No guns for Gaza war: French dockers set an example!

On 5 June, 14 tonnes of machine-gun parts were due to be loaded onto an Israeli cargo ship at the port of Fos-sur-Mer in southern France, bound for Haifa, Israel. The day before, however, the CGT general union of dockworkers and port handling personnel of the Gulf of Fos issued a press release announcing its categorical refusal to load the 19 pallets of military equipment.

[Originally published in French at marxiste.org]

The press release states:

“We say it again and again: the dockers and port workers of the Gulf of Fos will not take part in the ongoing genocide orchestrated by the Israeli government. We are for peace between peoples. We are opposed to all wars.”

The gun parts, produced by the Marseilles-based company Eurolinks, were destined for the arms company Israel Military Industries. According to investigative journalists at Disclose, this is the third shipment from Fos-sur-Mer to this company since the beginning of 2025. In a press release issued on the same day, the union stated that it had blocked two other containers of gun barrels manufactured by Aubert et Duval in Firminy, also bound for Haifa.

As we have pointed out on numerous occasions, the Macron government and the French ruling class are fully complicit in the ongoing genocide against Gazans. They have proclaimed Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’, repressed the Palestine solidarity movement, and authorised the export of weapon components to Israel. In addition to Eurolinks, other French companies such as Thalès and STMicroelectronics have sent (and may still be sending) parts and equipment used by the Israeli army to massacre Palestinians and wage its wars of aggression against Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

Yet, on 4 October 2024, Macron claimed that France did not supply arms to Israel. This blatant lie alone reveals that his current lamentations about the fate of the Gazans are nothing more than crocodile tears. The organised labour movement must denounce this hypocrisy.

The French government cannot be expected to help the Palestinian people. The only thing the government cares about is defending the imperialist interests of the French ruling class.

Between 2023 and 2024, dockers’ and transport unions in Belgium, India, Spain and Italy blocked arms shipments to Israel. In February, the Swedish dockers’ union voted to block shipments to Israel. The union’s main leader was subsequently dismissed by his employer, but this sparked an ongoing mobilisation to demand his reinstatement.

These mobilisations show the way forward. All too often, local union initiatives against the genocide of Gazans remain isolated and lack active support from the leadership of the main trade union confederations.

The political and trade union leadership of the labour movement – starting with the CGT, but also La France Insoumise – must stop appealing to the government or to so-called ‘international law’ to prevent the genocide of Gazans. They must turn to the working class and draw inspiration from the heroic example of the Fos-sur-Mer dockers to generalise these blockades to all sectors and companies linked, in one way or another, with the military apparatus of the Zionist state.