Support the demands and the open letter from Mohammed Alattar to the trade union Ver.di

Support the demands and the open letter from Mohammed Alattar to the trade union Ver.di

Sign if you agree!

To the leadership of the Ver.di trade union

I am Mohammed Alattar (Mo.Anker). I am Palestinian and come from the Gaza Strip.

I came to Germany in 2015. In 2023 I finished my vocational training in the port of Hamburg and since then I have been a permanent employee and a member of the Ver.di trade union. 2023 was the first and last time I was at home in Gaza since my arrival in Germany. On February 6, 2024, the Israeli occupation army murdered my brother Abood. He was 33 years old, married and left behind three children. At the beginning of May 2024, the Israeli occupation army razed my family home in the Gaza Strip to the ground. All my musical instruments, my father’s library (with over 5000 books), all my photos and memories, all gone.

I lost over 80 members of my family and over 130 of my friends, neighbors and former colleagues. Since then, my parents have experienced a horror of destruction, loss, physical and mental illness caused by the Israeli occupation army. Because of this aggression, 90 percent of my entire life before 2015 was damaged and erased: people, roads, paths, places, property. This makes me a person with no real memory of the origins and feelings of my previous life.

I came to a moment when I thought it was no longer worth living, then I looked into the eyes of my little daughter as she told me a sentence from a Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish (she has been practicing the sentence in Arabic for the last few days), translated it means “On this earth there is something worth living for”, then I woke up again and the fighter in me was called back to life.

Then I thought I would write to my trade union, Ver.di, because I realized what role, responsibility and political and social position a trade union has. So I appealed to my union, other comrades forwarded my appeal, tried to get attention from the union Ver.di, but no chance, just complete ignorance and silence.

On February 24, I wrote down my entire story and sent it to my union Ver.di. To several places within Ver.di at the same time, to the administration, to various shop stewards in different areas, but nothing came back, just ignorance and total silence.

Only after a month, on March 20, 2025, after repeated requests, did I receive an email from the regional head of Ver.di Hamburg, in my eyes this email was hypocritical, opportunistic and limited to shy, emotional solidarity. Ver.di’s disregard for my suffering and their silence in the face of the disasters that I personally experience, and that my people and the rest of my family experience on a daily basis, reflect the same disregard and isolation that Jewish people here in Germany experienced 80 years ago. Then, as now, there was silence. The stories are similar, the names, dates, details and interests may differ, but the catastrophe, its causes and the factors that lead to its creation and continuation are the same.

Here, in a country that should be learning from history, history is being ignored and suppressed. The very country that should have learned the most from its past continues to repeat the mistakes of history, in a different form, but with the same consequences. I am aware that the silence, disregard and isolation I am experiencing today is similar to what a Jewish exhausted man had to experience 80 years ago in Hamburg.

I know that I have become a person without memories, without friends, without my two brothers, without our home and without much else that the sadism of the Israeli occupation has erased.

I know that the silence of my union, Ver.di, is part of this nightmare. It is co-responsibility, complicity and support.

I know that no power in the world and no crime on this earth will break the fighter in me.

I know that I will continue to fight – for my freedom, the freedom of my people and my rights. And I will fight against inaction, ignorance, silence and against the clear, obvious complicity of my union in this hell in which my people and I must live. It is my moral, human and historical duty to carry out this fight.

I am already planning a large-scale campaign of networking meetings, events and rallies where I will talk about my struggle against the ignorance and silence of Ver.di and my experiences as a Palestinian.

My demands to Ver.di are:

A. Recognition of my suffering and loss in the form of a letter of solidarity from ver.di to me

B. Clear positioning of the Ver.di leadership against the genocide in Gaza

C. Organizing events where different workers in different fields can speak about the Palestinians and Palestine.

I will take to the streets, be loud and fight this disrespect, racism and discrimination that I have experienced from my union. I can’t be alone, I don’t have to be alone, I don’t want to write in my diary that I was alone. I call on every free person, every organization, every group, all associations, all workers, all freedom fighters, all people with a heart and a mind who have learned enough from history, I call on all of you to get your solidarity, your voice and your support.

Mo – Hamburg
July – 2025

Sign if you agree!