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As Israel perpetrates a genocide in the Gaza Strip, key players in the labor movement have joined forces to strategize how unions might apply leverage to help bring about an end to the assault. Over the last year, recognizing the widespread opposition to the war among their membership and the potential for dissent inherent in cross-union solidarity, representatives of over 200 U.S. unions — from many dozens of participating locals, to the leaderships of multiple leading national unions — banded together to form The National Labor Network for Ceasefire (NLNC).

“The workers [of Gaza] need us to push back through our unions,” Dimondstein said. “These are bombs often funded by the United States of America. We don’t want our tax dollars being used … to bomb the hell out of innocent men, women and children. And about half of the known deaths in Gaza have been children. This has got to stop. The idea of the NLNC is to bring more organized strength to the issue, to educate on the issue, and to pressure the Biden administration to use their leverage to force a ceasefire and [deliver] massive humanitarian aid.”

The NLNC promises to be a continuing force in the days to come. As Dimondstein reflected, “We’ve probably had some influence on the rest of the labor movement, even if it’s [just] in words. I don’t know if a majority of the unions now have ceasefire positions, but many of them do, including the AFL-CIO. So, I think by getting organized as the National Labor Network, we’re able to put much more of a spotlight on this issue and bring some strength to the issue within the organized labor movement.” By following the early example of the UFCW Local 3000, and at the urging of its early founding members like Dimondstein, the NLNC has at least helped labor advance past a certain political hesitancy.

A 2020 CBS/YouGov survey found that a slight majority of Pennsylvanians actually oppose fracking, with 52 percent of voters opposed and 48 percent in favor. Another 2020 poll, this one by Franklin & Marshall College, reported that 48 percent of registered Pennsylvania voters supported a ban on fracking, while only 39 percent opposed such a ban. And in a 2021 poll by the Ohio River Valley Institute, a sustainability-focused think tank, less than a third of Pennsylvanians said they supported continued fracking in the state.

Popular support for fracking has declined in Pennsylvania as understanding of its adverse effects has grown. A review of more than 2,500 scientific, medical, government and media reports — many of which focused on Pennsylvania — found that fracking is linked to numerous health problems, including cancer, asthma and congenital anomalies. The evidence is staggering, but here are some particularly egregious examples: An August 2023 report by the University of Pittsburgh determined that children living within a mile of a natural gas fracking well were seven times more likely to contract lymphoma, a rare form of childhood cancer. Another study found that children within a mile of a fracking well were also more likely to develop juvenile leukemia.

Commissioned by the Arab American Institute (AAI), the online poll of 2,505 American voters conducted between July 31 and August 1 found that 44% of U.S. voters would back Harris, 40% would support Republican nominee Donald Trump, and 11% would vote third party “if the election for president of the United States were held today.”

But if Harris were to endorse a suspension of U.S. arms shipments and diplomatic support for Israel “until there was a cease-fire and withdrawal of forces from Gaza,” her national support would grow from 44% to 49%.

A majority of Democratic voters say the Gaza crisis is either very or somewhat important in determining how they vote in November, according to the AAI poll.

The new survey, which has a margin of error of 2 percentage points, is consistent with an earlier poll commissioned by the Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding Policy Project, which found that Harris would bolster her chances in key battleground states if she backed an arms embargo.

“Reading the health experts, I am starting to think with horror that if it’s not stopped, Israel’s assault could end up exterminating almost the entire population in Gaza over the next couple of years,” Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, wrote on Friday on social media.

Albanese cited a recent report from University of Edinburgh global public health chair Devi Sridhar finding that the true death toll from Israel’s genocide could be estimated at 335,500 as of September.

Sridhar based this rough calculation off of an estimate by public health researchers published in The Lancet in July regarding typical indirect death counts from previous conflicts, citing research hailed as the gold standard in the field. At that time, the researchers estimated that the true death toll could be roughly 186,000, stemming from direct killings like bombings as well as Israel’s destruction of the health, food and sanitation systems in Gaza.

The death toll, then, could be between 15 and 20 percent of the population by the end of this year, Albanese said, in just over a year of Israel’s genocide. And, as Sridhar writes in her Guardian report, the calculation that she borrows from The Lancet editorial is highly conservative — meaning the death toll could be even higher than her 335,500 estimate.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Wednesday that Israeli forces have killed over two dozen people in the West Bank just over the past week, while the Palestinian Health Ministry reports a death toll of at least 39 people so far, with over 145 people injured. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has said that the past week was the deadliest in the occupied West Bank since November.

Over the past week alone, Israel has cut northern parts of the region off from the rest of the West Bank, putting cities there under siege as Israeli forces turned neighborhoods into war zones and razed others. Soldiers have used bulldozers to tear up major streets.

On Sunday — just a few days into Israel’s current assault — Jenin officials reported that the Israeli army had already bulldozed over 70 percent of Jenin’s streets, destroyed 20 kilometers miles of water and sewage infrastructure, and cut off water to 80 percent of the city. OCHA reports that Israel has destroyed the homes of at least 120 people in Tulkarem, while 13,000 people in Nur Shams have lost water access to their homes.

Meanwhile, Palestinians say that Israel’s endless assaults on the occupied West Bank are constantly radicalizing the victims of such attacks. “What do you think they’re doing? They’re pushing for escalation so that they can fully depopulate us,” one resident of Jenin told +972 Magazine. “They’re making life for us unbearable.”

This is the painful calculus of American immigration policy — a patchwork of executive actions that bring relief to a chosen few, while millions more are subject to increasingly cruel forms of immigration enforcement. Broadly speaking, enforcement comes in two forms: an explosion of border patrol that creates border detention camps, and makes crossing ever more dangerous for migrants, and deportations in the interior that rip families like mine apart. While the political debate over immigration moves in an ever more ethnonationalist direction, few understand the brutal reality of our current immigration system — and what deportation actually means for my family and thousands of families like mine who are currently fighting to stay together.

But as one administration after another failed to pass comprehensive legislation that would allow immigrants to apply for legal permanent residency, the immigration enforcement system grew ever crueller. Republicans, now calling for mass deportations, have become increasingly extremist, while Democrats have tracked them to the right. The Clinton administration expanded temporary protections for immigrants from certain countries, while criminalizing immigration and making it more difficult for most undocumented immigrants to adjust their status. The Obama administration enacted the DACA program, which allowed 800,000 undocumented youth to apply for temporary status, while deporting a record 3 million immigrants. As politics on immigration move further to the right, smaller and smaller segments of the community are granted fragile, temporary status, while the majority are criminalized and threatened with imprisonment and deportation.

The only way to break this vicious cycle is to demand the obvious: a path to legal status and permanent protection from deportation for the millions of us who have built families and a life in the United States. Anything less rips children away from their parents and destroys communities.

Sponsored by the Maine Coalition for Palestine and the Maine chapter of Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), the newly approved resolution contains a “divestment list” of more than 85 companies, from U.S.-based Chevron, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing to Israel-based Elbit Systems. The list also includes public entities such as Israel Bonds and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries.

The Maine Coalition for Palestine said Wednesday’s vote makes Portland the fourth U.S. city to adopt an Israel divestment resolution. Two California cities — Hayward and Richmond — and Hamtramck, Michigan passed similar divestment resolutions earlier this year.

“Americans overwhelmingly want a cease-fire and an arms embargo,” the group continued. “Divestment sends a clear message that current U.S. policy towards Palestinians is morally unacceptable and does not serve the interests of our country. We urge everyone to join this effort in their own communities. Our tax money should not be spent killing women and children in Palestine.”

Here is the Article for those who can't watch the video: The Gaza Ghetto Uprising - Adi Callai

On Aug. 28, Israel launched “Operation Summer Camps,” the largest military invasion witnessed in the northern West Bank in over two decades. In Jenin, Israeli forces first moved into the city before imposing a full-blown siege on the refugee camp within hours; the army simultaneously carried out operations in Tubas, Nablus, Ramallah, and Tulkarem.

Since 2021, the Israeli military has repeatedly targeted Jenin refugee camp under the pretext of fighting armed resistance groups. Most of the victims of these assaults have been non-combatant Palestinian civilians and minors, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)..

Four days into the operation, the camp had largely become a ghost town, with Palestinians forced to remain inside their homes as Israeli soldiers turned buildings into military bases and dispatched snipers across various rooftops. Civilians, including children, elderly, and chronically ill, have been denied access to water, food, and medicine as part of the total siege on the camp.

Local Palestinian residents and journalists say that this current assault is the most intense and violent in years, with at least 19 Palestinians killed in Jenin, including minors. This comes amid a dramatic increase in Israeli military operations and settler violence across the West Bank after October 7, which have killed nearly 700 Palestinians in the territory — 185 in Jenin alone — in brutal ways.

Although members of the press were denied access to the camp, the sounds of explosions and machine gunfire echoed throughout Jenin. Large numbers of Israeli D-9 bulldozers, armored personnel carriers, and armored jeeps moved through the city’s streets. The skies of Jenin were buzzing with drones; it was unclear whether these were surveillance drones or the lethal quadcopters, which Israel has commonly deployed both in Gaza and the West Bank.

At the start of the operation, the military also imposed a full lockdown on Jenin Governmental Hospital, the only public general hospital in the city. The Israeli Border Police, or Magav, was tasked with maintaining control of entry and exit to the hospital and declared the immediate surrounding area a “closed zone by military order.”

It is still unclear how long the Israeli military intends to continue Operation Summer Camps. The governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu Al-Rub, reportedly tried to coordinate a ceasefire with the army to allow urgent aid into the refugee camp, but his efforts were denied.

An independent United Nations expert warned Monday that “Israel’s genocidal violence risks leaking out of Gaza and into the occupied Palestinian territory as a whole” as Western governments, corporations, and other institutions keep up their support for the Israeli military, which stands accused of grave war crimes in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

“Apartheid Israel is targeting Gaza and the West Bank simultaneously, as part of an overall process of elimination, replacement, and territorial expansion,” Albanese said Tuesday. “The longstanding impunity granted to Israel is enabling the de-Palestinization of the occupied territory, leaving Palestinians at the mercy of the forces pursuing their elimination as a national group.”

Defense for Children International–Palestine noted Monday that “dozens of Israeli military vehicles” have “stormed” the West Bank city of Jenin over the past week as “Israeli forces deployed across the targeted refugee camps, seizing Palestinian homes to use as military bases and stationing snipers on the roofs of buildings, subjecting their residents to field investigations.”

Unlawful Israeli land seizures have also surged in the West Bank as settlers and soldiers wipe out entire Palestinian communities. The BBC reported Monday that, according to its own analysis, there are “currently at least 196 across the West Bank, and 29 were set up last year — more than in any previous year.”

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, similarly argued Tuesday that “the U.S. must reverse course — and do so dramatically.”

“A long-overdue cut-off of U.S. arms to Israel and recognition of the Palestinian right to self-determination would provide exactly the shock to the system that is needed,” Zogby wrote. “It would force an internal debate in Israel, empowering those who want peace. It might also serve to send a message to the Palestinian people that their plight and rights are understood.”

Update:

The chairman of Histadrut, Israel’s largest trade union, instructed workers to return to their jobs following an order by an Israeli court to end the general strike on Monday afternoon.

Earlier:

Workers across Israel walked off the job and took to the streets on Monday to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to agree to a cease-fire and hostage-release deal after Israeli forces recovered the bodies of six people who were held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Yair Lapid, Israel’s opposition leader, expressed support for the strike, saying that “Netanyahu and the cabinet of death decided not to save” the six hostages whose bodies were recovered from Rafah. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Sunday that Hamas fighters killed the hostages, including Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

Hamas said in a statement that “we hold the criminal terrorist Benjamin Netanyahu and the biased American administration responsible for the failure of the negotiations to stop the aggression against our people and to release the prisoners in an exchange.”

B’Tselem, an Israeli advocacy organization, said in a statement Sunday that “the six Israeli hostages whose bodies were recovered from Gaza this morning could have been saved if the Israeli government had heeded the pleas of their families and the Israeli public to reach a cease-fire and an exchange deal.”

Labor unions in the United States — Israel’s main ally and weapons supplier — expressed solidarity with Israeli workers who walked off the job Monday, with American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten applauding “this action to halt Israel’s economy to send a message to the Netanyahu government to end this war.”

The Israeli military killed nearly a dozen people Sunday in its latest bombing of a school-turned-shelter in the Gaza Strip, an attack that came amid limited pauses aimed at allowing relief workers to vaccinate Palestinian children against reemergent polio.

Israel’s strike on the Safad school in Gaza City killed at least 11 people, including a woman and a girl, a spokesperson for Gaza’s civil defense agency told Agence France-Presse.

The Israeli military claimed it was targeting a “Hamas command center” inside the school, which — like other Gaza schools that remain standing — was being used as a shelter for people displaced by Israel’s nearly 11-month assault.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement Sunday that “Israeli aircraft and tanks continue to bomb the central Gaza Strip, the area where the polio vaccination campaign has begun.”

“Along with the ongoing shelling in various parts of the strip, these Israeli military attacks have coincided with the peak of families’ movement with their children towards the designated vaccination centers,” the group said. “Some of these attacks have even targeted locations near the vaccination centers, endangering the progress of the vaccination process that is required to stop the poliovirus from spreading among Palestinian children in the besieged enclave.”