undisguised contempt with which the Israeli state treated the subjugated other.”
He highlights how the occupation mirrors historical forms of racial subjugation he has long fought against as a Black man living in America. After his time in the occupied West Bank, Coates clearly identifies the Israeli government’s actions for what they are: colonialist and expansionist.
We have the power to leverage millions of dollars to shut down Israel’s genocidal economy. If you pay taxes in the US, you are uniquely positioned to end the crucial financial support that the Israeli government relies on in committing genocide.
Why? Because the US is the primary financial backer of the Israeli government and military.
The Israeli military’s genocide is raging on, and as the Israeli government spends US military funding, the Israeli economy is increasingly dependent on bonds bought by states and municipalities across the US.
Israel Bonds are direct, unrestricted loans to and investments in the Israeli military and government that fuel every aspect of violence against Palestinians.
CONFIRMED: The first 25 days of the Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza were the deadliest and most devastating air campaign on civilians in all of modern history, according to @airwars.🧵
In its new report Airwars, a nonprofit watchdog monitoring civilian harm in conflict zones, revealed that at least 5,139 civilians were killed during the first month of the Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza, marking it as the deadliest and most intense air campaign for civilians in the 21st century.
This staggering loss highlights the brutality of the Israeli military’s assault as genocide. From the outset, the Israeli government’s actions showed a clear intent to harm massive numbers of Palestinian civilians, clearly laying the foundations for its genocide.
As of this morning, the Israeli military is directly targeting Al Awda Hospital in Jabalia, North Gaza, threatening to kill everyone inside unless all patients, medical staff, and sheltering Palestinians evacuate immediately. This demand is impossible to fulfill, as the Israeli military is also targeting the area surrounding the hospital, leaving no safe options for Palestinians in the hospital.🧵
This comes just one week after the Israeli military began yet another brutal attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital, which it had besieged for months. Last Friday Israeli soldiers abducted hospital director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and they’ve kept him illegally detained ever since. Dr. Abu Safiya has been a leading voice for healthcare in northern Gaza, refusing to abandon his patients even after his own family was targeted and his son killed by the Israeli military.
@palyouthmvmt says: “The world witnessed Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya’s abduction by the IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] after the doctor refused to abandon his patients and staff. Al Awda’s healthcare workers now face a fate like that of Dr. Abu Safiya and the patients and staff of Kamal Adwan Hospital if the imminent bombing of Al Awda Hospital is not stopped.”
We join @amnesty and healthcare workers all over the world in calling for the release of Dr. Abu Safiya.
“Around the world, backpacks represent freedom—school, work, adventure—but in Gaza, they have come to mean something entirely different. Backpacks are what we use to carry what’s left of our lives,” says Eman Alhaj Ali (@EmanAlhajAli1) for @nationmag. 🧵
When the the Israeli military’s genocide began and Eman and her family first fled their home, they packed backpacks with essential documents like IDs and birth certificates. As the Israeli military continued to attack and displace Palestinians, those backpacks were filled with memories, hopes, and remnants of normalcy.
During their first displacement last winter, Eman felt heartbroken over what to leave behind. Her little sister's Barbie backpack, once filled with drawings, cherished pictures, books, and toys, now carries only essentials. With each forced evacuation, the contents of the backpack grow lighter as more is left behind. Her brother had to abandon his cherished sticker collection—each item a fragment of their story, a memory of a life violently disrupted by the Israeli government.