The North American Regional Administration of the Industrial Workers of the World unequivocally reaffirms our solidarity with the workers and civilians of Palestine and their resistance to the Israeli Apartheid Regime and in the deepest terms condemn the ongoing genocidal actions of the US and Israeli governments in their assault of the dispossessed people and workers of Palestine.
The Israeli apartheid state has declared a genocidal state of siege on the Gaza Strip. They have forced over 1 million people from their homes, over half of them children, and bombed them as they were escaping. Bombs were once dropped on striking American workers, and now weapons made here by our hands kill other workers.
This genocidal act has not only been accepted but supported and funded by the United States and Canadian governments and capitalist class.
We have in our hands the power to refuse complicity and resist this killing. We must only seize it. We can’t and will not stand idly by as our labor is used to slaughter fellow Palestinian workers and the innocent.
In the short term, we ask all IWW members and the whole working class to stand against this atrocity. And we ask you to show support and care to the Palestinian diaspora in this harrowing time.
In the coming weeks, we hope to work along with other radical labor unions around the world to do what we can to in some small way lessen the suffering of the Palestinian people and resist the continuing occupation and apartheid.
Palestinian trade unions have urgently asked other unions to step up and couple our verbal and written support with tangible union action. They have suggested the following:
- Encourage and pledge practical support to members who refuse to build or handle weapons destined for Israel.
- Educate workers about the occupation of Palestine if they are involved in the building and transportation of weapons destined for Israel, including video conversations with representatives from Palestine’s trade unions.
- Examine our institutions’ contractual agreements to ensure we are not doing business with companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege on Gaza, particularly military companies.
- Examine our institutions’ investments to ensure we are not financing companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege on Gaza, particularly military companies.
The IWW has already signed on to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and that is a good start, but there is more that we can do.
In the long term, because the conflict has no end in sight, and because symbolic protests and solidarity statements are not nearly enough, we urge workers around the world to help form a revolutionary labor movement. Israel’s barbarism is not a random occurrence but an outgrowth of capitalist-imperialism and settler-colonialism that has been happening for hundreds of years. The liberation of the Palestinian people from Zionism is inseparable from the liberation of all humanity from imperialism. This system has gone on long enough. Its violence around the world is inevitable as long as we remain so disorganized.
As the IWW preamble says, “These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.” With this, we emphasize our task is to organize in such a way to be able to strike and shut down the flow of war any time workers face a military assault. Only then will we be able to ensure an end to the loss of life and the triumph of a cooperative humanity.
Solidarity Forever with the Palestinian workers and resistance!
The above statement was prepared by members of the International Committee in tandem with the Communications Department and other Fellow Workers of the IWW, and was approved by the NARA GEB on November 14, 2023.