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As Their Leaders Remain Complicit, Ordinary People Say No to Gaza Genocide
What gives a glimmer of hope is the activism, particularly that of youth throughout the world, protesting, organizing boycotts, risking arrest and their lives.
Aug 28, 2025
Medford, a city of 60,000 people in Massachusetts, voted to pass a historic ordinance to divest from weapons companies that contribute to human rights violations. Their vote included Israel’s ongoing genocide, starvation, and destruction of everything that makes life in Gaza possible.
The Medford City Council passed the Values-Aligned Local Investments Ordinance in August 2025, making Medford one of a handful of municipalities (and the only city in liberal Massachusetts) that has barred investments in companies that profit from genocide. Others include Dearborn, Michigan; Iowa City; Richmond, California; and Portland and Belfast, Maine. In December 2024, Alameda County, California, a populous county of 1.7 million people, became the first county to divest from Caterpillar, Inc., a complicit company that sells bulldozers to Israel to demolish agricultural fields, roads, buildings, and other infrastructure in Gaza and Palestinian territories.
Each of the handful of cities that has divested is small and their divestment is modest, but they have chosen an outsized moral path with global implications. “Americans don’t want our tax dollars spent on war crimes like forcibly starving children in Gaza,” Dina Alami, resident of Medford, said. “...This ordinance is one small step in making sure our tax dollars serve the interests of people rather than billionaires.”
The Medford City Council’s Kit Collins stated that “this policy is foundationally aligned with my Jewish faith and with the imperative to repair the world.” He speaks of being both “offended and saddened” by people with whom he shares Jewish Identity who consider him “illegitimate” because he does not share “their politics or ideology about Zionism and the state of Israel.” But his politics do align with leading Israeli rights groups B’Tselem, which documents the effects of Israeli policies on Palestinians and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, as well as the prominent US human rights group Jewish Voice for Peace.
Each of the handful of cities that has divested is small and their divestment is modest, but they have chosen an outsized moral path with global implications.
In Mid-August, Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, stated he has no choice but to “finish the job” in Gaza: Call it his final solution. And to ensure his ghoulish promise, the Israeli Cabinet, in lockstep, just approved an Israel Defense Forces plan “to sweep away all of the nearly million residents of Gaza City–by displacement or death—… slated to begin October 7.” Israel has also killed more food aid workers from the United Nations, International Red Cross, and other established aid agencies than any other country in the world, ensuring a now-confirmed famine in Gaza City.
I am reminded of the poet and pacifist Walt Whitman’s judgment about a cold-blooded, merciless war criminal in the Civil War, Heinrich Wirz, who tortured and starved to death thousands of Union soldiers in Andersonville prison, Georgia. “There are deeds, crimes that may be forgiven,” he said, “but this is not among them.” Nor will be the Israeli Zionists’ crime against Palestinian humanity, “the world’s first live-streamed genocide” that has treated the people of Gaza worse than animals, worse than we ever expected a people to be treated after the Nazis slaughtered Jews in the Holocaust. The lesson “never again” has not been learned: not by Zionist Israel, not by at least a dozen other countries where horrific genocides have been documented, not by European countries who have stood by Israel and are late upon the scene speaking against the genocide. And not by the United States and Germany together, whose weapons constitute the vast majority of those used on Gaza and who could end the war immediately by an ethical “no.” (Of course, weapons makers rule and would revolt.)
What gives a glimmer of hope is the activism, particularly that of youth throughout the world, protesting, organizing boycotts, risking arrest and their lives. It took two years of intense, nonstop “research, agitation and direct action” for the diaspora Palestinian Youth Movement to win a “landmark” victory in late June of this year against the Danish shipping company Maersk. Through rigorous research they gathered the evidence that Maersk shipped arms transfers, including vital parts for F-35 fighters, used to bomb Gaza’s civilian population, and provided commercial shipping for business enterprises operating in illegal Israeli settlements, some of which are arms companies.
Their strategy to find “the crack in the armor of genocide” led them to decide that convincing a shipping company to stop a controversial and small part of their business would more likely be successful than convincing a military arms manufacturer to cease selling arms to Israel. The organizers then released their findings about Maersk and turned to direct action: protests, sit-ins, and facility shutdowns in US and European cities; confronting politicians and city council meetings; enlisting allies in environmental and labor sectors, members of parliament, lawyers, and more. They successfully urged Maersk shareholders to bring forth a resolution about the company’s complicity in genocide. In June 2025, Maersk met the one of their demands: They will no longer provide shipping for Israeli business enterprises, including arms companies, operating in illegal Israeli settlements. The “Mask Off Maersk” campaign will continue until Maersk terminates the transport of weapons components and weapons to Israel.
May they succeed where admirable UN pronouncements with little enforcement have not.
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Polluters Must Pay: A Shipping Levy for Climate Justice
It is time to hold global shipping corporations accountable for burning heavy fuel oils and putting profits before the well-being of people and the planet.
Mar 28, 2025
In April, the International Maritime Organization has a critical opportunity to put shipping on a path toward real climate action. A levy on shipping emissions would not only hold major polluters accountable but also generate billions in funding to support a just transition—one that helps vulnerable nations, accelerates zero-emission fuel production, and breaks shipping’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Adeboye Joseph Oluwadamilare, a Nigerian climate advocate who called for a levy at last year’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) meeting, said, “If we don’t act now, climate change could cost the global economy $38 trillion every year.”
If the levy is adopted, the revenues could be used to support the most vulnerable countries towards transitioning their shipping fleets and port infrastructure to zero-emission technologies. It would rightly force the biggest polluters to pay the true cost to our planet and health to continue to pollute and would set the industry on a path to a just and equitable transition.
While some in the shipping industry may resist the financial burden of upgrading fleets, the alternative—a world plagued by climate-fueled disasters, serious threats to public health, and economic instability—is far worse.
Top shipping companies like Maersk and CMA CGM have made billions of dollars in revenues over this past year—more than $100 billion combined in 2024. Both companies have taken steps to transition their fleets to zero emissions but not on pace to meet the timeline of the Paris agreement or the IMO’s own 2023 greenhouse gas reduction strategy. Nicole Morson, a climate activist from Dominica, also pushed for a levy of $150 per metric ton of greenhouse gas emissions last year in London. She told The Wall Street Journal that the push for the tax is “a movement of the climate underdogs.”
It is time to hold global shipping corporations accountable for burning heavy fuel oils and putting profits before the well-being of people and the planet. The majority of Americans recognize that global warming is happening; a recent study from Yale and George Mason University found that 73% of Americans recognize that global warming is happening, including 60% who say that it is caused mostly by human activities. The good news is that the cost of clean shipping is negligible—one study shows that using e-fuels adds just 8 cents to a pair of Nikes.
As the world’s shipping regulator, it is time that the International Maritime Organization take action to adopt a levy to hold the sector accountable. Olumide Idowu, another climate activist from Nigeria and known as “Mr. Climate,” said: “One of the best ways to clean up shipping and avoid huge climate bills is by pricing its emissions. A global levy on shipping emissions will help get ships off faster off fossil fuels while generating finance worth billions of dollars to upgrade shipping to zero emissions and make the sector more resilient, especially in the most vulnerable and developing countries.”
Revenue could also be used to reward the needed production of zero-emission fuels and required infrastructure upgrades in climate vulnerable countries. The World Bank estimates that around $60 billion could be generated annually, based on a price of $100 per metric ton per greenhouse gas emissions. It would be a drop in the bucket for the industry but would help accelerate shipping decarbonization around the world and in the most vulnerable countries.
The cost of inaction is far greater than the price of transition. Climate change threatens global supply chains, coastal infrastructure, and economies, with damages projected to reach trillions of dollars annually. While some in the shipping industry may resist the financial burden of upgrading fleets, the alternative—a world plagued by climate-fueled disasters, serious threats to public health, and economic instability—is far worse. The IMO must decide: Will it lead the industry toward a sustainable future, or allow shipping’s biggest polluters to keep passing the costs of their pollution onto the most vulnerable?
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Amid Ports Strike, Note That Shipping Giant Maersk Spent $6.5 Billion on Stock Buybacks
"The same foreign-owned shipping giants that say they can't find the money for fairer wages and treatment of American port workers managed to find billions of dollars to enrich a small group of wealthy investors."
Oct 03, 2024
Amid a strike that dockworkers along the East and Gulf Coasts argue is about "corporate greed vs. workers rights," a watchdog group is highlighting how at least one shipping giant on the other side of the labor battle has recently poured billions of dollars into stock buybacks.
Around 45,000 members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) walked off the job at 12:01 am Tuesday after unsuccessful negotiations with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), a shipping industry group that includes Maersk.
In an analysis released Wednesday, Accountable.US pointed out that as part of Maersk's $12 billion stock buyback program, the Danish shipping company "has spent $6.5 billion buying back nearly 3 million Class A and B shares as of January 2024."
"When the big shipping industry was faced with a choice—share its success with the U.S. workers that delivered it, or go overboard with greed—its executives clearly chose the latter."
When companies pursue stock buybacks—also called share repurchases—they reduce the number of shares available on the market, which inflates earnings per share, enriching shareholders. The practice has fueled calls to hike the U.S. corporate tax rate.
Maersk paused its buybacks in February. CNBC reported at the time that the company "flagged 'high uncertainty' in its 2024 earnings outlook amid Red Sea disruptions and an oversupply of shipping vessels."
Still, Accountable.US framed what Maersk has done so far as proof that the shipping giant and fellow USMX members have the capital to end this strike, as ILA president Harold Daggett asserted this week.
"The same foreign-owned shipping giants that say they can't find the money for fairer wages and treatment of American port workers managed to find billions of dollars to enrich a small group of wealthy investors after riding a wave of record profits," said Liz Zelnick, director of the Economic Security & Corporate Power Program at Accountable.US, in a statement.
"When the big shipping industry was faced with a choice—share its success with the U.S. workers that delivered it, or go overboard with greed—its executives clearly chose the latter," Zelnick added.
The watchdog also took aim at COSCO Shipping Holdings, which last year "announced plans to buy back up to $101 million of its A shares, with plans for further buybacks, after reporting an 'industry-beating' profit of $2.7 billion in the first half of 2023."
Meanwhile, amid concerns about the economic fallout from the strike, the tens of thousands of striking ILA port workers emphasize that they are eager to return to work, but need a contract with wage increases and protections from automation.
"The action is going to give us a fair contract and we can get back to work to get people the goods they need," Joe Mosquera, a crane operator and union organizer with ILA, Local 1235, told The Guardian Thursday. "This is for our future generations. To keep automation out is to keep our jobs for the future. And if anything becomes automated, we want to make sure that there's a worker to back it up."
The industry's biggest strike since 1977 is already having an impact. Citing Everstream Analytics, Reuters reported Thursday that "at least 45 container vessels that have been unable to unload had anchored up outside the strike-hit East Coast and Gulf Coast ports by Wednesday, up from just three before the strike began on Sunday."
The workers are backed by U.S. President Joe Biden—who is empowered by an anti-union federal law to break the strike but has signaled he won't—and various pro-worker lawmakers, including the congressional Labor Caucus, co-chaired by Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) Donal Norcross (D-N.J.), and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.).
"We stand in solidarity with the ILA workers in their fight for a fair contract with USMX," the caucus said in a statement shared by the union Wednesday. "We've seen unions secure historic contracts for workers across the country in recent years, and now ILA workers—who kept our economy moving throughout the pandemic—are fighting for their share of the profits they helped create."
"Contract negotiations can be difficult at times, but collective bargaining is the best way for workers and employers to come to a fair agreement," the caucus added. "We encourage all parties to remain at the bargaining table and negotiate in good faith to reach a fair contract that reflects the success of the companies."
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