Israel’s Labor Court ruled on Monday to end a general strike that was called to pressure the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a hostage and ceasefire deal with Hamas.
The court ordered the strike to be lifted at 2:30 p.m. local time, three and a half hours before its scheduled end. Israel’s largest labor union, the Histadrut, which called the strike, said it would comply with the order.
The partial strike still disrupted services across Israel for the first half of the day. According to The Washington Post, the strike closed or delayed schools and universities, delayed departure flights for at least two hours, and closed some banks and malls. Doctors and nurses also walked off their jobs, restricting hospitals to emergency services only.
By ruling to shut the strike down, the court accepted the government’s argument that the strike was political and not about the economy. The Histadrut’s stance was that the government was damaging the economy by not accepting a hostage deal with Hamas.
The court’s decision was a major victory for Netanyahu, who reportedly accused the workers participating in the strike of supporting Hamas. According to Israeli media outlets, Netanyahu told his security cabinet that the strike was a “disgrace. It’s telling [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar — you murdered six people. Here, we support you.”
The strike was declared after the Israeli military recovered the bodies of six Israeli hostages in Gaza. The Hostage Families and Missing Forum said Netanyahu was to blame for their deaths since he’s been doing everything he can to sabotage the chances of a ceasefire deal.
“A deal for the return of the abductees has been on the table for over two months. If it weren’t for the thwarting [of the deal], the excuses, and the spins, the abductees whose deaths we learned of this morning would probably be alive,” the forum said.
Meanwhile, Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza continues. Gaza’s Health Ministry said Monday that Israeli forces killed at least 48 more Palestinians in Gaza during the previous 24-hour period.
How’s Dumbacrocy working out for you?….!……
Some national labour constitutions prohibit political strikes, general strikes or strikes by civil servants in order to maintain peace and order and the monopoly on the use of force.
https://www.ima.org.il/eng/ViewContent.aspx?CategoryId=6137 Restriction of the right to strike
https://www.nlrb.gov/strikes
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/there-is-no-such-thing-as-an-illegal-strike-reconceptualizing-the-strike-in-law-and-political-economy
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/general-strike
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/chicago-anarchists-and-haymarket-square-incident/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_strike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_action
https://www.britannica.com/topic/general-strike
https://www.epsu.org/article/right-strike-country-factsheets
https://normlex.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:70002:0::NO::P70002_HIER_ELEMENT_ID,P70002_HIER_LEVEL:3945422,2 Right to strike – Objective of the strike (strikes on economic and social issues, political strikes, solidarity strikes, etc.)
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2024/757656/IPOL_STU(2024)757656_EN.pdf Towards an EU-wide right to politically strike: A constitutional perspective
https://www.jhl.fi/en/news/what-is-a-political-strike-and-why-would-banning-them-be-wrong/
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/bakunin/index.htm Frederick Engels, The Bakuninists at Work 1873
https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1961/02/belgium.htm Tony Cliff, The Belgian General Strike 1961
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anarcho-anarchism-and-the-general-strike
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-about-a-strike
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/everything-you-need-to-know-about-general-strikes/
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/general-strike-2028-is-a-uniquely-plausible-dream/
Bet you were excellent at term papers, Bernard!
😉 Nicely sourced!
Haha, 3000-word essay with 1500-word bibliography.
They made me do that in my college once. I was like
"прокляте моє життя!! навіщо мені стільки джерел??"
Sourcing is by far the worst part of any paper i've written or will ever write.
Lapid: "Netanyahu and the death council decided not to save the six hostages who were alive in Gaza. While there are still hostages alive in the Strip, it is still possible to reach an agreement, but Netanyahu is reluctant for political reasons." He added, "Israel is collapsing, and it is impossible to continue like this."
BTW the American hostage who was killed was on the list that "Israel" rejected.
Even with no strike Israel economy is down…!
As I predicted… People in the US should take notice: pipe dreams about some "social pressure" or "electorate revolt" or "third party" are just that: delusional dreams.
Power comes from the barrel of a gun. The state has guns and until a large number of opponents of the state have guns (and strategy), nothing changes.
I dont know. Nonviolent resistance worked for Ghandi and India.
A general strike can bring the state to its knees. Without all of us, the state cant run its day to day operations.
https://youtu.be/poCJqjLfk9g?si=TBMcjA4zDFWN-P24
Things have changed. Look at Assange! Nowadays, Gandhi would be liquidated so quick for being a "terrorist," while people celebrated in the streets.
True, but in the long run, Assange "wins."
Here's how I see it, the state can not exist without us. They have all the weapons, all the resources, psychological media manipulation, and banks to fight against any small group of resistance. However, without the people behind the weapons to fire the bullets or drop the bombs, without officials and people actually doing the work, then it has no power.
Take, for example, a hospital, without all the doctors, nurses, aides, cooks, janitors, etc.. it wouldnt be a hospital, it would just be an empty useless powerless building.
The only way we make them powerless is to empower ourselves and that is where it gets hard for they have power over us monetarily. We need to go to our jobs to live. So, we are powerless until we all come together.
The only way to stop all this violence and bullying in the world for good is to stop it within and among ourselves.
However, I am not naive and I am actually a pessimistic person most of the time. I see the wisdom in nonviolent philosophies, yet cant even subdue or transform my inner angry and hatred. So, I dont have much hope. I kind of hate everyone at times and would love to just go off to the mountains or a deserted island and be a hermit. But I'm stuck with you all down here in the noise, chaos, stupidity, and daily greed we live in.
Mercy, if we only had more of you…
Thanks, but I'm not so sure you'd want more of me, personally. Hahaha.
You are too kind. Yes, I do.
oh cmon be more dapper
quite sad our world is
A general strike is the only real power the plebes have against their overlords. The problem is organizing one, and even harder, in the US, is convincing the mass of people to participate, as that would involve countering the most effective propaganda apparatus (the US corporate media, that is) the world has ever known. It has depoliticized the vast majority of the population, which sees voting for the lesser of two evils as the most it can do.
Any strikes in NYC? Where is Genocide Joe hiding these days?
This is where the only effective protests will take place: inside of Israel.
Can the pathetic Israeli state get any worse?
"Netanyahu told his security cabinet that the strike was a “disgrace. It’s telling [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar — you murdered six people. Here, we support you.""
No, mein Fuhrer…excuse me, MISTER Prime Minister…the strike was protesting YOU killing 40,000+ civilians. They're saying "Here, we DON'T support YOU."
Mein Führer Netänyahu Steïner rejëcts yoür stätements in the HÏGHEST REGÄRD
I have a soft spot for umlauts. Well done!
Thänks!
I used to have a list of ASCII shortcuts beside my monitor at an old job, would use umlautted letters and those cool Swedish 0’s with the slash thru them and the Stargate-a’s with the circle above them.
Oh, and Thorn and Wynn, which used to be letters in English. And fun fact, “&” was a letter in the alphabet, after Z. It still meant “and” but when reciting the alphabet, kids would say “…X, Y, Z, and, per se, And” (where per se means “on its own” in Latin). Thus, ampersand as the name of the ( & ) symbol.
ah the “å” and the.. well I don’t have the other one. I use a Polish keyboard to write in English because it has a bunch of foreign letters which the standard English keyboard sadly doesn’t.
And I love the thorn and the eð. It would make writing Engliš ðis much easier.
And I didn’t know the & was a letter, thats cool.
I’ve heard of Wynn but thorn is superior because you just got “w” instead
Weird we call it “double u” when it’s two v’s, as evidenced by the annoyance of typing “savvy” and it looks like “sawy”
Yeah
In my college my minor is English and my major is something else I like english
Apologies – English is a weird cobbled language whose rules only serve until an exception breaks them. Too many Old and Middle English vestigial structures remain.
German and Icelandic – now THERE are languages with their s**t together.
Pity that Esperanto never took off.
I hate how much French is in English
I had to study french for a year – This was after I knew english – I knew like a quarter of it somehow.
I don’t like German just because of the cases and Icelandic looks difficult bot probably isn’t.
I like Dutch, its close enough in conservativeness to German and Icelandic but it’s just easier to understand if you know English
Theres some french, but not a lot. Probably slightly more than the amount of Dutch in English anyways.
My understanding of German & Icelandic is the practicality. Words are compounds of descriptive words. A friend who was doing his Ph.D in Dark/Middle-Ages Icelandic poetry learned Icelandic to help interpretation of text. He mentioned that Iceland has a scholarly council that creates new words when they are needed. So for “computer” they combined the Icelandic words “thinking” and “box”.
We get a lot of Quebecois French in Canada but out west it’s a rarity. Mandarin or Punjabi or Hindi would serve better, just by demographics. Farsi, in North Vancouver, sizeable population of Persians there.
Ah yeah my German teacher told me that and thats how they get the stupidly long compound words
But I AM speaking Ukrainina as my native language so probably weird I'm talking…
After most sounds we add a "y" sound (as in yes and German and Dutch "Ja.")
So the word for Palestine, latinised as "Palestiney" I think, would be pronounced like
"Pal(y)est(y)i(y)n(y)ey"
I also hate how German has cases, thats one of the reasons I deiced to learn Dutch. It's just that learning it is annoying. If it's your native language you don't think about it. We have 7 cases.
Hah, I’m sure you sound just fine ! Am currently working with a guy from Tennessee who has that accent, and when it was pointed out by the work crew, he said “No, y’all got the accent !!”
My in-laws are German and their w’s come out as v’s. And they’ve been in Canada since, like, ’65 !!
And I’m sure you do to aswell.
My grandmother lived in Germany during the Interwar, her father was a soldier during WW1, fighting from 1915-18. They were Jewish, and my great-grandmother on my mom’s side died just before WW2 started. My grandmother had fled before that because she knew what the Nazis thought of us [Jewish people]. She couldn’t take my great-grandfather due to his fragility. Unfortunately, she fled to Ukraine and only realised her mistake when Barbarossa took off. She thought about leaving for Moscow or even just Rostov on Don, but she stayed and fought as a partisan in Western Ukraine. She despised the soviets as much as the Nazis. She was a socialist but believed that the USSR had tainted the idea. She miraculously lived to tell my mother the tale who told me. She also wrote a book of memoirs.