It has been 20 months since Israeli imperialism began its genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza. And now they have threatened a wider war in the Middle East by bombing Iran.
Since the beginning of the genocide, the RCP explained that moralistic appeals and pressure on imperialist politicians would not work. We explained that as an outgrowth of capitalism, imperialism is an economic system and cannot be swayed with moral arguments. We explained that only the working class can stop imperialism.
Therefore, we are very excited to see that there is a new campaign launched by Labour4Palestine. This campaign, called “Hot Cargo Kills,” aims to get the unions to not handle Israeli military goods.
The Revolutionary Communist Party fully endorses this campaign. We advise all of our members to promote it in the movement. We also advise all trade unionists to bring this campaign to their union to get their union to declare Israeli military goods hot cargo!
With the Hot Cargo Kills campaign, we can bring the organized working class into the struggle to actually enforce a real arms embargo. We need to spread this from union to union, to the shop floors and ports. This must be brought into every workplace, especially those that handle Israeli goods or perform services that aid Israeli imperialism. Through winning over the ranks of the organized working class to the Hot Cargo Kills campaign we can cut off arms and military supplies to Israel.
While Canada is not a major supplier of arms to Israel, if we paralyze arms exports to Israel from Canada, spreading this movement to the U.S. labour movement is a real possibility. Already dockers in France, Spain, Italy, Greece and others have refused to handle military goods destined for Israel. Lets add Canada to that list and build an international working class movement to paralyze imperialism!
We share here a model resolution that can be moved at union meetings.
Model resolution:
[This union] will:
- Refuse to handle any goods or perform services which assist the Israeli war machine
- Educate and mobilize its membership towards achieving this aim
- Extend this campaign to [superordinate union body, local labor council, regional labour federation] and ultimately to the Canada Labour Congress
Because:
- Israel continues its genocide in Gaza
- Israel’s recent unprovoked attack on Iran brought the region to the brink of all-out war
- Dockers in Spain, Greece, Italy, Morocco and more recently France have already refused to handle military equipment destined for Israel
- Appeals made to the Canadian government to enact an arms embargo have failed
- Workers themselves have power to stop arms shipments to Israel
- The New Brunswick Federation of Labour recently passed a resolution, committing it’s 35,000 members to not handle arms shipments bound for Israel
