{"id":1325265,"date":"2023-11-11T12:25:01","date_gmt":"2023-11-11T12:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2023\/11\/us-labor-israel-palestine-solidarity-history\/"},"modified":"2023-11-11T12:25:01","modified_gmt":"2023-11-11T12:25:01","slug":"us-labor-has-long-been-a-stalwart-backer-of-israel-thats-starting-to-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/11\/11\/us-labor-has-long-been-a-stalwart-backer-of-israel-thats-starting-to-change\/","title":{"rendered":"US Labor Has Long Been a Stalwart Backer of Israel. That\u2019s Starting to Change."},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

The US labor movement has a decades-long history of supporting Israel wholeheartedly, punctuated by moments of pro-Palestine actions by rank-and-file activists. As Israel wages its war on Gaza, those pro-Palestine moments are becoming increasingly common.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n A man climbing on his car waves the Palestinian flag to show solidarity during a march through downtown Detroit, Michigan, on October 28, 2023, calling for an immediate cease-fire and condemning Israeli attacks in Gaza. (Adam J. Dewey \/ Anadolu via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

As the Israeli government carries out what experts<\/a> describe<\/a> as a potential<\/a> genocide<\/a> in Gaza \u2014 with full political, financial, and military backing from the United States \u2014 millions of people around the world are mobilizing to demand an immediate cease-fire and a free Palestine. Workers in the United States, including numerous rank-and-file unionists and local union representatives, are similarly<\/a> speaking<\/a> out<\/a> against the ongoing siege and bombardment of Gaza and pledging<\/a> their solidarity<\/a> with Palestinian trade unions, which have called on<\/a> organized labor to refuse to manufacture or transport weapons destined for Israel.<\/p>\n

Labor leaders in various countries have joined in these calls, but top US labor officials \u2014 especially those in the AFL-CIO, the country\u2019s top labor federation \u2014 have mostly refrained<\/a> from supporting a cease-fire, with a few making tepid statements about the \u201chumanitarian crisis\u201d in Gaza. After a central labor council in Olympia, Washington, unanimously passed a cease-fire and Palestine solidarity resolution a few weeks ago, the national AFL-CIO even stepped in<\/a> to quash the measure.<\/p>\n

The flare-up over Gaza is hardly the first time<\/a> disagreement on foreign affairs has erupted within US labor. During the Vietnam War, conservative officials like AFL-CIO president George Meany unstintingly backed Washington\u2019s adventurism, even as health care workers with Local 1199<\/a> and some United Auto Workers (UAW) leaders were among the earliest voices in the antiwar movement. Eventually, a majority of union presidents opposed the war \u2014 helping pressure the US government to finally end it \u2014 but not before millions of Vietnamese civilians and tens of thousands of US troops had been killed.<\/p>\n

It is therefore urgent for rank-and-file activists to know the history of US labor\u2019s close relationship<\/a> with Israel \u2014 as well as the brave cases of US unionists working to alter that relationship to achieve peace and freedom for everybody in historic Palestine.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

Embracing Israel<\/h2>\n \n

In the early twentieth century, most working-class Jewish Americans were non-Zionists or anti-Zionists. The immigrant Jews who founded and led powerful organizations like the International Ladies\u2019 Garment Workers\u2019 Union (ILGWU) and Amalgamated Clothing Workers had cut their political teeth back in Eastern Europe as members of the socialist Jewish Labor Bund, which rejected Zionism as a bourgeois, nationalist project that sidetracked class struggle.<\/p>\n

At the First Jewish Labor Congress \u2014 a 1919 national gathering in New York of representatives from Jewish-led unions claiming to represent five hundred thousand workers \u2014 the delegates debated Zionism and passed a measure that explicitly rejected the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. Instead, the resolution called for the establishment of \u201ca free, independent republic in which no nationality, whether a minority or majority people, shall have any special rights.\u201d<\/p>\n