“I keep on asking are they alive or are they dead?”
Shuruq As’ad, a journalist in the West Bank and a member of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, described the constant worry of checking in on her colleagues in Gaza to a webinar hosted by the National Labor Network for Ceasefire on Tuesday, July 9. Due to lack of electricity and internet connection in Gaza, she often doesn’t hear back for several days or a week, and her fear is not unfounded: as she reported, 151 journalists have been killed by the Israeli military in the past nine months.
As’ad was one of a panel of Palestinian trade union leaders who spoke about the living and working conditions faced by working people in both Gaza and the West Bank (the two discontinuous Palestinian territories occupied by Israel) on the webinar, which was emceed by American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein. Since the invasion of Gaza in October, Israeli forces have killed over 30,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, and have displaced at least 75 percent of the population of Gaza.
In a pre-recorded audio message, Dr. Salama Abu Zaiter, the president of the General Union of Health Service Workers in Gaza, said that the camps to which most Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced do not meet minimal standards of human dignity, with rampant disease and lack of facilities to maintain health.
“I stress here the fact that there is no safe place in Gaza,” he said. “People here are enduring immense agony and trauma ... the toll is paid by ordinary civilians.”
Alaa Mayas, the Director of the General Union of Transport Workers, described how members of his union who work in the fishing sector in Gaza have seen their livelihoods “completely destroyed” by the invasion, with no working boats in which to go fishing. In the West Bank, where violent attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians commuting to work have increased since October, “many people have stopped working in the transportation sector because of the risks.” He pointed out that in addition to the military assault on Gaza, Israel has “worked relentlessly to destroy the economy of Palestinians.”
Rafeef Ziadah of Workers in Palestine, an advocacy group based in Great Britain, reported that since the invasion, every office of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions has been bombed. PGFTU leaders are now “mostly living in tents, having been uprooted more than eight times,” but they remain in Gaza, doing their best to advocate for their members. “Please keep them in your mind, please keep them in your hearts,” she asked webinar participants.
Ziadah pointed out that “The U.S. continues to be Israel’s main weapons supplier,” sending $3.8 billion in aid annually to Israel’s military, and having approved an extra $14.5 billion in military aid since the beginning of the invasion. Arms corporations are literally “making a killing” off of the invasion of Gaza.
“We believe this money can be much better spent at home,” she said, “especially as the cost-of-living crisis intensifies.”
At the conclusion of the webinar, the National Labor Network for Ceasefire unveiled a new letter-writing campaign targeting Members of Congress and Senators.
As Dr. Zaiter said in his remarks, recorded in a tent after having been displaced four times, “The sufferings are intolerable and our people need to see the support of the remaining honorable peoples of the world.”