Al-Qalam 
The General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA) is extremely Alarmed and strongly condemns the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and other senior leaders of Hezbollah and escalating Israeli aggression in Lebanon.
The General Industrial Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA) strongly condemns this cowardly assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, a prominent leader and General Secretary of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, perpetrated by the Israeli state.
This brazen act of terrorism is a stark reminder of the Israeli regime’s blatant disregard for peace and security in the Middle East, including Lebanon, Palestine and Israel itself, and the imperialist warmongering belligerence of its racist right-wing leadership.
The fact that this assassination was carried out in the manner and circumstances in which it amply demonstrated not only colonial arrogance but a sense of impunity, facilitated by unconditional support from the US Imperialism and complicity of Western powers in Israel’s ongoing imperialist aggression in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and across the whole of Middle East.
GIWUSA views this escalation as a dangerous provocation that brings the entire region to the brink of all-out war. The Israeli state’s actions, enabled by US military aid and diplomatic cover, which insulate Israel’s right-wing regime and its settler colonialist leadership from any accountability before institutions of the Western-dominated institutions of international law, threaten regional stability and global security.
The world has never inched this close to a complete regional conflagration in the whole of the Middle-East, a war which can easily spill over into World War 3 in the highly charged geopolitical world situation, especially with the US fighting another proxy war with Russia in Ukraine and trying to provoke another with China in the pacific.
We condemn the Israeli state’s terrorism and the US government’s enabling role. We stand in solidarity with the people of Lebanon, Palestine, the working-class people in the Middle East and their forces resisting occupation and oppression.
The international working class should mobilise to demand accountability for Israeli state crimes and demand an end to US and Western complicity. GIWUSA is making a clarion call to the working class and Palestinian Solidarity Movement, as well as all progressive people globally, to unite against Israel’s genocidal attacks and injustice. On a weekend in which enormous destruction has again been recorded in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank, we urge unions, Palestinian solidarity organisations, and everyone committed to international solidarity and world peace, here and abroad to join forces for an all-out coordinated International Day of Action protests against Israel’s genocide, apartheid, land grabs, al campaign, barbaric cruelty, and criminal assassinations and regional terrorism which are inexorably driving West Asia and the whole of Middle East towards a full-fledged bloody regional war.
GIWUSA, therefore, reiterates its call and insists that the South African government drop its unprincipled position towards trade with Israel and impose boycotts, divestments and sanctions. We strongly oppose the position articulated most recently in Parliament on 25 September 2024 by Minister Parks Tau. We especially insist on an immediate cessation of coal sales by the likes of Glencore and African Rainbow Minerals, as well as an end to the diamonds and grape trade.
We insist that the government break diplomatic relations with Israel, as Parliament specifically mandated in November 2023. We insist that mercenary soldiers recruited to join the IDF be prosecuted, as is occasionally threatened by state officials.
The General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA)
