Striking Settlers

Throughout the genocide in Gaza, Israeli workers and unions have supported - and participated in - the Israeli state's exactions. In doing so, it did not deviate from historical precedent. It acted as settler labour movements have throughout the last 150 years, in Palestine and elsewhere. Why have Israeli workers repeatedly been at the forefront of fighting for greater exclusion of Palestinians from the Israeli state and economy - even against their own bourgeoisie? Why do Israeli social and labour movements continue to systematically exclude Palestinians and their demands from their struggles? Why do they continue to support Israel's wars against the Palestinian people? Through historical and contemporary analysis, Englert argues that this repeated pattern is not accidental but structural-rooted in Israel's character as a settler colony where Israeli workers benefit materially from Palestinian dispossession. At the heart of this, he argues, lies the fact that as Israeli workers fight their bosses for better wages and conditions, they simultaneously contest the distribution of the "colonial loot" extracted from Palestinians through land confiscation, resource exploitation, and labour subordination. As genocide unfolds in Gaza, many liberals still hope Israeli labour and social movements might become allies of Palestinian liberation. This book demolishes that illusion.