On June 4, dock workers at the French port in Fos sur Mer, near the city of Marseille, refused to load several shipments of military equipment and parts destined for use in Israel’s ongoing genocide against the people of Gaza.
The shipments, which included 14 tons of machine gun links as well as two containers of gun tubes, were set aside and the union says they cannot be loaded by any other workers.
In a press release issued on Wednesday, the CGT General Union of Dockers and Port Workers of the Gulf of Fos confirmed that their members would not load the vessel, stating unequivocally that “The dockers and port workers of the Gulf of Fos will not participate in the ongoing genocide orchestrated by the Israeli government.”
The workers’ refusal to load this cargo and the union’s strong statements against genocide and militarism are a welcome development, and reflect the growing international rejection of Israel’s actions in Gaza. But they are also a blow against the legitimacy of French and European imperialism.
Embarrassed by the revelations that it is in fact continuing to allow weapons shipments to Israel — after it said it would stop doing so last October — the French government is claiming that the parts were for export manufacturing and not intended to be used by the Israeli military.
But the workers know better.
In fact, the machine gun links, made by the French company Aubert et Duval, are designed to be compatible with Israeli Negev 5 machine guns, weapons which the manufacturer advertises as especially useful in dense urban environments. These are the same machine guns that were notoriously used in the 2024 “Flour Massacre” in Gaza, where more than 100 starving Palestinians were murdered by the IDF while attempting to access a shipment of food aid. And are the same weapons which Israel continues to use to repress and kill Palestinians in both Gaza and the occupied territories.
A Growing Movement Against Genocide
This successful blockade, though small in comparison to the more than 100,000 tons of military equipment that Israel has received from the the United States and Europe in the last two years, represents another escalation of the international movement of port workers to resist Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its ongoing genocide in Gaza. And this is not the first act of such solidarity that we’ve seen since the start of the genocide. In April, port workers in Tangiers, with the assistance of thousands of demonstrators, temporarily blocked a vessel suspected of carrying spare parts for F-15 fighter jets from leaving the port. On October 18, dock workers in Piraeus, Greece, blocked a truck carrying ammunition meant for Israel from entering the facility. And last June there were massive protests at the Italian port in Genoa, where hundreds of demonstrators and union members closed down the port to protest the shipment of weapons to Israel.
Such actions show that there is a strong willingness among the working classes and the masses across the entire world to take direct action now against the genocide in Gaza. This includes the thousands of students in the United States and Europe who have put their lives and futures on the line in an attempt to call attention to the genocide and to force their institutions to divest from Israel.
It also shows the enormous power that logistics workers in particular wield. In a world of just-in-time manufacturing and increasingly interconnected supply chains, dock workers, delivery drivers, and warehouse workers everywhere have enormous power. Not only are they often in a position to directly stop the shipment of weapons — they have the ability to shut down entire supply chains and to massively disrupt the flow of goods, and thus of profits, across the entire world.
But making the most of that power requires self-organization. The port workers in France were able to coordinate this action because they are highly organized and, despite the shortcomings of their bureaucratic leaders, they have a history and tradition of class struggle. Unionizing the logistics industry — and, most importantly, developing forms of independent class struggle organization within those workplaces — is essential. But building the kind of working class power needed to end the global scourge of imperialism, exploitation, war, and genocide requires the unified actions of the labor unions, the working class, students, and oppressed people everywhere. These actions by the courageous dock workers in France are an inspiration and a small part of that larger struggle.
