Evan R. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Oregon–

Dockworkers across the Mediterranean launched a coordinated strike on Feb. 6 to block arms transfers to Israel in protest against the increasing militarization of port infrastructure. Thousands of workers have united to demand an end to port militarization and a full arms embargo against the rogue apartheid state.

In advance of this demonstration, ships laden with the weapons used to commit genocide on Palestinians were forced to divert their course. The campaign expands on port blockades that began in 2023 and has received backing from the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) under the slogan “Dockworkers Don’t Work for War.” 

The Turkish dockworkers union, Liman-İş Sendikası, gathered hundreds of workers for a demonstration against the ongoing genocide of Palestinians and issued a statement in support of the Italian unions:

“Port workers do not only carry cargo. We also carry conscience and responsibility. As Liman-İş Union, we declare: No weapons, ammunition and cargo for military purposes should be transported from our ports to Israel. Dock workers will not be a link in the logistics chain of crimes committed in Palestine.

“This attitude of ours is universal. Any war and arms shipments targeting civilians and violating international law, including the war between Ukraine and Russia, are crimes against humanity. Dock workers; are not part of imperialist interests, arms trade and death economy. Our side is clear: We are on the side of peace, not war, labor, not weapons, life, not death. Ports do not carry death. Ports are not arms shipment centers. Ports cannot be a trade area that feeds on the blood of peoples. This is our call to dock workers, unions and labor organizations all over the world: Let’s grow the international solidarity of labor. Let’s say a joint ‘NO’ to war crimes, rising from the ports.”

The coordinated actions were spearheaded by the Italian dock unions Unione Sindacale di Base (“Basic Trade Union,” USB) and Collettivo Autonomo Lavoratori Portuali (“Autonomous Port Workers’ Collective,” CALP), who held strikes and demonstrations in twelve Italian cities. Strike action turned back five ships headed towards the Israeli ports of Ashdod and Haifa, including three operated by the Zionist government-owned corporation ZIM Integrated Shipping Services. 

CALP is a coalition of workers and activists founded in the mid 2010s dedicated to stopping the Israeli war machine. It grew out of the city’s militant trade-union culture, frequently acting in coordination with USB while remaining independent from official union structures.

Its members have repeatedly halted or publicly opposed the loading of weapons at the port—whether bound for Saudi Arabia and America’s genocidal war in Yemen or, more recently, for the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Over time, CALP has established itself as a link between workers’ struggles and international solidarity movements, pairing direct action on the docks with a visible and vocal presence in public squares.

The strike action was coordinated under the World Federation of Trade Unions, a global coalition of trade unions that represents over 105 million workers in dozens of countries. The WFTU released a statement in support of the strikes:

“The war economy and military interventions devastate countries and their people, putting global peace at risk while eroding wages, rights, and health‑and‑safety protections, and worsening working conditions. Hence, the International Action Day opposes any complicity of port workers in the transport of weapons and war materials, and expresses strong opposition to the consequences of the war economy.

The WFTU supports the just struggle of the dockworkers’ unions for:

1. An immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people by Israel, with the open support of Israel’s allies, the USA, NATO, and the EU.
2. Blocking all arms shipments from their ports to the genocide in Palestine, as well as to any other war zones, and demanding a trade embargo on Israel by local governments and institutions.
3. The establishment of a stable humanitarian aid corridor.
4. The rejection of the EU’s Re-Arm initiative and an immediate end to the EU and European governments’ plans to militarize ports and strategic infrastructure.
5. Ensuring that European and Mediterranean ports remain places of peace, free from any involvement in war.”

Israel receives unconditional support from the US, NATO and the World Zionist Organization, which gives them the illusion of unlimited power. Hundreds of billions in financial aid flows into their coffers which allows them to influence western academics, politicians and think tanks.Their armies are equipped with the latest and most lethal weapons money can buy, and they are not afraid to use them in the aims of an outright and open genocide, confident in their Western support. 

All of this is directed towards a single goal, not just the destruction of the Palestinian people, but the creation of a “greater Israel,” purged of its indigenous people and open for settlement. They will stop at nothing to accomplish this, and we can see the results in the Levant today. Beyond the Gaza genocide, Israel has made incursions into Syria and Lebanon, and are moving to annex the West Bank entirely. Zionist politicians now openly talk about their goals, no longer needing to conceal their genocidal aims from the world.

However, we have a weapon that not even the Zionists can match: international solidarity. It is that weapon which we must use to defeat them, uniting the broadest possible coalition of the masses together under one banner. If workers unite together, they can not only cause tangible harm to the cause of Zionism, weakening the forces and mechanisms used to commit genocide, but they are also learning and growing stronger. It is from this embryo, the general strike, that the power of the workers can be built. 

Once the workers realize their power they can continue to organize increasingly more effective actions until the Zionists are defeated once and for all.

Strikes, therefore, teach the workers to unite; they show them that they can struggle against the capitalists only when they are united; strikes teach the workers to think of the struggle of the whole working class against the whole class of factory owners and against the arbitrary, police government. This is the reason that socialists call strikes “a school of war,” a school in which the workers learn to make war on their enemies for the liberation of the whole people, of all who labour, from the yoke of government officials and from the yoke of capital.

V. I. Lenin, “On Strikes,” 1899.

Categories: International, Israel, Italy, Labor, Palestine, Turkey, U.S. News, Workers Struggle