Dockworkers shut down ports in solidarity with Palestine

When dockworkers rebel against the war machine, Palestine becomes a banner of liberation worldwide

 

From the dockworkers of Jaffa who resisted British colonialism in 1936 to the 113 ports preparing to mobilize against war on October 30, 2026, the working class is reviving its traditions of international solidarity. As Canada's largest labor federation endorses workers' refusal to handle weapons destined for Israel, Palestine is becoming a rallying point for struggles against colonialism, racism, exploitation, and imperialism.

 

There are moments in history when workers do not need lengthy speeches to change the world. Sometimes, all it takes is for a worker to place a hand on a massive crane and decide not to move it.

 

In one port, a ship waits for its cargo. On the other side of the sea, a Palestinian family waits for the bombing to stop, for their children to return to school, and for a single night of sleep without fear.

 

Thousands of kilometers may separate the worker from that family. They may never know each other's names or speak the same language. Yet they are connected by something that does not appear on the maps of global trade: the weapons passing through the ports may be the very ones destroying people's lives on the other side of the sea.

 

Here, a worker's refusal to load a shipment of weapons takes on a profoundly human meaning. The worker refuses to allow the labor that puts food on their children's table to become another link in a chain of death that deprives other children of their lives.

 

"Dockworkers Do Not Work for War."

 

Under this slogan, dockworkers are in the midst of a major international mobilization on Friday, October 30, 2026, against arms shipments and imperialist wars, with solidarity for the Palestinian people at its center.

 

The mobilization map lists participation from 113 ports across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Australia, although the forms of action and the extent of work stoppages will vary.

 

This movement goes beyond symbolic solidarity with Palestine. It reaches into the heart of the economic machinery that sustains wars: production, transportation, trade and global supply chains.

 

But this story did not begin today.

 

From Jaffa to the world: a history of resistance on the docks

 

In the spring of 1936, Palestinian dockworkers in Jaffa stood at the heart of the general strike against British colonialism and the Zionist project.

 

Jaffa's port was an economic lifeline for Palestine. Goods and agricultural products passed through its docks, particularly the famous Palestinian oranges. The workers who carried those crates on their shoulders understood that by stopping work, they could paralyze a significant part of the colonial economy.

 

When they went on strike, they were defending more than their wages. They were fighting for the future of an entire society facing colonial domination and land dispossession.

 

British Mandate authorities helped facilitate the creation of an alternative port in Tel Aviv, seeking to bypass the Palestinian strike and undermine its economic power.

 

Twelve years later came the Nakba of 1948. Jaffa's port, once a place of work, life, and resistance, became one of the routes of mass displacement. Thousands of Palestinians fled their city by sea, leaving behind homes, markets, workshops, and docks where they had built their lives.

 

But traditions of working-class solidarity against colonialism were also developing in ports elsewhere in the world.

 

In 1935, when fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia, African dockworkers refused to handle Italian shipments. After the Second World War, dockworkers participated in solidarity campaigns supporting struggles for national liberation, particularly in Indonesia.

 

In November 1984, the port of San Francisco witnessed one of the most inspiring chapters in this history.

 

A Dutch ship arrived carrying goods from South Africa, then ruled by the apartheid regime. But workers belonging to ILWU Local 10 refused to unload the South African cargo, leaving it aboard the ship for ten days.

 

Among the leading organizers was Black dockworker and activist Leo Robinson. The workers faced the risk of lost wages and legal penalties, yet they refused to contribute to a system that denied millions of people their rights because of the color of their skin.

 

They did not necessarily know the names of the Black workers struggling in South Africa's mines and factories. But they understood that their own power in San Francisco could become part of the strength of those oppressed workers on the other side of the world.

 

Six years later, Nelson Mandela visited Oakland after his release from prison and thanked the dockworkers for their solidarity.

 

Apartheid was not defeated by a single strike. But that action contributed to an international movement that made the system increasingly difficult to sustain.

 

The lesson was clear: workers who do not have the power to declare wars or end colonialism can, through collective organization, disrupt some of the mechanisms that allow them to continue.

 

Palestine revives the power of international solidarity

 

The labour movement revived this tradition through its solidarity with Palestine.

 

In 2009, dockworkers in Durban, South Africa, refused to handle an Israeli ship in protest against the assault on Gaza. The following year, Swedish dockworkers carried out a week-long boycott of Israeli goods.

 

In 2014, Oakland became the center of the "Block the Boat" campaign, bringing together Palestine solidarity activists and trade unionists to prevent ships belonging to the Israeli shipping company Zim from being unloaded.

 

Workers were drawing on the same experience they had used against apartheid in South Africa: transforming political solidarity into collective economic action.

 

Then came Israel's war on Gaza after October 2023, with its mass killing, destruction, displacement, and starvation, giving this solidarity a new urgency.

 

On October 16, 2023, Palestinian trade unions issued an appeal to workers around the world, calling on them to refuse to manufacture or transport weapons destined for Israel and to pressure governments and companies to end their complicity in the war.

 

It was not simply an appeal for sympathy. It was a call to mobilize the organized economic power of the working class.

 

The response soon began.

 

In Barcelona, dockworkers announced their refusal to handle military shipments. In Italy, workers in Genoa mobilized against arms transportation. In June 2025, dockworkers at France's Fos-sur-Mer port refused to load a shipment of military equipment bound for Israel.

 

But Genoa witnessed one of the most powerful moments of solidarity.

 

In September 2025, as the Global Sumud Flotilla attempted to reach Gaza and break the blockade, dockworkers declared their readiness to shut down port operations if the flotilla's ships came under attack.

 

One worker stood before a large crowd of demonstrators and warned that any loss of contact with the flotilla would trigger action to shut down the ports.

 

His words carried particular weight because they did not come from a politician promising something beyond their power to deliver. They came from a worker who knew that he and his colleagues possessed the real capacity to disrupt shipping operations.

 

At that moment, Palestinians were no longer simply images of children beneath the rubble on television screens. They had become people for whom workers in Europe could take concrete action.

 

Pain was transformed into organization, and anger into collective action.

 

From twenty ports to a movement across continents

 

On February 6, 2026, the first coordinated International Day of Action under the slogan "Dockworkers Do Not Work for War" took place, involving twenty ports across seven countries.

 

In May, trade unions representing 35 ports met in Istanbul and agreed to expand their coordination. The network subsequently grew to include more than forty ports across the Mediterranean and Europe before the international mobilization expanded further in preparation for October 30.

 

What is new here is not merely the number of ports involved but the attempt to build an international workers' network capable of challenging shipping companies that can circumvent local boycotts by redirecting cargo to other ports.

 

The movement also refuses to separate opposition to war from workers' everyday struggles.

 

Its second slogan, "Ports for Peace—Jobs with Dignity," connects opposition to the militarization of ports with demands for higher wages, shorter working hours, improved health and safety conditions, and resistance to privatization, temporary employment, and subcontracting.

 

It also opposes the use of automation and artificial intelligence to eliminate jobs and intensify the exploitation of those who remain employed.

 

The same worker whom a company pressures to accept lower wages and longer hours may also be ordered by the government to transport weapons in the name of the "national interest."

 

In both cases, workers are being asked to sacrifice their lives and rights for interests over which they have little or no control.

 

Canada's labor movement takes a stand against arms shipments to Israel

 

As dockworkers prepared for their international day of action, a significant development has emerged within Canada's labor movement.

 

On October 28, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) announced that its Canadian Council had voted in support of a resolution calling on workers to refuse to handle weapons and military equipment destined for Israel.

 

The CLC, Canada's largest labor federation, also called on the federal government to end all direct and indirect transfers of arms and military equipment to Israel.

 

The resolution expresses solidarity with Palestinian workers and their families while emphasizing Canada's responsibility to ensure that weapons and military equipment produced here are not used to harm Palestinian civilians or contribute to violations of international humanitarian law.

 

It also rejects antisemitism, anti-Palestinian racism, and Islamophobia, affirming that the labor movement stands for the rights, safety, and dignity of working people everywhere.

 

This decision comes after years of organizing by Palestine solidarity activists and trade unionists across Canada.

 

The Toronto and York Region Labour Council had already endorsed calls for workers to refuse to handle arms shipments to Israel. Unifor, Canada's largest private-sector union, supported the Palestinian trade union movement's demand for an arms embargo in 2025. Other provincial labour federations have adopted similar positions.

 

The latest CLC decision brings that demand to a major national labour body.

 

Its importance goes beyond the wording of a resolution.

 

Canada is part of the international military supply chain. Canadian-produced military equipment and components have been exported to Israel, while companies operating in Canada remain connected to a global arms industry sustained by government contracts, international trade, and military alliances.

 

This raises a fundamental question for Canada's working class: should the labor that produces our livelihoods also be used to produce and transport the weapons that destroy the lives of Palestinian workers and their families?

 

The CLC resolution does not mean that Canadian workers have already stopped all such shipments. The challenge now is whether this commitment can be translated into workplace organization, practical solidarity, and collective action.

 

For workers in ports, transportation, manufacturing, aerospace, and logistics, the international dockworkers' movement offers an example of how political solidarity can become a material force.

 

There is a profound connection between a dockworker in Genoa refusing to load weapons, a Palestinian worker struggling to protect their family, and a Canadian worker demanding that the products of their labor not be used to sustain war.

 

They may live under very different conditions, but their struggles raise the same question: who controls the wealth workers produce, and whose interests does it serve?

 

Why has Palestine become a cause for everyone fighting for liberation?

 

At first glance, the distance between a dockworker struggling to pay the rent and a Palestinian family searching for shelter after their home has been destroyed may seem enormous.

 

But that distance begins to disappear when we examine the economic and political system governing our world.

 

Wars are not disconnected from capitalist competition over markets, energy, resources, and trade routes. Arms manufacturers, shipping corporations, and powerful business interests benefit from a system in which war generates profits while workers and the poor bear its consequences.

 

While governments demand that workers accept austerity and declining public services, they spend billions on armaments and preparations for war.

 

This is why dockworkers see no contradiction between striking for higher wages and striking against arms shipments. From their class perspective, these are two sides of the struggle against a system that places profits and military power above human life.

 

Anti-Zionism also acquires a deeper emancipatory meaning in this context, extending beyond opposition to the policies of any particular Israeli government. It means opposing a settler-colonial project built on the displacement of Palestinians and the denial of their rights, sustained by the backing of major imperialist powers.

 

Such opposition is not directed against Jews as a religious or ethnic community. It is directed against colonialism, racism, and systems of oppression and privilege and stands for freedom and equality for everyone.

 

This is why Palestine has become a meeting point for different struggles.

 

Indigenous peoples recognize echoes of their own histories of land dispossession. Migrants confronting racism see parallels with discrimination and exclusion. Anti-imperialists see an example of military power being used to subordinate peoples. Organized workers see evidence of their ability to challenge injustice when they act together.

 

Palestine has not become a global cause because everyone experiences the same suffering, but because the Palestinian struggle exposes the connections between different forms of exploitation, oppression, and colonialism.

 

It does not lose its distinct character as the struggle of a people resisting occupation and displacement. Instead, it gains additional strength by becoming part of a broader movement seeking to liberate humanity from relations of domination and exploitation.

 

When workers refuse to load death

 

Nobody can know in advance what the October 30 strikes will achieve. They may not succeed in stopping the arms trade or ending the war. But the movement has already accomplished something profoundly important: it has brought together workers separated by continents, languages, and different trade union traditions around the idea that solidarity can become a material force capable of changing reality.

 

And now, with the Canadian Labour Congress supporting workers' refusal to handle weapons destined for Israel, that message is reaching deeper into Canada's organized labor movement.

 

The next challenge is to turn resolutions into collective strength, connecting opposition to war with the everyday struggles of workers against exploitation, austerity, and attacks on their rights.

 

From Jaffa to San Francisco, from Durban to Genoa, and from Tangier to Marseille, there is a long history of workers who have refused to choose between their livelihoods and their consciences.

 

They are defending an idea that is both remarkably simple and profoundly radical: no human being should have to contribute to killing another human being in order to feed their children.

 

In a world where governments try to convince people that wars are inevitable and that the decisions of the great powers cannot be challenged, dockworkers offer a different answer.

 

The war machine, however enormous it may appear, depends on millions of people who manufacture weapons, transport them, and operate ports, railways, and factories.

 

And those people can organize. They can say "No."

 

This is why the struggle to liberate Palestine is not the responsibility of Palestinians alone, just as the struggle against apartheid was never solely the responsibility of Black South Africans.

 

It is a struggle that tests the meaning of international solidarity and affirms that the freedom of any people cannot be separated from the freedom of others.

 

When a worker in Genoa, Marseille, or Tangier refuses to load a shipment of weapons, they do not stop the war alone. But they demonstrate that the world is not forever condemned to obey the will of generals and corporate bosses.

 

Ninety years ago, Jaffa's dockworkers stopped working to defend their people and their land. Today, fellow workers around the world are preparing to stop work in solidarity with Palestine.

 

The ships, cranes, and technologies have changed, but the fundamental question remains: Who do workers work for? Who benefits from the wealth they produce? And who has the right to decide the future of our world?

 

Palestine will not be liberated through sympathy alone but through solidarity transformed into organization, struggle, and a social force capable of challenging colonialism and imperialism.

 

For a free Palestine, and for a world in which no worker must choose between feeding their own children and participating in the killing of someone else's.