The Morning Star reports on five transport unions in Belgium refusing to handle arms shipments destined for Israel. They say that loading and unloading them would mean contributing to the killing of innocent civilians. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/belgian-transport-workers-boycott-israeli-military-shipments
While others continue to wring their hands in despair at the failure to call a cease fire and a group of world leaders condoning the continuing devastation of Gaza leading to mounting deaths and misery for a long suffering population, a group of Belgian trades unions have declared enough is enough and demonstrate to the unions world wide that action can be taken. Furthermore such action has been shown to be extremely effective in earlier conflicts. Pinochet's Chile is given an example of how boycotting the supply of aircraft had serious consequences for that abhorrent regime although this was not revealed until much later.
Arms manufacture has been a very lucrative activity for the industry, but at some point a call has to be made to choose between going for profit or protecting life. It is encouraging to see action being taken to stop the killing in Gaza, shown to be the wishes of more and more people following the United Nations call for a cease fire. The mass media industry has been silent in admitting this until the scale of the genocide has become apparent to so many with massive and repeating demonstrations world wide. Meanwhile the Israeli Government continues to step up death and destruction boosted by a few unrepresentative voices of our leaders complicit in a long list of war crimes defined and agreed by members of the U.N.
John Tyrrell, President. Socialist Labour Party 2/11/2023
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