Eventful Protests Against the Israeli Genocide: The Italian “Hot Summer” for a Free Palestine

On September 22 2025 a 24 hour general strike was called by several grassroot unions in Italy to protests the complicity of the Italian government with the Israeli genocide in Gaza, support the effort of the Global Sumud Flottilla to bring humanitarian help to the starving population, and call for an end to the war economy. Up to 500,000 people mobilize in the street in 90 protest events all over the country under the slogan “Let’s block everything,” with several blockades and occupations of harbors, railway stations and high-ways in Rome, Milan, Turin, Genoa, Florence, Bologna. The main promoter of the initiative, the  Unione Sindacati di Base (USB, Union of grassroots unions) called for “the immediate break-off of relations with the terrorist state of Israel, which is the concrete way in which Italy can, and must, react to the genocide that is taking place”. Since then, protests have multiplied taking various forms.

On October 3 2025, a new general strikes is called against the Israeli genocide, this times by grassroots unions but also the CGIL  As two millions mobilized on the streets, marching, blocking harbours and railways stations, interrupting traffic and occupying schools and university, with a main slogan being “L’Italia lo sa da che parte stare, Palestina libera dal fiume al mare”, I addressed the questions of several journalists from all over Europe who wanted to know, why now? And, Why in Italy? I think, there are several reasons. First of all, the protest in solidarity with Palestine has been growing for two years, relying on a mix of old and new organizations and activists. The Summer has been intense with thousands acts of resistance and disobedience that allowed masses to mobilize and feel empowered through flash mobs and hunger strikes. But then there was a trigger, as the Global Sumud Flotilla represented a way to do something against a genocide that intensified in the most dishuman forms. The moral shock was catalysed as the dockers in Genova launched their proud and daring motto, “If they block the flotilla, we block everything”. The very form of the flotilla, bridging heroic commitment with a global participation, created a strong identification by workers and students, pacifists and feminists, the many diasporas and the racialised Italian citizens, firemen and progressive police persons but also prisoners, pupils and their teachers, the grassroots unions and the CGIL, the traditional Left and the new generations on the Left, religious and lay authorities. Especially, it was the Palestinians who encouraged with their example to resist and oppose one of the worst genocide in history. At the moment, it looks like an unstoppable tide.

In what follows, I will develop on the example of this intensification of protests in Italy to present some more general reflections on what came to be known as a global social movement for a free Palestine. In particular, I will propose the concept of eventful protests to single out how contentious politics is produced in action, through the interactions of different individuals and collectives.

Since October 7^th, 2023, when Hamas and other Palestinian militias launched the “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” Israel’s retaliatory war on Gaza has led to devastating consequences, with attacks expanding to the West Bank and Jerusalem as well as other countries in the area, including Lebanon, Syria Tunisia, Qatar and Yemen. At the moment, the Israeli Army has killed over 70,000 civilians, displaced more than 2 million Palestinians displaced, destroyed 70% of Gaza including hospitals, schools and univeristies and pushed an entire people to the brink of survival without water, food, medicine or electricity. Despite the International Court of Justice (ICJ) warning Israel to prevent genocide, attacks have escalated for two years while most Western governments and mainstream media remained silent or even complicit.

Yet, global solidarity has surged against what was defined as the first televised genocide in history All over the world millions have taken to the streets with demands going from ceasefire to the end of Israeli-imposed famine and from a free Palestine to the end of settler colonial occupation. The coalitions mobilized all over the world on those claims have been broad and heterogeneous. In different countries, they have involved in various constellations diaspora associations and religious communities, students and workers, feminists and environmentalists, pacifists and anti-racists, older and new generations on the Left, anti-imperialist and anti-colonial groups, large civil society organizations and squatted centers, lay and religious solidarity organizations. Social movement organization in solidarity with Palestine, active long before October 7th, found themselves revitalised and reshaped, developing new repertoires of protest while continuing to draw on established practices. New organizations and citizen platforms emerged rapidly across countries at local, national and transnational levels.

Pro-Palestine Protest at Columbia University, 2024

These mobilisations have been characterised by a multifarious repertoire of actions. Large numbers of activists have participated in marches; boycotting of Israeli entities have been campaigned for in academia, arts and sports as well as with reference to companies with high investment in Israel; hunger strikes have mobilized specific professions; knowledge has been built in university encampments and spread by artists and intellectuals. More recently, civil disobedience has emerged as a central form of protest which is able to directly achieve the aim through the blocking of ships carrying weapons to Israel and the Flottillas trying to force the Israeli blockades to bring food to Gaza.

These protests have been met by repression which, in many countries, targeted especially vulnerable groups, such as migrant, racialized Arab and Muslin communities, but in many cases it extended to prominent public figures—including Jewish—who expressed solidarity with the Palestine people. Especially in the countries which have been more involved in the arm trading with Israel (such as the US and Germany) as well as in those that bear more historical responsibilities for the Palestinian Nakba since 1948 (such as UK and France) the attempts to suppress solidarity with Palestine has been the most pronounced, with brutal police interventions against peaceful protestors as well as the harassment of activists through administrative disciplining (up to firing and deportation) and public defamation. Moral panic have in fact been launched by pro-Israel lobbies, politicians and mass media in a weaponization of the accusation of antisemitism which has been facilitated by the broad adoption of the working definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, collapsing Judaism with Israel, and the criminalization of non-violent social movement organizations such as the Boycott, Divest and Sanction network. In this process, with the support of the far right, the accusation of antisemitism was used in racist campaigns against Arab and Muslim migrants, but also ethnic minorities and the Left tout court accused of “importing” antisemitism into the morally superior Western  civilization.

The development of the massive global social movement for a Free Palestine can be explained by the convergence of several broad streams of opposition. In it, we can in fact single out dynamics which are typical of movements of international solidarity, pacifist protest campaigns, mobilizations against colonialist legacies led by diaspora activists, but also, more broadly, a movement against capitalism, racism and patriarchy. Resisting a Far Right backlash (and a turn on the right by many center-left parties), the protests in solidarity with Palestine have opposed racism and repression at home, resisting an authoritarian turn which is more and more affecting even established democracies. In different moments and with different intensity, the global movement for Palestine also intersected with resistance to neoliberal development in the educational system as well as in the economy at large, mobilizing students and workers on their own conditions of precarity and exploitation but also on the moral content of their own activities. While call for keeping “all eyes on Gaza”, the massive protests also addressed what Gaza represents in the world, opposing institutions that have consistently deviated from their proclaimed norms by aiding and abetting the Israeli genocide. In fact, the dominant demands have ranged from a call for an immediate ceasefire, the humanitarian relief of population besieged in Gaza, the Palestinians’ right to self-defence and self-determination, to a call to dismantle the imperial Zionist project and its regime. Chants such as ‘It didn’t start on the 7th. Oct’ or ‘It’s not a war, it’s a genocide’ pointed at the framing of the events in Gaza within a broader liberation struggle also indicating an international reckoning of the chain of complicities that in the West have brought about the current Western-supported Israeli genocide.

As has been noted in previous global waves of protests, while international events have been influencing the flow of the protest events for a Free Palestine, national variations persist, shaped by different political and social contexts, as well as different movement traditions. These variations affect the ways in which movements coordinate, cooperate, and frame their struggles within and across contexts. What is more, while certainly stemming from grievances, social movements do not automatically emerge when dissatisfaction is high.  The framing of a problem as political and the mobilization of organizational resources are necessary steps towards transforming grievances into action. In this sense, it is important to observe how social movement organizations in solidarity with Palestine have successfully created and sustained coalitions over a long period of time. In particular, broad alliances between racialized minorities, diaspora communities and social movement organisations focused on different issues (from workers’ rights, climate change to transfeminism, pro-migrant and anti-racism) have forged around an anti-colonial master frame, denouncing and opposing different forms of colonization and domination that intersect in the Palestinian cause bridging the issue of peace and war within broader discourses and other struggles of social justice and democracy.

What is more, these processes emerged from action itself, as it is often during the protests that ties between very different groups are built and shared narrative emerges bringing existing and new organizations in the streets but also mobilizing long-term activists together with new generations that are socialized to the protest for the first time. In order to study the mobilisations in solidarity with Palestine, it is therefore essential to analyze the mechanisms of the intensification of protests by looking at how a global social movement for a Free Palestine has emerged, expanded, and transformed across different settings.

Embedded in the Fordist moment, at the onset social movement studies assumed a stable (albeit conflictual) system. Opposing a vision of social movements as pathological, seminal studies have pointed to the ‘normalization’ of protests. Generally speaking, many reflections have focused on ‘quiet times’; that is times in which structures heavily constrain agency, events and reactions to events seem predictable, routines prevail, changes happen at slow pace, objectivity is pursued, and the situation is considered ‘normal’. This certainly helped our understanding of the development of social movements under certain circumstances. However, the post-Fordist period has challenged some of these conditions through the increasing neoliberal uncertainty linked to growing and multiple inequalities, the spread of feelings of exclusion, and multiple crises of political responsibility. Sociological reflections have thus addressed the acceleration of time and the increasing role of events in catalysing protest. Intense times emerge therefore as times in which agency challenges structural constraints, predictability shrinks, the influence of conjunctural events increases, decisions are made at high speed, and the need for subjective assessment increases under conditions that are considered as extra-ordinary.

In this context, the concept of eventful protest points to the effects of protest on the social movement itself. Some protest events constitute processes during which collective experiences develop through the interactions of different individual and collective actors that take part in them with different roles and aims. Protest, therefore, not only produces breaks but also builds new norms by forming prefigurative arenas, forging new networks and developing feelings of solidarity “in action”. In this sense, some events help intensify time by breaking old institutions and allowing new ones to emerge. Eventful protests trigger a process of time intensification, which on the one hand implies a fluidization of structures and, on the other hand, a densification of relations.

The recent intensification of protests for a Free Palestine in Italy provide pertinent illustration of how resources for protest increase during the actions themselves. In Italy, since October 2023, a broad network of social movement organisations active on feminist struggles, environmentalism and anti-racism as well as labour unions joined forces with pacifist actors. The leadership of the pro-Palestine mobilisations was quickly assumed by Giovani Palestinesi (the Young Palestinians) – a group formed in 2020 that includes Palestinians from the diaspora, young Arabic speakers (often second- generation) as well as young Italians, primarily students. Alongside them, a central role was played by the national Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Coordination and pro-Palestinian organisations which had been active even before 7 October 2023. While not always massive, the protests were persistent over time and very widespread across the Italian territory. It has been however in September 2025 that grassroots trade unions have been able to catalyse a huge and massive resistance against the Israeli genocide—this is what, also thanks to the territorial rootedness of the movement in solidarity with Palestine.

Greta Thunberg Speaking at Global Sumud Flotilla, Barcelona, 2025

A turning point that triggered the general strike for Gaza mentioned in the incipit was the march in Genoa which, on August 31, mobilized 50,000 citizens wishing good winds to the vessel that was to leave from the city harbor to join the Global Sumud Flotilla. Reminding the Freedom Summer of 1964, as activists from the Northern States of the US went to the South to help Black voters to register as their visibility was used to protect the Black activists, also the activists are sailing to Gaza in the more than 50 vessels from all over the world put their lives at risk, using their visibility to sensitive the public opinion and shame not only Israel but also the complicit governments in the West that are arming the Israeli genocide. In this process, they build upon, but also create global ties and prefigure another world, a world of justice and solidarity

On the occasion of the protest in Genoa, the commitment to solidarity with Palestinians was embedded in the history of resistance that characterized the city. So, taking part in the march,  the mayor stated how proud she was to be the mayor of a city that was awarded a golden medal for its resistance to Nazi-fascism and was now triggering a new wave of resistance against a new genocide. The moral shock of the genocide resonates with a long tradition of solidarity from Genoa and its harbour. So, a CGIL unionist recalled the ship who left Genoa in 1973 with humanitarian help for the Vietnamese population, reaching Hanoi after months of navigation while an activist of the Calp mentions the historical commitment by the dockers to block arm traffic.

The preparation of the sailing of the Flotilla vessel saw the emergence of a coalition of organizations of very different types, from labour (overcoming competition among unions) to the educational system (putting together different student groups), catholic and lay pacifist associations. The trade unions have provided material and human infrastructures for the pro-Palestine action while the Catholic Church, including the archbishop, blessed the flotilla.

In support of the flotilla, hundreds of thousands of citizens brought more than ten times the expected amount of food. The mayor had gone several times to encourage the protestors, The harbour entire harbors mobilized to help the flotilla. The March in Genoa was covered in a sympathetic way even in most of the mainstream press.

At the protest, the mayor praises the courage of those who will sail to bring food to Gaza, but also the solidarity on the tens of thousands who donated food and the voluntary association that coordinated the event and especially the Collettivo Autonomo Lavoratori Portuali (Calp, Autonomous collective of the dock-workers), that has been at the core of the civil disobedience against arm trafficking, refusing to load weapon to be delivered to Israel. In five years, the Calp developed from a small collective, investigated by the police as ‘terrorist’, into an influential collective that has been invited in Vatican and blessed by the Pope, representing the image of the Genoa that resists.  It was at the vigil for the flotilla that the slogan was put forward on which the general strike was called as one of the dockers from Calp stated ”If Israel will not let this humanitarian help be delivered to the Palestinian population in Gaza, not a single nail will any longer go to Israel from this harbour”. The spokesperson of the Calp so explained that: “If we lose contact with our boats, with our comrades, even for just 20 minutes, we will block all of Europe. Together with our Usb union, together with all dockworkers, together with the entire city of Genoa.” During the torchlight vigil, the dockworkers stated: “Our girls and boys must return without a scratch, and all our goods, which belong to the people, down to the very last box, must reach their destination.” And ‘if anyone tries to stop the boats, “we will block all of Europe”.

Diffusion of protest usually happens as successful repertoires are adopted and adapted. The Genoa protest highlighted the potential of the workers to disrupt the logistic support for the Israeli crimes. Interestingly, while the neoliberal management of the harbour has challenged labour power, the international solidarity and workers’ combativeness that characterised dockers in the past are emerging anew. The Italian dockworkers are so doing, what the EU should have done: blocking arms direct to Israel. After the dock-workers of Genoa, also the dock-workers of Livorno (the Tuscan city that hosted the first congress of the Italian Communist Party in 1921) have been effective in stopping a US ship carrying arms from entering in the harbor after, for many days, 300 citizens have occupied the harbour to oppose the Israeli genocide. A main role has been played by grassroots unions and collectives that pushed the authorities and main unions to open a negotiation table.

The blockade of weapon trade with Israel continued then, thanks to the dockworkers as well as their rootedness in the territory and international solidarity. Also the dockers of the Ravenna harbour, in agreement with the city mayor, refused to be complicit in a genocide and so did those of Taranto by preventing the entrance in the harbour of a ship bringing military equipments to Israel. On September 27, it was again in Genoa that the workers forced a ship to leave the harbour without his load of arms. As many as 25000–including the archbishop and the mayor—marched again in the street from Gaza and the Flottilla. Blocchiamo tutto” is not an empty slogan as the dock-workers planning an international assembly and discussing the possibility to stop all trade to and from Israel. In Genoa and in the other harbor city, the eventful protest in support of the Global Sumud Flotilla and against the Israeli genocide. also catalyzed a collective solidaristic identity, rooted in the historical tradition, the harbour, the resistance to Nazis and fascists. The call “let’s block everything” has empowering effects on all those who oppose the genocide as the workers built strong alliances with the citizens and the harbour became a positive symbol for all.

These protests, leading to and following the general strike of September 22 have been eventful in their capacity to inspire also other forms of protests by a variety or social and political groups. On the same day of the strike, in the most important Italian Theater, la Scala in Milan, all performers went on stage under a large ban against the genocide, while cinema theatres started a campaign in support of the Global Sumud Flotilla and for Palestine. Face to the complicity of Western governments, humanitarian action has also become political. So while Emergency sent its ship to support the Global Sumud Flotilla, UNICEF and Save the Children are denouncing the massacre of children in Gaza, and Oxfam, Doctors without borders, Medico international, Amnesty International, Human Right watch and many others appeal to the public opinion and the governments to stop the massacres of civilians. ARCI, the largest civil society network for cultural and recreational activities in Italy, is participating with a boat to the Global Sumud Flotilla, in order to break the siege and the silence, calling for a free Palestine and opposing the genocide. Born within the Communist tradition, the ARCI is still at the core of the mobilization for peace, social justice, global citizens‘ rights.

Over the Summer, hundred thousand citizens had been involved in the horizontal protests against the genocide launched under the slogan “Ultimo giorno di Gaza”, with the hanging of white sheets  out of windows and balcony, to remind of the shrouds enveloping the bodies of killed Palestinians. Performances and flash mobs against the genocide had been organized everywhere in the country, from the big cities to the small villages. Protests also aimed at disrupting the use of land and touristic resorts as places of recovery from their military activities by Israeli soldiers. In Italy, as in Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, Spain, this immoral use of the land ad land grabbing for speculative projects of gated Israeli communities have been contested in Sardinia, Marche and Campania. Request of boycott of representative of the murderous Israeli state have multiplied in sport competitions, artistic contests, commercial fairs. Most visible, at the Cinema Biennal in Venice, many actors and directors expressed horror about the Israeli imposed famine and support for the Global Sumud Flotilla. Receiving the Silver Lion for The voice of Hind Rajab (that had received a 24-minute standing ovation at its premiere), the director Ben Hanua stated “Her voice will continue to echo until accountability is real until justice is served. …. It is tragically the story of an entire people enduring genocide inflicted by a criminal Israeli regime that acts with impunity.”

Hunger strikes have also spread as a way for collective of people to express their moral outrage. As many as 15,000 health workers have participated today in a hunger strike against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The protest, called by Health workers for Gaza, has spread all over the country being supported by several civil society organizations ì. Entire hospitals mobilized in some cities with the support of the professional association of the Italian doctors. The health workers honored their more than 1400 colleagues killed by Israel in Gaza, recalling the 125 medical structures, 186 ambulances, 34 hospitals bombed by Israel. Part of the protest campaigns of the Italian health workers for Gaza is the successful boycott of the Israeli pharmaceutical firm Teva. The recognition health workers got during the pandemic seems to have been relevant also in granting a broad, widespread and sympathetic media coverage for their actions.

Protests are eventful when they also succeed in affecting institutional actors. Reinvigorating the tradition of engaged municipalism, as a sign of solidarity, the Palestinian flag is flying on more and more public buildings in Italy—including the city council in Rome. Also, more and more public administrations voted for the recognition of Palestine and a boycott of Israeli goods.

To be successful social movements need to (also) affect party politics. With huge delay, this is happening with the protest against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Among others, four Italian lawmakers from PD, 5 Stars movement and the Alliance of the Greens and the Italian Left will be on board of one of the vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla. In the mist of the military attacks on the Flotilla, the members of the Italian parliament from the Democratic Party, the 5 Star Movement and the Green-Italian Left alliance occupied the Parliament Chamber calling the government to take position on the latest intensification of the Israeli genocide and take action against the criminal attacks on the Global Sumud Flotilla. Under this pressure, the Minister of Defense sent a ship to protect the about 50 Italian on board of the Flotilla, while the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni even opened up to a possible recognition of Palestine.

In sum, a global movement for  a Free Palestine has been growing against the Israeli genocide but also the Western complicity in it. As Israel threatened the ‘unprecedented force’ against a starved population while blocking the very possibility to run away and western powers are watching without intervening, it is the civil society that, in many countries, is mobilizing against the Israeli genocide and a free Palestine. With the recent intensification, but also their rooting in a two-years long campaign, the Italian social movement for a Free Palestine is showing what Charles Tilly defined as Worthiness, Unity, Numbers, and Commitment (WUNC). In sum, with the hunger strikes of health workers; the block to the traffic of weapons to Israel by the dock workers; the calls for boycott of Israeli institutions by those working and studying in Italian schools and universities, the workers in the film industry stating they will not cooperate with Israeli firms, citizens and workers in the tourist sectors rejecting to provide a relaxing time to IDF soldiers—all these protest actions indicate that Gaza is forcing us not only to act in solidarity against the genocide but also to think about the ethical issues that are related with all human activities.