By JOSE MONTEROJO

Since the beginning of this latest Israeli war against Palestine, residents of the San Francisco Bay Area have organized demonstrations of historic proportions in solidarity with the Palestinians. In addition, unions, student organizations, and activist and community groups have declared themselves against Israeli aggression and have taken important actions for the Palestinian cause.

The Arab Resource and Organization Center (AROC), along with other left-wing and pro-Palestinian organizations, have mobilized tens of thousands of people in the streets of downtown San Francisco. AROC is a nonprofit organization and the leading organization in the pro-Palestinian movement in the Bay Area. Since the beginning of October, huge numbers of pro-Palestinian protesters have gathered at the Embarcadero Plaza (in a square that activists call “Harry Bridges Plaza,” in honor of the leader of the longshore union in the 1930s), to demand a ceasefire in Palestine. In addition to AROC, trade unionists, members of left-wing groups, anti-Zionist Jews, and other activists representing a variety of groups and communities that stand in solidarity with Palestine have attended.

The Bay Area has never seen pro-Palestine mobilizations of this magnitude. Their size, militancy, and politics demonstrate a strong commitment to the Palestinian struggle and a growing awareness of the complicity of Joe Biden’s imperialist government with the Israeli genocide. In the streets, protesters denounce Joe Biden as “genocide Joe” and demand an end to the U.S. government’s military and political support for Israel. The protesters link the Palestinian struggle with the struggle of immigrants, denouncing both the separation wall in Palestine and the border wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, marking both as racist walls imposed by imperialist and colonial governments to subjugate and oppress the workers of the colonized countries.

These slogans express the political consciousness of the American masses—the majority of whom support a ceasefire in Palestine—which is particularly significant since this movement directly criticizes the imperialist role of the American government. People of many backgrounds have rallied in favor of Palestine, along with Palestinians and Arabs in a multi-racial movement. Generally, in the protest fliers, the speeches of Palestinian and Arab leaders, and the chants of the protesters, the call for a ceasefire is recognized as the main demand, although many protesters also state that it would be a partial and temporary advance to win this demand and that the struggle for Palestinian liberation would have to continue beyond a ceasefire.

AROC and its allies called a last-minute mobilization against the continuation of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza after the end of the so-called ‘humanitarian pause,’ to which thousands of people attended under rainy conditions. Since then, the organizations at the forefront of this movement have not called for a new round of demonstrations.

This is a key opportunity for us to discuss the efficacy of the demand for a “ceasefire,” which we believe is inadequate to the needs of the struggle. In our Workers’ Voice literature for this movement, our demands range from calling for end to U.S. aid to Israel, lifting the siege and ending the war on Gaza, defending Palestinian self-determination, and the ultimate goal of a secular, democratic, Palestine from the river to the sea. In our view, a ceasefire mistakenly equates the forces of the colonizer with those of the colonized by placing equal responsibility on both sides for the violence.

As anti-Zionists and anti-colonialists, we place the violence squarely on the hands of the racist state of Israel and frame our demands through that lens. In addition, as revolutionaries, we defend the right of the colonized to defend themselves and to fight back, while a demand for a ceasefire calls on both sides to stop fighting as if both were equivalent on a military, moral, or political plane. We have a side and we want to do everything in our power—particularly fighting our government’s imperialist designs in the Middle East—to defeat Israel on the path towards Palestinian liberation. The failure of the latest so-called “humanitarian pause”—a temporary ceasefire—to end the violence against Palestine shows that the emphasis on a ceasefire is ultimately an ineffective pacifist demand. There can be no peace while the settler-colonial state of Israel continues to drive out and massacre Palestinians, build settlements, and deny Palestinians the right to return to their stolen lands.

Beyond street mobilizations, pro-Palestinian activists have taken other measures to pressure Joe Biden’s government in its support for Israel. Young people across the Bay Area have organized school walkouts in support of Palestine. These young militants have been supported by AROC. On Oct. 18, hundreds of young people participated in such a mobilization, meeting at City Hall to denounce American support for Israel. In school hallways and on the streets, they have shouted the now famous slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Their actions have been repressed by school authorities who, although they formally recognize the right to mobilization, criticize them for not taking “both sides” into account and for causing disturbances during the school day. For pro-Palestinian teachers and the movement in general, it is essential to support and defend the pro-Palestine youth who have become not only the target of Zionist attacks but also a vanguard element in this struggle.

On Nov. 3, about 200 activists responded to AROC’s call to block a ship in the port of Oakland loaded with weapons destined for Israel. Although most protesters were denied entry by police, one group was able to enter early and chain themselves to the ship, forcing the ship to wait another few hours before it continued its journey to Tacoma, Wash.—where activists also tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent the ship from continuing to Israel.

In mid-November, a coalition of activists drove their cars to the Bay Bridge, threw their keys over the bridge into the bay, and organized a blockade of the bridge, a major thoroughfare in the region. Organizers took advantage of the fact that Joe Biden was in San Francisco to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference; they demanded a ceasefire and denounced support for Israel by the United States. In this action, about 80 people were arrested, the vast majority released after being cited by the state.

These last two actions were important in the sense that they targeted the nerve centers of the capitalist economy to fight for the demands of the movement. On the other hand, we also think that in such actions—when they affect workers—activists should do everything possible to involve the affected workers in the organizing because we want to win them to our cause. In the case of the Bay Bridge blockade, we believe that such actions could be more effective if they focused on mass mobilizations that organized large sectors of workers as opposed to relatively small actions that block workers’ access to the bridge without their knowledge or participation.

The blockade of the Zionist ship in the port of Oakland had the endorsement of the dockers’ union (ILWU)—which has a long history of solidarity actions, such as against South Africa under apartheid and against the North American invasion of Iraq—although the union did not actively participate. We believe it is essential to engage with port workers in order to organize joint actions in which they mobilize their collective power over the lucrative port of Oakland to weaken the Biden government’s effort to sustain the Israeli war against Palestine.

At the national level, numerous unions have spoken out in favor of a ceasefire in Palestine. In the Bay Area, the two major education unions, the Oakland Educators Association (OAS) and the Unified Educators of San Francisco (UESF), passed resolutions criticizing American support for Israel and settler violence in the West Bank, in addition to demanding a ceasefire in Palestine. Oakland’s pro-Palestinian teachers hosted an educational forum on this struggle during the school day on Dec. 6 in order to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to educate young people about the history and dynamics of the situation.

In the meantime, in San Francisco and Oakland, Zionist groups are counter-mobilizing against unions for their critical stances toward Israel and toward pro-Palestinian organizations and individuals who organize with pro-Palestinian youth, calling for disciplinary action against teachers for teaching or mobilizing in favor of Palestine.

There is a great need for a democratic, militant, and independent labor movement that fights for Palestinian liberation using working-class methods: mass mobilizations, strikes, and democratic discussion and study. The pro-Palestinian resolutions express workers’ to fight for Palestine, but the union leaderships do not take this initiative, due to their bureaucratic weight and their reformist and pro-Democratic Party ideology. Various unionists and socialists recently formed “Bay Area Labor for Palestine,” bringing together various unionists and activists in the labor movement.

The fact is that, even if a powerful union like the UAW approves a resolution calling for a ceasefire, the union leadership in the United States continues to be complicit with American imperialism in its project to support Israeli colonialism. It will take an initiative from the base of the labor movement to challenge this policy, take pro-Palestinian actions, and expel the pro-Zionist leaders of our unions to create a combative labor movement in solidarity with all the peoples oppressed by our government.

The Bay Area is known for its militant and rebellious spirit when it comes to fighting for the working class and the oppressed. We saw this in the Occupy movement of 2011-12, Black Lives Matter, and the health and education worker strikes, among other key struggles. It is not surprising that the region is a fortress of support for the Palestinian people, and this is how we intend to maintain and fortify it. We invite all pro-Palestinian activists in the region and in the country to connect with our party, which carries out various labor initiatives in solidarity with Palestine.

Photo: Palestine solidarity march in San Francisco. (Amy Osborne / AFP)