The struggle for justice is not a spectator sport. The West’s political-media class won’t challenge the genocide it arms and supports. We have to take action ourselves, wherever we are, if we want to confront the grave crimes against the Palestinians.

Israel's war machine is enabled by the financial, military, diplomatic, and cultural support it gets from companies around the world. In ways big or small, thousands of companies are complicit. That means workers in these companies hold the power to throw sand in the wheels of the war machine.

At the start of the genocide in Gaza, Palestinian trade unions called on workers and trade unions around the world to act against their employers’ complicity with Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.

Many thousands of them already have. Dockworkers in Spain, Italy, Belgium, Namibia and India have refused to handle military cargo destined for Israel to use to kill Palestinians. Just this week, Moroccan dockworkers in the port of Tangiers refused to load the NYSTED MAERSK after the vessel was found to have received at least 46 US military shipments for Israel during the genocide in Gaza, following an investigation by the Progressive International and the Palestinian Youth Movement.

Pressure from Japanese unions and protestors forced the Japanese giant Itochu to end cooperation with Israel’s largest private military company, Elbit Systems. Building on years of activism for boycotts, divestment and sanctions, these campaigns have spread to other parts of the economy.

To connect and support existing worker-led campaigns and foster new ones, this week the Progressive International launched the Watermelon Index, a tool for worker-led resistance against the occupation and genocide in Palestine. The Watermelon Index is a database of companies complicit in Israeli crimes and worker campaigns against them.

The database extensively covers the complicity of over 400 companies with the intention of supporting workers anywhere to investigate company complicity in the occupation. Companies in the database vary from big technological corporations, such as Microsoft, to insurance companies, banks, energy and logistics firms. The Watermelon Index measures complicity through the different kinds of support, including financial, military, diplomatic, cultural, trade and social, in which a company enables Israel’s occupation.

A number of groups have already come together to partner the Watermelon Index alongside the Progressive International including the Palestinian Youth Movement, Workers for a Free Palestine, Campaign Against Arms Trade, United Tech and Allied Workers, No Tech for Apartheid, Energy Embargo for Palestine, Organise Now!, Disrupt Power and the Movement Research Unit. All these organisations are either involved in Palestine solidarity campaigns, have facilitated worker organising or have won in strategic campaigns against company complicity.

The Palestinian Youth Movement, after publishing critical research on Maersk’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza, successfully blocked a Maersk shipment with military goods from being able to dock in Spain. This was after Spain announced an arms embargo on Israel. The Palestinian Youth Movement is currently mobilising with trade unions and civil society organisations in Morocco, Turkey and Spain to disrupt the journey of Maersk shipments to Israel.

No Tech for Apartheid, another partner of the Watermelon Index, is also a worker-led campaign that has organised mass sit-ins, petitions and pickets demanding the end to Project Nimbus, a contract between Google, Amazon and Israel. In February 2024, Google workers from No Tech for Apartheid and United Tech and Allied Workers organised a picket outside of Google UK Headquarters.

Since the wake of Israel’s siege on Gaza, there have also been multiple pickets organised outside of arms factories from Workers for a Free Palestine and cultural worker-led mobilisations targeting institutional partnerships with insurance and energy companies from Energy Embargo for Palestine and Culture Workers against Genocide.

The Progressive International has placed organising capacity behind the Watermelon Index to facilitate further worker-led campaigns. This organising drive will focus on four key sectors: logistics and shipping, technology, finance and insurance, and energy. The Index provides resources for workers to be able to request support in organising in their workplace and will be supporting key actions taking place in these four sectors in the coming months.

You can read more about the launch of the Watermelon Index here.

Please explore the database of over 400 complicit companies and the campaigns against them here.

But most importantly, join the dozens of workers in complicit companies that have contacted us in the last few days- using this form - to whistleblow on their employers, share information about campaigns and ask for help to organise for Palestine in their workplaces.

The ties of complicity with Israel’s occupation and genocide are all around us. It’s up to all of us to cut them where we can to advance Palestinian liberation.

Latest from the Movement

Colombia’s Environment Minister calls for global energy embargo on Israel

Speaking on the sidelines of COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijain, Colombia’s Minister of Environment, Susana Muhamad, issued a powerful appeal to world governments to impose a global energy embargo on Israel. In a video statement, Muhamad urging nations to follow Colombia’s lead in cutting off fossil fuel supplies that, in her words, “fuel genocide.”

In her message, Muhamad explain “we should stop the flow of fossil fuels that fuel genocide. We need an energy embargo to stop this genocide, and all countries can follow the lead of Colombia. There is no climate justice if there is no human rights.”

Colombia made history in June 2024 by becoming the first nation to impose an energy embargo on Israel, cutting off 70% of its coal imports. Muhamad’s call builds on growing demands at COP29, where Palestinian civil society delegates—supported by environmental groups from South Africa, Turkey, and Brazil—have amplified calls for immediate action against countries that continue to sell or transport oil and coal to Israel.

The minister underscored that such an embargo is not just a moral imperative but a legal one, citing Colombia’s obligations under the Genocide Convention, “as a country, we take our legal obligations for human rights, and under the legal convention on genocide, very seriously”

European scrutiny on Amazon’s warehouses

European Union lawmakers have reached an agreement on scrutiny of working conditions at Amazon warehouses in line with demands by European trade unions earlier this week. Under the agreement, Amazon must attend a hearing in the Parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs Committee (EMPL) before Members of European Parliament go on a fact-finding mission meeting Amazon officials and workers’ representatives at its warehouses. Subsequently, the Committee would decide, without any automatic guarantee, on the readmission of Amazon lobbyists to the European Parliament. The decision comes after European trade unions, including UNI Europa and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), sent a letter to lawmakers on Monday outlining these conditions. The letter also urged them to consider Amazon’s history of alleged union-busting and refusal to engage in collective bargaining as part of their deliberations.

Kenyan communists join the PI

Following its historic Second National Congress, the Communist Party Marxist—Kenya has officially joined the Progressive International.

We shall collaborate to advance the socialist project in Kenya and promote Pan-Africanism grounded in the vision of scientific socialism across the continent.

On joining the PI, the party said “PI solidarity has been extremely important in consolidating progressive and revolutionary forces internationally, CPM celebrates your presence at the 2nd National Congress. Long live international solidarity!”

Brazilian police accuse Bolsonaro of coup plot

Brazil's Federal Police concluded this week that former President Jair Bolsonaro had “full knowledge” of the plan to assassinate President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and overturn the results of the 2022 election.

COP Out

COP29 is drawing to a close in a hail of ignominy and failure. Even insiders are now calling for a complete institutional overhaul as the needs of the planet—and demands of the Global South for financing a rapid green transition—are not met by the rich countries and fossil fuel companies.

Art of the Week: Natalie Lama is a visual artist based in Amman, Jordan working with photography and editing to “transform her surroundings”. Free was created as part of a series titled Sour Summer, which the artist explains captures a “generation grappling with powerlessness and heartbreak” portraying both “despair and solidarity.”

The fruit's origin story as a stand-in for the Palestinian flag dates back to the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel banned the flag and its colours in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In 1980, an Israeli official stated, “Even if you paint a watermelon, it will be confiscated,” upon shutting down an exhibition at 79 Gallery in Ramallah. The watermelon remains an enduring symbol of creative resistance.