Dockworkers in Genoa have taken militant action against shipments of weapons to Israel, blockading ports, halting arms, and joining solidarity initiatives like the Global Sumud Flotilla. These actions show how workers can strike real blows against Zionism and imperialism: expanding the struggle, raising the level of confrontation, and placing Palestine at the centre of national and international working-class mobilisation.
Since late July 2025, multiple acts of solidarity with the Palestinian people from dockworkers in Genoa, Italy, have occurred. A crucial step forward was taken when workers blockaded the unloading of military supplies destined for Israel, after being informed of what was enclosed within shipping containers from Greek unions PAME and ENEDEP.
On August 7 2025, the dockworkers once again established a militant blockade against a Saudi Arabian ship that was set to load military equipment, such as a cannon, tanks and explosives that were already stationed in the port, destined for Israel.
These victories add to a wave of labour actions resisting the genocidal assault on the Palestinian people. From Greece to Italy and Morocco, dockworkers have shown that worker-led action in solidarity with those resisting in Palestine is both necessary and entirely possible.
The result of these efforts has led to the Autonomous Collective of Dockworkers (CALP) and the USB union in Genoa, to partake in food distribution in Gaza, by onboarding the Global Sumud Flotilla.
The Flotilla, a coalition that includes cultural and political figures from diverse backgrounds, aims at “breaking the siege on Gaza.” While its approach reflects a largely bourgeois understanding of solidarity – centred on appeals to international law and raising visibility for the ongoing tragedy – this does not diminish the need for it to be fully and actively supported by workers and communists.
For this reason, we endorse the declaration of CALP delegates: “If we lose contact with our boats even for just 20 minutes, we will block all of Europe. From this region 13 to 14,000 containers leave every year for Israel, not a single nail will leave anymore.”
This quote perfectly encapsulates the political level the workers’ movement is currently experiencing. On one hand, workers in Italy and everywhere must heed the call to seize every opportunity to act in solidarity with Palestine, deploying the means uniquely theirs and most feared by capital: cross-sector strike action.
On the other hand, we must not pin our hopes on the success of the boats alone. Whatever their outcome, the systematic genocide of the Palestinians will not cease. Rather, our efforts must ensure our organising efforts strike the heaviest possible blows against Israel’s colonial killing machine.
This requires raising the level of confrontation by placing Palestine at the centre of an expanding workers’ mobilisation. In Britain, we remain far from the prospects of a general strike or a complete blockade in solidarity with Palestine. Yet these are the decisive weapons through which the working class can join the struggle against Zionism and against British imperialism.
To advance in this direction, we believe that the only way forward lies in building an organised and militant pole within the workers’ movement, one capable of acting as a vanguard in shaping and advancing internationalist class struggle. This must be a force that recognises the tactical value of cross-class initiatives while ultimately rejecting class collaboration; one that can connect and direct diverse struggles; one that understands that only through the destruction of capitalism and imperialism can the working class achieve its liberation.
Communist Vanguard supports the creation of working-class mobilisation in Britain, orienting these struggles across workplaces nationwide, with the aim of sustaining the Palestinian resistance until the ultimate defeat of Zionism.