Israeli Workers Strike over Hostage Deaths

Sep 16, 2024

After the Israeli military found the bodies of six of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, the largest union in Israel called a one-day general strike. Workers disrupted municipal services, the country’s main airport, banks, and even hospitals.

The strikes were accompanied by demonstrations across the country, demanding that Netanyahu agree to a cease-fire to save the remaining hostages.

These demonstrations and this strike are quite limited, first of all in their extent, and second of all in that they are demands about the hostages only, not about the horror being inflicted on the Palestinian population.

Nonetheless they show that there is widespread anger within the Israeli population about the war being carried out in their name.

There can be no Israeli military solution to the danger of more attacks like that of October 7, or to the fact that the whole Israeli population lives in a permanent garrison state. Neither can a cease-fire guarantee the safety of the Israeli population—any cease-fire signed by this Israeli government can only be a temporary pause between wars.

This permanent war is a product of the very way Israel was built as a state for only the Jews. They are only one of the peoples who share the country, and the Israeli state has condemned many of the others to live behind walls and barbed wire. The leaders of that Israeli state cannot solve this problem, fundamental to its existence as currently constructed.

Nonetheless, the mobilization of part of the Israeli population and especially its working class against some of the horrors that this situation means for them—even if those horrors pale in comparison to what has been inflicted on the Palestinians—is the only possible way out.