The Labor for Palestine National Network, National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), and U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) join the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions-Gaza’s 2025 May Day call* in urging U.S. unions to “go beyond statements and speeches and create real pressure”—including “general strikes and widespread civil disobedience”—against the ongoing bipartisan, U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, and to “coordinate efforts with the student movement” against the Trump regime’s domestic assault on Palestine solidarity and on “civil liberties and freedom of expression.”
As the PGFTU-Gaza statement explains:
“We, in the General Federation of Trade Unions in Gaza, address this call to you on the eve of International Workers’ Day, affirming that your struggle for workers’ rights in the United States is inseparable from our struggle against occupation and colonialism. True labor solidarity is demonstrated through actions, not just words, and we count on your awareness and determination to take concrete steps to end this tragedy.”
The PGFTU-Gaza call is particularly welcome as—with little domestic resistance—the Trump regime is sharply re-escalating the genocide in Palestine, while unleashing a parallel blitzkrieg of repression and destruction at home, not only against Palestine solidarity activists, but against all workers, unions, students, immigrants, people of color, women, LGBTQ+, social services, education, science, free speech, and humanity itself.
We therefore reaffirm the Labor for Palestine National Network’s 2024 call for No Business As Usual: May Day for Palestine by calling on working class and labor bodies across the U.S. to take one or more of the following actions on and leading up to May Day 2025:
- Withhold labor, and uplift growing calls for a general strike on May Day 2025
- Organize a labor contingent for Palestine or otherwise amplify demands to stop Israeli genocide at actions on and leading up to May Day, including the March on Washington to Stop the Genocide and Hands Off Mass Mobilization on April 5, Kill the Cuts National Day of Action on April 8, and Day of Action for Higher Ed on April 17, and the May 1 National Day of Action
- Hold a teach-in or moment of silence
- Post a group photo, with flags, signs, keffiyehs, buttons, and other symbols of Palestinian solidarity
- Leaflet and demonstrate at a weapons plant, military facility, or other complicit institution
- Storm social media with:
- #AnInjuryToPalestineIsAnInjuryToAll
- #MayDay4Palestine
- #GeneralStrike2025
- #StopArmingIsrael
- #BDS
- #DumpIsraelBonds
- #DroptheHistadrut
- #FromtheRivertotheSeaPalestineWillBeFree
- Devise other creative actions
Why is Palestine a Labor Issue?
- An injury to one is an injury to all. The Israeli settler-colonial regime is part of the same U.S.-backed system of racist state violence that brutalizes Black, Indigenous, African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, Asian, and working class people in the Global South and around the world. With Israel’s knee on their neck, Palestinians can’t breathe, and we unconditionally stand with them, just as they have stood with our struggles for Black and Brown Lives, Standing Rock, migrant rights, and beyond.
- Our tax dollars fund Israel. Israel’s crimes are committed with tens of billions in bipartisan US weaponry—tax dollars that should be spent instead to reverse Israeli destruction in Palestine, and on badly-needed jobs, food, housing, healthcare, education, and transportation for poor and working people at home.
- Our workplaces arm Israel. Many of our unionized factories, logistics, academia, tech, and other workplaces—without our consent—produce weapons, transportation, research, technology, and other materials for the genocidal Israeli regime.
- Our unions fund Israel. Our unions are already involved—on the wrong side. In the 1920s-1930s, top labor officials donated millions to the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation that spearheaded anti-Palestinian dispossession, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, including the Nakba (Catastrophe) that established the Israeli state in 1948. For more than 70 years, they have used our union dues and pension funds to buy billions of dollars worth of Israel Bonds. Today, despite horrendous Palestinian casualties, most labor officials remain silent—or worse.
- Global working class solidarity is the only way to win. More than ever, in this era of globalization, workers and oppressed people everywhere are up a common enemy. We can’t win if we are atomized by union, or even country. We need international, classwide unity. That means every worker must take on the task of building solidarity with Palestine—today an epicenter of class struggle.
- Workers can stop Israeli genocide. More than 50 years ago, Arab and Black auto workers led a wildcat strike and other actions to protest UAW complicity with Israel. Today, we can follow their example in respecting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line by protesting, bringing union resolutions, and—above all—by mobilizing our collective power at the workplace, as shown by dockers in South Africa, India, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, Italy, Belgium, and the ILWU on the West Coast of the United States, which has respected Block the Boat’s community-labor picket line by refusing to handle Israeli cargo.
Please Endorse Here (list in formation)
- Entertainment Labor for Palestine
- Historians for Palestine
- Coalition for Action in Higher Education
- 73 For Palestine
- UPTE Members for Palestine
- National Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine
- University of Minnesota Educators for Justice in Palestine
- Rutgers University Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine
- New York City Labor for Palestine
- University of North Texas Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine
- Planning Alternatives for Change
- UAW Labor for Palestine
- Young Active Labor Leaders (YALL) Texas
- Teamsters Mobilize
- CWA for Palestine
- Theater Workers for a Ceasefire
- Wesleyan Young Socialists
- SUNY BDS
- National Educators United
- Shut It Down For Palestine
- Educators for Palestine (NEA)
- Educator Defense Network
Gaza genocide: How reliable are the figures coming from the Gaza Ministry of Health? This is an important issue. The Lancet study** uses a statistical technique called “capture-recapture” – that’s a discussion for another time, but here are their conclusions:
“We estimated 64 260 deaths (95% CI 55 298–78 525) due to traumatic injury during the study period, suggesting the Palestinian MoH under-reported mortality by 41%.” [ Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024 ]
However, there are other organizations that are trying to get an accurate count, for example Every Casuality Counts*** .
“It seems like they’re actually updating the lists more in real time, as more information appears,” says Professor Mike Spagat of Royal Holloway College, chair of Every Casualty Counts, an independent civilian casualty monitoring organisation. “We should have regarded the previous lists as a little bit more provisional than I had assumed.”...However, he says he detects no attempt by health officials to mislead and sees the changes as “a big clean-up operation”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx25x35476yo
Spagat’s comment on the IDF:
Netanyahu got it wrong before the US Congress: IDF’s clean performance in Gaza is a lie…we can categorically reject the strong Netanyahu-Spencer claim that, for urban combat, the IDF is achieving historically low ratios of non-combatants to combatants killed.
https://aoav.org.uk/2024/netanyahu-got-it-wrong-before-the-us-congress-idfs-clean-performance-in-gaza-is-a-lie/
**
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02678-3/fulltext
***
https://everycasualty.org/?s=gaza
A note on the Gaza genocide:
Norway FM slams Western silence on Israel’s genocide in Gaza…“The silence of others on what is happening in Gaza worries me,” Eide said, adding: “Many of my Western counterparts are making a grave mistake by not clarifying their views.”….Regarding Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its global impact, Eide said Norway has not remained silent on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and was among the first countries to call for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip….“We were among the first countries to say that Israel’s response to the attacks of October 7 went far beyond international human rights law or the principle of proportionality,” he said, emphasising that consistency in this position is crucial.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250425-norway-fm-slams-western-silence-on-israels-genocide-in-gaza/
INJURY UPDATE :
Keffiyeh-wearing Jewish woman assaulted by pro-Israel mob in New YorkSunday, 27 April 2025 11:12 AM PressTv
A pro-Palestine Jewish woman with an Israeli passport has been violently assaulted by a mob of Zionist extremists outside a prominent Brooklyn synagogue in New York, where a visit by far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir drew tense protests and sparked heavy clashes.
https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1916208339488219317?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1916208339488219317%7Ctwgr%5E56068292893f0a2e86404dd310ef285ef05d593e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.presstv.ir%2FDetail%2F2025%2F04%2F27%2F746946%2FJewish-woman-assaulted-Brooklyn-synagogue-New-York-Israeli-minister-Itamar-Ben-Gvir-
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Ralph Nader, what timing, thank you!
Pro-Semitism as an Antidote to Bigotry and Bombinghttps://www.commondreams.org/opinion/prosemitism
“Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot and Israelis were being eradicated and driven towards expulsion.”would Mr. Garber have remained silent? Would he have labeled pro-Israeli rights advocates on campus as “anti-semites”? He needs to be educated by Jewish Voice for Peace, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, and Rabbis for Human Rights.”
RALPH NADER
Apr 27, 2025
Common Dreams
“From a recent peaceful student rally at Columbia University came a chant that summed up their protest: “FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DEAD AND YOU’RE ARRESTING US INSTEAD.”
Louis Theroux in Israel lobby’s sights as he shows ‘sociopathic’ nature of illegal settlers
Despite recent capitulations to the pro-Israel lobby, the BBC has just broadcast a documentary by TV icon Louis Theroux on the “sociopathic” nature of the illegal settlement movement in occupied Palestine. And he’s already very clearly in the sights of the lobby.
Louis Theroux exposing racism, apartheid, and settler violenceLouis Theroux worked on The Settlers in response to reports that settlers were “accelerating the settlement process while being protected by the Israeli military”.
The documentary shows Rabbi Dov Lior, “one of the most prominent and influential rabbis in Israel” and “one the most dangerous people” in the country, calling Palestinian people “savages” and asserting:
The film also gives an insight into daily harassment of Palestinians by Israeli occupiers, Israel’s system of apartheid, and soldiers’ bullying and aggression (in this case of Theroux himself), with a clear instinct to get physical in order to impose their will.
https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2025/04/28/louis-theroux-the-settlers/
This is the second, perhaps even the third, call by the PGFTU-Gaza since October 2023 for international solidarity from Western trade unions and workers. The response has been close to a uniform silence while well-paid workers enjoy comfortable careers building weapons purposely to seriously injure and kill children. Those workers know exactly what their daily labour produces but they squash their consciences and happily take the money. Shame on them all. This shows not only the defeat of the Left in the US and UK but also the historical role that trade unions have played in advancing Western imperialism – this is not a new situation.