August 4 2025

NWU Calls on Unions and Media to Denounce Israel’s Starvation of Gaza

The National Writers Union calls on our colleagues at mainstream news outlets to provide truthful coverage of the ongoing, now-worsening campaign of starvation that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza. We also call on our fellow trade unionists to uplift these stories, demand that the U.S. stop arming Israel, and stand with the working people of Palestine. 

Israel is deliberately starving a population of more than 2 million people. More than 150 Palestinians have already died of hunger. Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif reported that 85% of Gaza’s population have entered the fifth stage of malnutrition, which can cause irreversible damage to internal organs.

As Palestinians starve, Israel is blocking thousands of aid trucks loaded with lifesaving food, water, and medical supplies from entering Gaza. On July 26, 2025, Israeli forces also intercepted the Handala, a fishing trawler loaded with humanitarian aid on its way to Gaza, in international waters. Twenty-one crew members were abducted and detained by Israeli forces for their demonstration of solidarity with the Palestinian people. 

Once in Israeli custody, Chris Smalls—co-founder and leader of the Amazon Labor Union, a U.S. citizen, and the only Black crewmember of the Handala—was beaten, choked, and kicked by Israeli officers. He was the only crewmember to be treated with such severity.

Under blockade, Palestinians have been forced to seek food at distribution sites manned by military contractors, who have used the crisis to massacre starving people with impunity. Contractors have killed more than 1,000 people and injured thousands more since May 2025. 

Our fellow journalists, including freelancers working with Agence France-Presse, the BBC, and the Associated Press, now report that they, too, are being starved to death. This comes amid a campaign of assassinations by the Israeli military that has killed more than 200 Palestinian journalists. 

As journalists, we have a professional duty to accurately name the perpetrator of these atrocities and their consequences. As workers, we have a duty to act in solidarity with fellow workers at home and abroad. The assaults on Gaza’s people and the abduction and beating of Handala crew members are assaults on the working class.

In a video posted from the Handala earlier this month, Smalls called out unions’ role in arming Israel and their “responsibility to protect, to be the shield of the working class.” Smalls demanded that unions extend that shield to the Palestinian people. 

More than 600 days into what human rights experts, scholars, and journalists reporting from the ground have called a genocide, many media outlets and major unions remain silent or refuse to accurately cover and condemn the violence.

We join our colleagues of conscience who are infuriated with the craven and inaccurate coverage of this genocide in calling for honest reporting. We also call on our fellow unions to demand that the U.S. stop arming Israel and to stand with the working people of Palestine. An injury to one is an injury to all.