The April 15 Trade Blockade Around the World

• On April 15, 2024, protests by anarchists and far-left radicals were scheduled around the world to blockade shipping activity at ports in the name of “a Free Palestine.” The action is labeled “A15.” The organizers vowed, “On April 15th, we will block logistical hubs to stop the flow of capital worldwide.”
• The action represents the tolerance of global subversive actions in the name of the so-called “pro-Palestine” movement, which has the potential to turn Israel into a global pariah state for the purposes of global trade.
• While A15 declares itself an independent movement, many longtime Palestinian activist groups are listed in actions planned for April 15.
• Evidence presented by opponents of the Iranian regime suggests that the Revolutionary Guards “support and encourage Palestinian movements [to act] toward the political isolation of the Zionist regime.”
• BDS supporters may find themselves at one with A15 actions. Despite the BDS movement’s official stance, BDS-aligned movements have shut down main thoroughfares in the West in recent months.
• The intended collective punishment via the global economy that anarchists wish to exact in cooperation with pro-Hamas activists on April 15 is a pressure tactic that complements that of Iran’s unprecedented and massive drone and ballistic missile attack on Israel on April 14.

On April 10, 2024, an unusual video clip was released on social media platforms.¹ It called on the public to blockade shipping activity at ports around the world on April 15, 2024, “for a Free Palestine,” that is, against Israel’s defensive military actions against Hamas following the terrorist organization’s October 7 massacre. The planned action, nicknamed “A15,” is also being promoted through an accompanying website in seven languages.

The video’s YouTube tagline declares:

On April 15th, people from over 30 cities around the world will launch a global economic blockade, answering the call from Gaza to fight for a liberated Palestine. Seventy-five years and 182 days into this U.S.-backed genocide, we must take collective risk beyond symbolic acts of solidarity. On April 15th, we will block logistical hubs to stop the flow of capital worldwide. This is just the beginning. We will not cooperate with the police. If a blockade in one city faces repression, we will respond in solidarity in other cities. Join us in organizing towards our collective liberation a15action.com.

Though the clip received only several thousand views on YouTube and X, A15’s proposed collective action represents a new, more extreme strain form of BDS – even more sinister than the targeted actions of the BDS movement itself. The planned action, even if unsuccessful, represents the tolerance of global subversive actions in the name of the so-called “pro-Palestine” movement, which has the potential to turn Israel into an international pariah state for the purposes of global trade.

Who Is Behind A15?

A15’s video has primarily been promoted on social media by far-left organizations, including anarchist groups and radical Palestinian activist organizations such as “Within Our Lifetime,” which sprouted from a New York chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Local contacts listed on the site to organize grassroots actions in port cities around the world are provided email addresses under an encrypted website called Proton.²

The A15 action is solidly grounded in the Antifa movement. The social media clip is produced by Submedia (“sub” is short for “subversive”), an anarchist “digital media collective” “spread across the stolen lands of the so-called Americas,” according to its website.³ Submedia is “one of the most prolific producers in the world of anarchist, anti-capitalist, and anti-colonial propaganda” with films on “indigenous resistance” and “riot porn,” and it also hosts the “Circle A” podcast. Further illustrative of its anti-Western profile, the Submedia website features merchandise for sale, such as a $25 hat emblazoned with the words “Make America Go Away.”

Submedia is a member of Kolektiva, a video platform that focuses heavily on prison and police abolition⁴ and features a film entitled “From the River to the Sea.”⁵ Submedia is also part of the Channel Zero Network, an anarchist radio and podcast network that includes podcasts, for example, on youth trans liberation, and shows called “Molotov Now” (a play on the name of the popular leftist videocast “Democracy Now”) and “Coffee with Comrades.”⁶

A15, Palestinian Organizations – and Iran?

While A15 declares itself an independent movement, many longtime Palestinian activist groups are listed in actions planned for April 15. Some of these activist groups are involved in other actions, such as a strike scheduled for April 15 in cities such as Los Angeles and a plan to shut down financial districts. More than 23 Palestinian organizations, such as the Palestinian Youth Movement, the Palestinian Feminist Collective, and Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, have signed up for the Los Angeles event. The planned strike calls for “No Work, No School, No Spending” on April 15, American “tax day,” in protest of U.S. support for Israel.⁷

On April 15, Iranian opposition figure and activist Vahid Beheshti tweeted a photo of what he claims is a leaked “top-secret letter” from the Deputy Commander-in-Chief and Head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Intelligence Organization, addressed to the Deputy Cultural and Psychological War Operations of the IRGC.⁸ Titled “Supporting and encouraging Palestinian movements towards the political isolation of the Zionist regime,” the letter proves, said Beheshti, his claims that A15’s goals are in line with those of the Iranian regime, which hopes to subvert the West. He claims that the regime is behind the weekly protests in major cities and infiltrating Western society, with the ultimate goal of supplanting it with a global caliphate.

Further evidence of Beheshti’s assertion can be observed in a social media video posted in April 2024. The video shows a room full of activists in Chicago being trained to chant “Hands off Iran” in English⁹ and “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” in Farsi.¹⁰

If Beheshti is correct, it would prove the claims of many Middle East observers who have tracked the intensifying synergy of the Red (Leftist)-Green (Islamist) alliance.¹¹

Is A15 BDS?

At face value, the “A15” actions seem to align with the aims of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement against Israel, established in 2004. During the current Gaza war, BDS has publicized its relatively modest accomplishments in the boycott arena. Yet, the BDS movement has not publicly supported A15, though it may be aligned with it clandestinely.

On April 13, hours before the Iranian drone and missile strike on Israel, the BDS movement posted on its Twitter account: “As Israel’s genocidal atrocities escalate, turn solidarity into impact with our #BDS Guide full of effective actions, from divestment to targeted boycotts, to strategically campaign for Palestinian rights. Let’s unite for freedom, justice, and equality.”¹²

The link in the tweet leads to a page on the BDS website that presents the BDS movement’s “approved” forms of boycott and sanctions like targeted political and economic pressure actions. These targeted actions do not include A15’s global activities. The nuance between the conventional approach taken by BDS activists as opposed to anarchist-style actions can be explained by the fact that anarchic activism may harm the BDS movement’s growing credibility among mainline leftists.

Regardless of these methodological differences, many fervent BDS supporters may find themselves at one with A15 actions. BDS-aligned movements have recently shut down main thoroughfares in the West. For example, the London Tower Bridge was shut down by public activism initiated by the UK-based Palestine Solidarity in February, as were bridges in the San Francisco Bay Area, Memphis, and New York by other groups.¹³

Recent years have seen a convergence of far-left activism with that of anarchists, specifically the Antifa in the United States, during the Black Lives Matter riots following the death of George Floyd in 2020. Some Antifa activists took an active part in the destruction and riots that followed, specifically on the West Coast, especially in the Pacific Northwest.¹⁴

Despite differing sources of anti-Israel and essentially pro-Hamas activism, these movements share an ideology that demonizes and delegitimizes the existence of the Jewish state and the right to defend itself from its enemies. The leaders of the BLM movement have also openly taken anti-Zionist stances, with BLM co-founder and self-declared “trained Marxist” Patrisse Cullors stating that “Israel is the new South Africa,” comparing it to South Africa’s apartheid regime.¹⁵

BLM leaders and anarchists are generally aligned with revolutionary Marxist-Leninists. For example, Cullors and other leftist political activists visited Israel in 2015 for a “Palestine solidarity mission” organized by the U.S.-based interfaith Peace-Builders and the BLM-aligned Dream Defenders, all of whom support and promote the mission of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization. Dream Defenders stated, “They [the PFLP] want to be free from global imperialism. They want liberation. They want equal rights. Just like the Dream Defenders.”¹⁶

Despite nuanced ideological differences, the anarchists of “A15” use Soviet anti-Zionist tropes based on older classic antisemitic tropes familiar in Russia even before the Communist revolution, common to many far-left anti-Zionist organizations.¹⁷ The A15 action as a whole is evocative of Marx’s theme of global capital being connected to Jews:

“Money is the jealous god of Israel, in the face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities.”¹⁸

This is further evidenced in the transcript of the A15 video clip:

On April 15th, people across four continents will launch an economic blockade in solidarity with Palestine….We will jam up trade chokepoints and disrupt the global economy….Yemen is bombed to secure global trade routes, and billions of dollars continue to fund the occupation. The time has come to open up new fronts against the Zionist war machine….We know that symbolic actions are not enough. We must escalate. As Palestinians face one brutal atrocity after another….We will disrupt global logistical hubs, and we’ll clog flows of capital worldwide….We will identify and blockade major chokepoints in the economy. We will focus on points of production and circulation, with the aim of causing maximum economic impact. If one city faces police repression, other cities will extend or expand blockades in solidarity…. For 75 years, Israel has operated with impunity. But the zionist project must end.¹⁹

The gist of the above A15 rhetoric inverts the aggressors (Hamas, the Houthis, and the Iranian regime) and targets (Israel), portraying Israel, “the collective Jew,” as a warmonger. In contrast, the word “atrocity” inverts a term used to describe the October 7 massacres. The video also clearly calls for an end to the “Zionist project” – that is, the eradication of the State of Israel.

What BDS will not itself do officially, the A15 anarchists plan to do by disrupting the global supply chain. This action, in turn, aims to increase anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism globally that anarchists wish to exact in cooperation with pro-Hamas activists on April 15. This is a pressure tactic that complements that of Iran’s unprecedented and massive drone and ballistic missile attack on Israel on April 14. The A15 act of Marxist economic warfare requires moral clarity by the international community, which has a record of confusing victims and villains. This was on full display in Iran’s direct missile and drone attacks on Israel, which, in Orwellian doublespeak, Iran justified as an “inherent right of Self Defense” at the United Nations Security Council.

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Notes