Communication Workers of America–Resolution to Uphold the Palestinian Trade Union Picket Line
Resolution to the 2025 CWA Convention
I. Whereas Israel and the U.S. continue to subject the Palestinian people of Gaza to a catastrophic campaign of bombings, massacres, abductions, torture, and starvation that has resulted in estimates as high as 186,000 people killed as of June of 2024, and as many as 377,000 people missing as of June 2025.
II. Whereas this escalated phase of the Israel-U.S. genocidal war on Palestine has damaged or destroyed over 90 percent of all homes in Gaza, displaced over 90 percent of the population, and left millions of people currently at risk of death due to starvation. About half of Palestinians in Gaza are children;
III. Whereas Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza’s telecommunications infrastructure, severing networks that Palestinian workers depend upon for essential services, emergency response, and contact with the outside world;
IV. Whereas Israel has decimated Gaza’s healthcare system and targeted and killed at least 1,400 healthcare workers, including doctors tortured to death in Israeli prisons and medical staff bombed in hospitals and in marked ambulances;
V. Whereas the Israeli army has deliberately targeted journalists and their families, killing more than 200 journalists; and
VI. Whereas Israeli forces have killed more than 500 teachers and university educators and destroyed more than 90 percent of schools and university buildings across Gaza through airstrikes, shelling, burning, and controlled demolitions, systematically eliminating both the educators and infrastructure that sustain Palestinian learning; and
VII. Whereas Israel has killed at least 317 United Nations UNRWA staff—the highest UN death toll in history—and seven World Central Kitchen workers, forcing the charity to suspend operations; and
VIII. Whereas, amid its escalated genocidal war on Gaza, Israel has simultaneously escalated attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, including mass kidnappings and imprisonment of children and adults, massacres, and raids on Palestinian homes and businesses;
IX. Whereas the United States government under the leadership of both political parties has used U.S. taxpayer funds to provide over $3 billion a year in military support to Israel (including an estimated 69 percent of the weapons Israel uses to assault Gaza), as well as military and intelligence coordination, and political cover at the United Nations and other international institutions. President Trump recently explicitly declared the goal to “clean out the whole thing,” and for the U.S. to take over and run Gaza;
X. Whereas the United Nations Special Committee, the International Court of Justice, the South African government (backed by Ireland, Mexico and a dozen other countries), Amnesty International (a CWA shop), the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Pope Francis have all either declared Israel is committing genocide, that the Palestinians are at risk of genocide, or called for an investigation into whether Israel is committing genocide;
XI. Whereas Israel and the U.S. have used this escalated phase of genocide in Palestine to broaden horrific attacks throughout the region, consistently defying supposed international norms and state sovereignty in assaults on the people of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Outside of Palestine itself, Israel and U.S. forces have killed thousands of people and decimated homes and other infrastructure, while occupying large parts of Syria and attempting to occupy and ethnically cleanse parts of Lebanon.
XII. Whereas the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions in Gaza, whose headquarters was bombed by Israel, has called on U.S. unions to “escalate pressure within workplaces and American decision-making institutions to end the military, financial, and diplomatic support provided by the U.S. administration to the occupation and hold accountable the companies and institutions involved in financing and supporting Israel’s war machine and the genocide”;
XIII. Whereas PGFTU-Gaza has further told U.S. workers that “your struggle for workers’ rights in the United States is inseparable from our struggle against occupation and colonialism,” and has called on U.S. unions to uphold the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) picket line”;
XIV. Whereas U.S. based national trade unions including the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), International Union of Painters (IUPAT), National Education Association (NEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Auto Workers (UAW), and United Electrical Workers (UE) have collectively demanded that the President and Congress end lethal military aid to the Israeli government, in order to secure an immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages;
XV. Whereas, an injury to one is an injury to all, and CWA has a long history of standing with workers facing colonialism around the world, including standing with South African workers against apartheid and in the boycott of Shell;
BE IT RESOLVED
1. The Communications Workers of America calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the withdrawal of all Israeli military from Gaza, the free flow of international humanitarian aid into Gaza, an end to the siege, and an end to U.S.-backed Israeli attacks and occupation throughout the region;
FURTHER BE IT RESOLVED
2. The Communications Workers of America calls for the halting of all U.S. military aid to Israel and an arms embargo, and will encourage locals to take action in support of this demand;
3. The Communications Workers of America will work to divest all holdings and investments supporting Israeli occupation and settler colonialism, including any Israeli bonds and any stock in corporations directly funding Israel’s war and occupation;
4. Per the call of the PGFTU-Gaza, the Communication Workers of America will further work to sever any existing ties with Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut, which is complicit in occupation and genocide in Palestine;
5. The Communications Workers of America will publicize this resolution, including language referring to Israel’s assault on Gaza as a genocide and uplifting the calls of the PGFTU-Gaza, and will encourage other unions to take similar action.
