On October 7, the settler-colonial regime of Israel launched an indiscriminate bombing campaign and land invasion of the Gaza Strip under the pretext of countering Palestinian resistance operations carried out in occupied Palestinian territories. Attempting to summarise the sheer destruction unleashed by the apartheid regime in numbers is difficult due to the pace at which it is taking place.
As of writing, Israel has murdered more than 14,000 Palestinians, the majority Women and Children with the latter surpassing the 5,500 mark meaning that a child is being killed every 10 minutes. Nothing has escaped Israel’s genocidal drive.36 health facilities, including 22 hospitals have been bombed. The most prominent of which was a strike on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in which 500 Palestinians were killed. Refugee camps have been struck, so too have schools including those run by the UN.
In addition to the bombing campaign, Israel has shut down access to food, water, medicine, power, and gas to the Strip whose inhabitants have been described as “human-animals” by the Israeli Defence Minster. This tightening of the sea, land, and air blockade, which has been ongoing for 17 years, has resulted in drinking water and food shortages making starvation a weapon of war. The breakdown of infrastructure and services resulting from the bombing and blockade is hard to capture in words and numbers, but it is so acute that stray dogs are eating at the bodies of Gazans in hospitals and the streets. More than half of Gaza’s residential units are now uninhabitable or completely destroyed.
Israel has also stepped up its repression in the West Bank killing 200 Palestinians since October 7 and swelling its jails with more than 5,000 arbitrary arrests bringing the total number of hostages it holds to over 10,000. In jail, prisoners are subject to intimidation, humiliation, and torture leading to deaths.
Those of us watching have been horrified by the videos and images emerging from Palestine. A father carrying the remains of his children in carrier bags. Ice-cream trucks filled with the bodies of the dead as morgues overran. Decapitated and mangled bodies of children being removed from under the rubble or being rushed to hospitals with missing limbs.
The IWW Edinburgh Branch recognises the cruelty of these acts as what they are: Genocide. We also recognise that these acts constitute a continuation of the long-standing project of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people inextricably linked to the violence used to establish the Israeli settler-colonial regime in 1948. We also recognize and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian’s right to self-defence by any means necessary.
Importantly, we recognise the complicity of the UK government and its capitalist class in these acts of genocide who continue to support Israel’s actions materially and politically. This includes the intersection of the struggle for Palestinian liberation with the struggle against the domination of global capitalism.
For the above reasons, the IWW Edinburgh Branch, in line with calls from Palestinian workers, has passed a resolution to create a Palestine Solidarity Committee with the aim to mobilise our members and the wider public to take action here to end the genocide. This includes:
- Organising pickets in front of businesses known to support Israel.
- Organising workers in a way to uncover any links between their workplaces and the Israeli occupation and take necessary action.
- Raising awareness of the ongoing genocide and mobilizing members to attend solidarity protests and marches.
- Building stronger relationships with other organisations focused on Palestinian liberation operating in Edinburgh.
- Carrying out other actions as we see fit.
The IWW Edinburgh Branch has also made donations to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.
We call on other branches of the IWW in the UK and globally to pass similar motions and undertake similar actions.
We unequivocally stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and take courage from their resilience and bravery as they endure the unimaginable. The conflict in Palestine cannot end until the entire land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is decolonized. This means an end to the siege of Gaza, the lifting of the occupation in the West Bank, the return of displaced Palestinians, and the equal treatment of all within Palestine is established.
An Injury to one is an Injury to all!