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 ✊🛠
Last night the Israeli military attacked a school and hospital in Gaza City, killing at least 10 Palestinians and burning one child alive in their sleep.
These attacks are unmistakable war crimes — and the Israeli military is deliberately escalating its intensity as it continues to blockade and starve the Palestinian families in Gaza. 🧵
The Israeli military’s tactics of unleashing multiple unfolding atrocities at once is a calculated move to steal and control as much land as possible in Gaza with as few Palestinians on it. The result of this goal is a cataclysm of genocidal violence.
Last night, the Israeli military bombed Jaffa School, burning displaced Palestinian families alive as they sheltered. The airstrikes also destroyed bulldozers and vehicles being used to lift rubble and help recover bodies of loved ones trapped under the ruins.
JVP Rabbinical Council co-founder Rabbi Brant Rosen, in his latest piece for Truthout, reminds us that the Passover Hagaddah instructs Jews to examine the relevance of the Exodus story in every generation.
Rabbi Rosen writes, “As the Jewish community prepares to observe Passover this year, I’m thinking a great deal about the centrality of children to the Exodus story we tell around the seder table. In particular, I’m struck that this narrative from the Torah begins with a terrifying description of atrocities committed against children. Among other things, the Exodus story drives home the tragically familiar truth that children are not mere casualties of wartime atrocities, but are actually targeted by state violence.
“Just like the violence inflicted by the pharaoh in the Exodus story, Israel’s violence toward children stems from the view of an entire people as a ‘demographic threat.’ This view itself stems from Zionism: an ideology and movement that seeks to create and maintain a majority Jewish nation-state in historic Palestine. As such, the targeting of children is part of a larger effort to ethnically cleanse Gaza through a variety of means, including demolition of homes, population transfer and, as the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights report puts it, ‘erasing Palestinian identity and annihilating future generations.’
BREAKING: Days after a Louisiana judge ruled that the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil can proceed, thousands are holding an emergency Passover Seder at the ICE headquarters in New York City, saying: If you come for one, you face us all.
We are outside Federal Plaza to say: Stop arming Israel. End Israel's genocide in Gaza. Free political prisoners held by ICE. Stop the attacks on immigrants, trans people, and students.
This year, we are in a more narrow place than ever. The Israeli military is raining bombs on Gaza, in the deadliest phase of the genocide since October 2023, while enforcing a total blockade that leaves Palestinians in Gaza without access to food, water, fuel, and any other aid.
The Israeli military is attacking the last fully functioning hospital in Gaza again.
On October 17 2023, @GhassanAbuSitt1 delivered a press conference following a massacre by the Israeli military in the courtyard of Al-Ahli hospital that killed over 471 Palestinians.
As he described the atrocities the Israeli military inflicted on hospital patients and medical staff alike, Dr. Abu Sitta also gave a grave warning, “What happened today was a war crime, and if the Israelis get away with it again, then more war crimes will be committed and more hospitals will be targeted.”
Before October 2023, Gaza was the most densely populated place on Earth. Now, over 2 million Palestinians are trapped in just 40% of Gaza and facing an ongoing blockade.
No food, water, fuel, or aid has entered in over a month, and conditions worsen each day, as Palestinians are pushed into smaller and smaller areas within Gaza.
This is forced displacement with the ultimate goal of ethnic cleansing.
Nationalism is chametz, during Passover and always!
This Passover, we cannot celebrate as usual while Palestinians in Gaza face famine and the Israeli military continues its genocidal campaign, using starvation as a weapon and murdering Palestinians with impunity. The questions of liberation are not theoretical—this year’s Jewish holiday of liberation calls us to strengthen our commitment to the liberation of the Palestinian people.
This year is unlike any other. We cannot feast while there is famine. This Passover, we gather not to celebrate, but to demand and dream of liberation for all.
During Passover, Jews abstain from eating “chametz,” or foods that are forbidden to consume during the holiday. For many, part of the ritual of beginning the Passover fast from chametz can include donating or burning these foods. This passover, and every day, we strive to build a world free from the US-Israel alliance that is funding and enabling Palestinian genocide. We collectively work towards a future free from Zionism — the colonial ideology built on the premise of “maximum land with minimum Palestinians,” which requires the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land — as well as all forms of nationalism.
Holding the lessons of Passover close — that all deserve to be free from bondage, and that we must struggle together against oppressive Pharaohs towards a place of collective liberation — JVP has compiled a series of Passover offerings so we may continue the sacred work of mobilizing to end genocide and apartheid. Join us in building an expansive practice of our collective Exodus from Zionism.