[News] Italian Dockers Stop Arms Shipment to Israel in Solidarity with Palestine

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.leftvoice.org/italian-dockers-stop-arms-shipment-to-israel-in-solidarity-with-palestine
Italian
Dockers Stop Arms Shipment to Israel in Solidarity with PalestineMay 14,
2021
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This Friday the *Asiatic Island* arrived in the port of Livorno, Italy.
Thanks to the report of the Autonomous Collective of Port Workers of Genoa
and the WeaponWatch association, the port workers, organized in L’Unione
Sindacale di Base, learned that the ship was filled with weapons and
explosives bound for the Israeli dock of Ashdod. These weapons and
explosives would be used to kill Palestinians, who have already been hit by
a brutal Israeli military offensive that has murdered hundreds of victims,
including many children. The union announced shortly after that it would
not allow this or any other maritime shipments of armaments to set sail for
Israel.

The dockworkers’ unions in Italy are trying to gather more information
about the shipments coming to their ports in order to prevent military
supplies from arriving in Israel. Just yesterday they received a report
about the presence of dozens of armored military vehicles ready to be
loaded onto another ship, the *Molo Italia*.

This Saturday, the L’Unione Sindacale di Base will be in the streets of
Livorno marching in solidarity with the Palestinian population to demand
the immediate cessation of the bombing of Gaza and the evictions of
Palestinians from their homes.

This example of workers’ solidarity, if multiplied and expanded
internationally, could be powerful enough to stop the criminal attacks of
the State of Israel against Palestine.

In the United States, the labor movement must take this example into its
own hands and actively mobilize against the Biden administration’s policy
of “unwavering support” and military aid for Israel and boycott any U.S.
shipments of weapons destined to be used against the people of Palestine.
We must take up the example of sectors of the labor movement that in 2008
took action in the U.S. against the imperialist war
<https://labornotes.org/2008/05/longshore-workers-shut-ports-protest-war>
against Iraq. The international solidarity actions with Palestine called
for this Saturday in the United States and around the world could be the
beginning of an anti-imperialist movement in the heart of the U.S. empire,
one that takes up the cause of the Palestinian people as its own. Unions
must move from declarations and words to deeds and mobilize to demand an
end to U.S. military aid to Israel and the bloody occupation of Palestine.
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