On Monday 22 September, workers and students across Italy joined an unprecedented general strike and mass demonstrations, to demand an end to the arming of the Israeli state’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
By Matt Kilsby
Under the slogan of “Let’s Block Everything”, millions of workers shut down transport, education, and other sectors and, most importantly, blockaded ports in Genoa, Ancona and Salerno.
All this shows the widespread disgust of millions of people against the genocide and the complicity of Western imperialist governments, which has forced governments in Europe, such as Macron’s in France and Starmer’s here, in to ‘recognising’ the state of Palestine.
But after almost two years of unending war and carnage, these statements are entirely hypocritical. Indeed, since Starmer’s government came to power, arms sales to Israel have massively increased.
As is typical of Netanyahu’s genocidal regime, the response to Starmer’s and Macron’s supposed support for Palestinian statehood has been to double down on their aggression and warmongering.
The day after the strikes in Italy, Israeli drones attacked the solidarity flotilla of 50 boats sailing to Gaza to break the siege and deliver much needed food, aid and medicine; Israel has also branded the flotilla as a “terrorist operation”.
Under the pressure of the mass movement, Italy was forced to send a ship into the Mediterranean to defend the flotilla – even despite far-right president Georgia Meloni’s staunchly pro-zionist politics.
If Starmer’s government was actually interested in stopping the bloodshed in Palestine, it would deploy ships to protect the flotilla from Israeli aggression. Not to mention, of course, suspending all arms sales.
After almost two years since the genocide began, an average of 91 Gazans have been murdered every day. More than half of the victims have been women and children.
The horror is laid bare by the fact that on 4 October, in 20 cities across the UK, activists will read out the names of all the children that have been slaughtered, which will take 17 hours.
Shut down the war economy!
In that context it is easy to despair, but we must take inspiration from the strikes that brought Italian cities and ports to a standstill. Britain has seen huge demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine – all of them bigger than the far right mustered in London, recently – but their effect is limited.
It is true that hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating can have an impact in terms of engendering solidarity and inconveniencing the ruling class and their police forces, but as we saw in Italy, mass strike action means that weapons cannot be produced or transported.
The example of Italy must be urgently spread as part of an internationally coordinated workers’ boycott of Israeli weapons. This means fighting within our trade unions to take an active stand against militarism, rather than cosying up to Starmer’s government.
On X, Zarah Sultana expressed her solidarity with the strike action in Italy, correctly stating that, “coordinated action shows the power of our global movement”.
A new left and openly anti-war party could fight to nationalise the arms companies, for an immediate transition to green, socially useful production with no loss of jobs rather than making weapons of war.
What’s more, it could play a key role in supporting the building of a mass working-class movement for socialist change across the Middle East to guarantee the rights of all national communities.
