In June, the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) scored a major (though partial) victory in its campaign to shut off supply chains to Israel as it conducts its genocide against the Palestinian people. Maersk is a global shipping company deeply complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity. It has contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense to ship equipment central to the campaign against Palestinian civilians, including Armored Personnel Carriers and F-35 jet parts. The victory is partial because Maersk has only committed to cutting ties with settlements in the West Bank, although these include links to significant nodes of the Israeli war industry. Maersk has committed to end its practice of transporting goods in and out of these illegal settlements.
Launched in January, the global campaign has relied on corporate research and grassroots mobilization to put pressure on Maersk through a variety of tactics, including attempts to inform and enlist dockworkers, pressure on Maersk’s board and shareholders, and mobilizations to executives’ homes. Pressure also manifested in the Spanish government blocking some Maersk ships from docking in their ports, 1,000 activists shutting down the company’s Copenhagen headquarters and, most interestingly, dockworkers in Morocco and France refusing to load F-35 parts onto Maersk ships.
But the biggest weapons supplier to Israel by far is the U.S. Dockworkers, as well as a lot of other workers along the supply chain, find themselves involved in this trade. The centrality of the war industry to U.S. exports puts workers in a difficult position – many would prefer to be manufacturing and transporting products that serve societally useful purposes, but the priorities of U.S. imperialism offers few other comparable options. In fact, you could say that since supply chains are interconnected, all U.S. workers find ourselves to some degree implicated in what the U.S. is doing in Gaza. Because the war industry is so central and profitable to U.S. exports, it is important that workers recognize they play a huge role in the struggle against imperialism.
As well as being interconnected in this weapons trade that’s facilitating a genocide, we also all face the possibility of having the violence of capitalism turned on us. The techniques of oppression developed in the frontlines of empire have a way of making their way back to the U.S. to be used against us – just look at the political police force that is emerging in ICE. During this campaign, activists connected the crimes of the U.S. empire to the struggles of U.S. workers facing the militarization of the police, whose tactics and weapons were developed through Israeli oppression of Palestinians.
We all have a role to play and an interest in opposing this industry of death through building and sustaining international consciousness and solidarity in ourselves and people around us. The Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions asked workers of North America and the world to “Let your solidarity with us be a light in the darkness of bias, and let your courageous positions be the voice of truth in the face of falsehood.” We must all work towards answering their appeal.
