Resources and Education on Palestine
Divesting from Apartheid and Genocide : an action kit for trade unionists
Is Israel an Apartheid State?
“We found that Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid.”
Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General
Canada’s Complicity in Israeli Apartheid
“We are opposed to any initiative within the United Nations and other multilateral forums, that is specifically aimed at criticizing Israel.”
Melanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Liberal Government of Canada
What is BDS and Why Should You Support It?
“There’s a very robust boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign all over the world that is capturing the political and moral imagination of the people, the NGO’s and civil society and is beginning to have an important impact on Israel’s way of acting and thinking.”
Richard Falk UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
Why Supporting the Rights of Palestinians is NOT Antisemitic
5 Principles for Dismantling Antisemitism:
1. Do not isolate antisemitism from other forms of oppression.
2. Challenge political ideologies that foment racism, hate, and fear.
3. Create environments that affirm and celebrate all expressions of cultural and religious life.
4. Make undoing all forms of racism and bigotry both policy and daily practice.
5. Practice safety through solidarity, not law enforcement.
Ressources en français
Israël, un État d’apartheid?
« Nous avons conclu que les politiques cruelles de ségrégation, de dépossession et d’exclusion mises en œuvre par Israël dans tous les territoires sous son contrôle constituent clairement un apartheid. »
Agnes Callamard, Secrétaire générale d’Amnesty International
La complicité canadienne
« Notre gouvernement met en œuvre une série de mesures qui appuient Israël dans ses violations des droits palestiniens. »
Yves Engler, auteur, chercheur, militant
La campagne BDS
Le mouvement BDS réunit plus de 170 groupes de la société civile palestinienne, dont les principaux partis politiques ainsi que des associations de défense des droits des réfugié·es, des fédérations syndicales, des syndicats de femmes, des réseaux d’ONG et une multitude de groupes populaires. BDS appelle les organisations internationales et les gens de conscience à coordonner des boycotts à grande échelle et à mettre en œuvre des initiatives de désinvestissement contre Israël, à l’instar de la lutte menée en Afrique du Sud à l’époque de l’apartheid.
Soutenir les droits palestiniens
La définition de l’antisémitisme élaborée par l’IHRA représente une menace pour la justice et les droits de la personne en Israël et en Palestine, ainsi que pour la liberté académique, la liberté d’expression et le droit à la dissidence.
STRUGGLE of PALESTINIAN WORKERS
FACTS and FIGURES
Palestinian workers, like workers in Canada and elsewhere, are struggling hard for better wages, benefits, health and safety protections, rights to association, and collective bargaining.
The struggle of Palestinian workers is immeasurably more difficult because of the state and impact of apartheid and Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.
In its drive toward total control of Palestine and Palestinians, the Israeli government, since its inception in 1948, has imposed a draconian web of apartheid laws and policies that touch every aspect of Palestinian life, including the economy, working conditions and compensation, and labour organizing. Together, they extinguish basic rights and freedoms. Examples include:
the ongoing siege of Gaza,
the ever-expanding Apartheid Wall,
the military occupation,
the illegal settlements with their connecting system of “Jewish Only” roads, wanton settler violence, check points, land appropriations, and house demolitions.
One of the main instruments of control within this system are the plethora of restrictive measures such as identification cards, work permits, permission requirements, and the like. Permits can determine where Palestinians work or study, where they can live, what roads they can drive on, whether they can access urgent medical assistance and whether they can visit relatives to name a few.
Permits can be used to prevent labour organizing by denying workers and activists freedom of movement. The exploitation of Palestinian workers may be exacerbated by permit brokers who, often in collusion with Israeli employers, charge fees and exert controls over individual workers.
The Palestinian labour force numbered almost 1.4 million people in 2017. This includes about 108,600 people who worked in Israel and 22,100 who worked in the illegal settlements in the West Bank. The unemployment rate stood at 27.7%.
The average daily wage in 2017 was roughly $40 for those working in the West Bank, and about twice that amount for those working in Israel or the illegal settlements. However, about 36% of private sector wage employees in Palestine received less than the minimum wage. Furthermore, in 2021, more than 25% of Palestinians, numbering about 1.4 million people, lived in poverty.
Women, youth, and the people of Gaza fare especially badly under this regime. In 2017, women earned about 70% of what men earned while youth unemployment stood at around 56%. Living conditions in Gaza have been horrendous because of the strangulating siege and devastating bombings of the last ten or more years.
With courage and resolve, Palestinians have persistently contested the oppressive economic conditions, poor working conditions, and the regressive Occupation that mark their lives.
Their first major strike took place in the early 1920’s, when Britain governed Palestine under its colonial style mandate.
Subsequently, they organized major strikes and mobilizations in 1936, 1976, the late 1980’s and 1990’s, 2018, and 2021.
Additional actions, strikes, and mobilizations of various magnitudes have broken out periodically throughout this period.
All of these contestations have been met, first by the British Administration and after 1948 by the Israeli government, with brutal repression and the suppression of labour and political organizing.
Despite these longstanding, extraordinarily difficult conditions, Palestinians have achieved some gains with respect to trade union rights, working conditions, and social programs, even as they have continued to resist the Occupation. Workers struggle and their struggle for national liberation cannot be separated, they are inherently intertwined. So when Palestinians labour makes gains it is a loss for the apartheid regime, and vice versa. It must be said, though, that overall conditions on both the labour and Occupation fronts make life extraordinarily difficult for all Palestinians.
Sources:
Democracy & Workers Rights Center – Palestine: Facts Sheet on Palestinian workers in the oPt, August 2018
International Labour Organization, The situation of workers of the occupied Arab territories, Report of the Director – General - Appendix 2021
Joel Beinin, “Palestinian Workers Have a Long History of Resistance,” Jacobin Magazine, June 6, 2021