The Histadrut, the country’s main labor federation, said Monday that it would not join a general strike called for August 17 to protest the continuation of the war and the government’s approval of a plan for a military takeover of Gaza City. However, the labor union said it would support workers planning to participate in a protest rally that day.
Meanwhile, much of Israel’s private tech sector declared that it would back the general strike action next week, as did the Israel Bar Association.
The decision by the labor union followed a meeting between Histadrut chairman Arnon Bar-David, senior representatives of the business sector, and representatives of the families of hostages who are leading the call for the strike, scheduled for Sunday.
Bar-David, who requested to meet with the families to explain his decision, expressed concern that the involvement of the powerful organization would divert public discourse around the return of the hostages into politics.
“If I knew that a strike — not just for one day but longer — would end the matter, stop the war and bring back the hostages, I would go for it with full force,” Bar-David said. “Unfortunately, and although my heart is bursting with anger, it has no practical outcome.”
Although the Histadrut will not join the strike in an organized manner, Bar-David committed to asking company management and workers’ committees to allow employees to participate in the protest and solidarity rally on August 17 without harming their rights as workers.
Family members of hostages and those slain on October 7 hold a press conference in Tel Aviv on August 10, 2025. (Screenshot/Facebook)
The strike was called by groups representing families of the hostages, slain soldiers, and victims of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, days after the cabinet voted to seize the densely populated Gaza City. The vote came despite the military’s objections that the move would imperil the captives, needlessly endanger troops, and deepen the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
At a Sunday press conference in Tel Aviv, held opposite the Kirya military base that houses military headquarters and the Defense Ministry, organizers urged private companies, organizations, workers’ unions, and citizens in general to take a vacation day and bring the economy to a halt.
An anti-government protest group representing dozens of the country’s largest tech companies, collectively employing tens of thousands of workers, said Sunday that it would join the strike. Among the tech companies are Wix, Fiverr, Meta, Papaya Global, HoneyBook, Natural Intelligence, and Fireblocks. The group also includes venture capital funds such as Qumra Capital, Pitango, Disruptive, and NFX.
“We are at a fateful moment in the story of the nation of Israel, and we don’t intend to resist,” the group said in a statement, noting the IDF chief of staff’s opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to take over Gaza City.
“We are sending our soldiers into a death trap and are endangering the lives of the hostages,” it said. “Time is running out, and we hope and expect full attendance by all the country’s sectors on the side of the [hostage] families.”
The Israel Bar Association announced that it supports the strike, calling on the nation’s lawyers to join.
Workers from the high-tech sector protest against the proposed changes to the legal system, in Tel Aviv, on February 7, 2023. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90/File)
“Freeing the hostages is a moral, Zionist, and Jewish order of the first degree, a condition for Israel’s security and existence,” Bar Association head Amit Becher said in a statement.
He urged the country’s large law firms to follow the Bar Association’s lead in allowing employees to miss work on Sunday without having their pay docked.
“We call on Israel’s government: Listen to the IDF chief of staff, to the voices of all the heads of the security branches and listen to the voices of the people, act for the freedom of the hostages and reach a deal to free them now, before it’s too late,” Becher said
In September last year, Tel Aviv’s labor court ordered the Histadrut to halt a general strike called after Israelis seethed over the discovery of the bodies of six hostages killed by their captors in Gaza — whom many believed could have been saved by a deal that would have put a halt to the war in Gaza after nearly a year.
The state and the Tikva Forum, a group of hawkish hostage families that has largely backed the government’s prioritization of military action over concessions as a means to win the release of hostages, had petitioned the court for an injunction against the Histadrut move, arguing that the strike was politically motivated and unrelated to workers’ rights — and therefore illegal.
The court accepted their arguments, rejecting the Histadrut’s stance that the government’s failure to secure a deal was damaging the economy.
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