[“U.S. military aid going in is pouring gasoline onto a fire. It
encourages that there be military solutions, and military solutions
will get more people killed.]
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THE U.S. LABOR VOICES OPPOSING MILITARY AID TO ISRAEL  
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Jeff Schuhrke, Sarah Lazare
October 13, 2023
In These Times - Labor
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_ “U.S. military aid going in is pouring gasoline onto a fire. It
encourages that there be military solutions, and military solutions
will get more people killed. _

A child in Rafah who was injured in an attack by the Israeli
military, on Friday, October 13, 2023. About half of Gaza's residents
are children. , Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images

 

As the Israeli military relentlessly bombards 2.4 million Palestinians
in the besieged Gaza Strip and a ground invasion appears imminent,
one storied, national union — the United Electrical, Radio and
Machine Workers of America (UE) — is opposing U.S. military aid for
the state of Israel whose assault on the besieged strip has already
taken the lives of at least 1,800 Palestinians (a number that is
quickly rising) and displaced more than 420,000 others. The Israeli
government’s overwhelming violence comes on the heels of a surprise
attack by Hamas militants on October 7 when 150 were taken hostage
and more than 1,300 people, almost entirely Israelis, were killed.

“We certainly don’t support any killing, whether it’s in the
form of bombs, guns, starving people through blockades, or through
apartheid, from any side,” says Andrew Dinkelaker, the UE’s
general secretary treasurer. ​“U.S. military aid going in is
pouring gasoline onto a fire. It encourages that there be military
solutions, and military solutions will get more people killed.”

In opposing U.S. military aid to Israel, the UE — along with
some organizers, elected representatives and rank-and-file workers
from other unions, as well as just a few progressive members of
Congress like Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D.-Mich.) and Rep. Cori Bush
(D.-Mo.) — is striking in a U.S. political climate defined by
unqualified bipartisan support for Israel’s newly formed, hawkish
​“unity” government as it uses white phosphorus and cuts off
fuel, food, water and electricity to Gaza’s entire population, which
is about half children. 

A video
[[link removed]]
has been circulating of Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant
saying, ​“We are fighting against human animals.” Israeli
President Isaac Herzog said Friday, ​“It’s an entire nation out
there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about
civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true.
They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil
regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’état.” In an article
published Friday by _Jewish Currents
[[link removed]]_, Raz Segal,
a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University,
writes that ​“the assault on Gaza can also be understood in other
terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of
our eyes.”

After destroying roads, entire blocks and other infrastructure, the
Israeli military ordered the entire population of northern
Gaza — 1.1 million civilians — to evacuate to the south
within 24 hours, something the United Nations says would be
​“impossible
[[link removed]].”

A growing chorus of human rights organizations, including Amnesty
International
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Human Rights Watch
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and the Israeli group B’Tselem
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have said the Israeli government has embedded the conditions of
apartheid and many have been sounding the alarm about the growing
humanitarian crisis in Gaza — which has been under a land, air
and sea blockade enforced by the Israeli military since 2007.
​“Military action, total war, expulsion, and carpet bombing will
not solve anything. They will make things worse. The immediate
priority should be a ceasefire,” tweeted
[[link removed]] Jehad
Abusalim, co-editor of _Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire_. Many
have also warned about the dire situation in the occupied West Bank,
where Israeli settlers have been violent
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and frequently attacked Palestinians. The scope and impact of
Hamas’s attack was unprecedented and hundreds of Israeli civilians,
including children, were killed. Some organizations and social
movement groups, and even the brother
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Israeli Hayim Katsman, are urging that the killing of Israeli
civilians should not be used to justify more civilian deaths.

Less than a month ago, on September 21, a resolution
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was passed at the UE’s national convention calling for the United
States to end military aid to Israel, citing the urgent need to end
the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza. Titled
​“For Jobs, Peace and a Pro-Worker Foreign Policy,” the
resolution also calls for a reduction of the U.S. military budget, an
end to sanctions on Venezuela, and steps toward a ​“world free of
nuclear weapons.”

The 78th UE convention ​“demands the U.S. government end all
military aid to Israel,” the resolution states.

It’s not military invasion that people in the U.S. are most
endangered by, but rather, the ​“failure to provide living wage
jobs, affordable healthcare, education, housing, and necessary social
services as human rights,” the resolution states.

The UE represents roughly 35,000 workers and Dinkelaker says the
provisions about Israel are important in light of ongoing violence.
​“By saying, ​‘Hey we’re going to back [Israel] no matter
what with military support,’ that seems to be the wrong message,”
he says.

With rare exceptions
[[link removed].],
both Republicans and Democrats are almost entirely showing
unconditional support for Israel, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
says
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she is weighing new sanctions on Iran, in a political atmosphere some
observers have compared
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to the post-9/11 U.S. climate of pro-war jingoism. In addition to the
roughly $3.3 billion in aid the United States gives the Israeli
government annually, Biden pledged
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at a press conference on Tuesday to increase U.S. support for the
Israeli government’s war, with no requirement that it show any
restraint in its killing of Palestinians and tactics of
collective punishment. 

Some high-profile U.S. politicians have overtly called for or
justified the mass killings of Palestinians. In a Fox News interview
on Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said
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​“We are in a religious war here, I am with Israel. Whatever the
hell you have to do to defend yourselves; level the place.” White
House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said
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on Thursday that calls for a ceasefire are ​“repugnant” and
​“disgraceful.”

This bipartisan support comes despite calls from many in the
international community — including a number of Jewish
groups — that a real end to the violence, and true safety for
everyone, requires addressing its root causes. ​“The Israeli
government may have just declared war, but its war on Palestinians
started over 75 years ago,” according to
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a statement from Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that is arguing
that Hamas’s targeting of Israeli civilians should not be used to
justify more killings. The statement continued: ​“Israeli
apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that
oppression — are the source of all this violence. Reality is
shaped by when you start the clock.” In a statement
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Jewish anti-occupation group IfNotNow asserted that, ​“Our grief
is not a weapon, our pain is not an excuse.”

Joining them are several prominent Israeli Jews, including
award-winning _Haaretz_ columnist Gideon Levy, who blamed
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Hamas attack on ​“Israeli arrogance; the idea that we can do
whatever we like, that we’ll never pay the price and be punished for
it,” and Knesset member Ofer Cassif, who called
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government ​“a
fascist government.” The _Haaretz_ editorial board, one of
Israel’s leading newspapers, also published
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an article just a day after the violence began declaring that
​“Netanyahu Bears Responsibility for This Israel-Gaza War.”

At its recent national convention, the UE also renewed a position it
has held since 2015, which is an endorsement of the Palestinian civil
society call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel,
a strategy that aims to peacefully pressure the Israeli government
and its citizens to end the occupation and system of apartheid. While
in a different context, the strategy in part draws inspiration from
similar pressure tactics used to oppose apartheid in South Africa. At
least 35 states
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passed laws, resolutions or executive orders to ban or
discourage BDS.

Alan Hart started as a rank-and-file UE member before joining the
union’s staff until he retired in 2017. He played a lead role in
drafting the 2015 BDS resolution.

“UE has never been afraid to speak out on foreign policy issues,”
he explains, ​“and has always taken a position that labor should
have its own foreign policy — labor shouldn’t fall behind
corporations and politicians.”

Hart, who is not speaking on behalf of the UE in an official capacity,
says resolutions opposing U.S. aid to Israel can be helpful, because
when members speak out on the issue, they know the union is behind
them. ​“UE people show up at demos in support of Palestine, and we
do it knowing that our union supports that,” Hart says. ​“They
show up with UE banners and UE signs. Not every local in the union is
involved in this, but it’s the union’s position, so people feel
authorized to do this, and we feel like we’re doing the
right thing.”

"HOW DID WE STAND UP?"

The UE is helping lead the way in organized U.S. labor on opposing
U.S. aid to Israel, and what appears to be a growing number of labor
leaders, groups and rank-and-file union members have been speaking out
since Oct. 7.

“It is important for unions to ask themselves, for all of us to ask
ourselves in any space we’re in, what did we do when Gaza was being
decimated to ashes? How did we stand up, wherever we were?” says
Amira A., co-founder of the Palestine Labor Network — a national
group of around 150 labor organizers and Palestine solidarity
activists that seeks to strengthen ties between U.S. unions and the
Palestinian freedom movement through educational resources and
organizing support.

Amira, who helped lead the effort to unionize staff at JVP in 2020
with the NewsGuild-CWA, says even symbolic statements of solidarity
from unions ​“absolutely make a difference” and send a
​“very clear communication to Palestinians the world over that
they are not alone.”

 

But in a climate where many of those who express sympathy for
Palestinians can face tremendous scrutiny and repression, and while
supporters of Israel generally do not face the same institutional
crackdown for expressing their views, some statements in support of
Palestinians made by members of Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) are
being weaponized by anti-union forces.

Several individual SBWU members and some SBWU accounts tweeted
statements of solidarity with Palestinians and denouncing apartheid in
the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack. One of the tweets also demanded
that the labor movement ​“support liberation for all and fight all
forms of oppression.”

The so-called Center for Union Facts — the corporate astroturf
firm
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run by union buster Rick Berman—demanded
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condemn the SBWU organizers for the statements. Right-wing news sites,
including Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, quickly jumped on the story,
prompting Sen. Rick Scott (R.-Fla.) to call
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for Starbucks to be boycotted unless the coffee giant denounced
​“this horrific support of terrorism.”

In response, both Starbucks and the Republican-controlled House
Committee on Education and the Workforce, each
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issued
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public calls for SEIU and Workers United to condemn SBWU members.
Starbucks posted the call on its union-busting ​“One.Starbucks”
website, which has been the subject of National Labor Relations Board
complaints
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for posting claims and statements that violate labor law.

“Starbucks is cooperating with Rick Scott and Ben Shapiro to use
this incredible humanitarian crisis to try to score points on the
union, which just emphasizes how utterly opportunistic and
unprincipled Starbucks’ union busting is,” says Jaz Brisack,
a Workers United organizer and former barista who helped lead the
successful effort to unionize the first Starbucks stores in Buffalo.

“I think this is obvious but maybe needs to be clarified: no one is
supporting anyone being killed. We’re saying we want people to be
able to live with freedom and democracy,” says Brisack, a longtime
Palestine solidarity activist who is not speaking in their official
capacity with the union. ​“We’re grieving all of the lives lost,
but at the same time there is an incredibly unequal dynamic where the
U.S. government and all of these forces are generally very much
behind Israel.”

They add, ​“human rights should not be controversial. I think the
labor movement has to be willing to use our collective voice
for freedom.”

For her part, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry tweeted
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​“The violence in Israel and Palestine is unconscionable. SEIU
stands with all who are suffering, while strongly condemning
anti-Semitism, Islamophobia & hate in all forms. I pray for a swift
resolution and a future where all in the region can be happy, safe
& live with dignity.”

"NOT NEUTRAL"

Long before Oct. 7, many union locals and central labor councils that
have democratically voted (or planned to vote) on resolutions
criticizing the Israeli government’s human rights record or
endorsing BDS, including United Educators of San Francisco and the
Unified Teachers Los Angeles, have faced swift
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backlash
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from pro-Israel organizations.

High-ranking union officials have also sometimes worked to shut down
expressions of pro-Palestinian sympathy within the labor movement. In
2015, after rank-and-file members with UAW-affiliated graduate worker
unions at the University of California
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New York University
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and University of Massachusetts Amherst
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each voted to endorse BDS, the UAW’s international executive board
formally ​“nullified
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the measures. In 2021, AFL-CIO leadership intervened
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to stop the San Francisco Labor Council from voting on a BDS
resolution, saying it did not comport with the federation’s
national policies.

The AFL-CIO and top U.S. labor leaders have a long history
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among Israel’s most steadfast supporters
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in the United States — including by using union funds to
purchase hundreds of millions of dollars in State of Israel bonds
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the 1950s.

Residents in Gaza amid the rubble of destroyed buildings on October
13, 2023. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images

During Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and siege of Beirut, the
AFL-CIO Executive Council took out a full-page ad in the _New York
Times_ declaring
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all-caps: ​“THE AFL-CIO IS NOT NEUTRAL. WE SUPPORT ISRAEL.”

In 2007, several AFL-CIO leaders signed onto a statement
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formally opposing BDS, and in 2009, the AFL-CIO’s then-president
Rich Trumka called
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anti-Zionism antisemitic. (Many Jews are non-Zionist or anti-Zionist,
which has been true
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for well over a century
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with many arguing that modern Zionism is harmful to all involved,
including Jews.)

In response to this week’s events, the AFL-CIO condemned Hamas and
also expressed
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concern ​“about the emerging humanitarian crisis that is affecting
Palestinians in Gaza and throughout the region” and called for
​“a swift resolution to the current conflict to end the bloodshed
of innocent civilians, and to promote a just and long-lasting peace
between Israelis and Palestinians.”

On Saturday, Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and
Department Store Union, issued a statement
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on behalf of a pro-Israel group of union officials that reads:
​“We recognize the State of Israel’s unequivocal right to defend
itself and those who live within its borders, and extend our support
for that country’s defense forces. … Hamas’s violent hatred of
Israel and refusal to live in peace will only lead to more tragedy for
both those living in Israel and Gaza.”

Another anti-BDS voice in the labor movement, American Federation of
Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten, also issued a statement
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along with AFT Secretary-Treasurer Fedrick Ingram and Executive Vice
President Evelyn DeJesus.

“Israel has every right to defend itself as it will now do,” the
AFT leaders said. ​“We are deeply worried for the safety of the
Israeli people, including the hostages now in Gaza as Hamas has
threatened their execution. We are also worried for the safety of the
Palestinian civilians who are now caught in the crossfire — with
hundreds of people now reported dead and over 2,500 wounded in Gaza
amid intensive Israeli airstrikes and a full cutoff of electricity,
gas, water and food to the Gaza Strip.”

The AFT message calls for peace for all Israelis and Palestinians,
but, like the AFL-CIO’s statement, makes no mention of the
occupation, apartheid or the 16-year blockade of Gaza that are seen by
many as the primary obstacles to peace.

Calling the AFT statement ​“problematic in a number of ways,”
the executive board of the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, which is
affiliated with the AFT, endorsed
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JVP’s message calling on ​“all people of conscience to stop
imminent genocide.”

Another AFT affiliate, the Graduate Employees’ Organization at the
University of Michigan, issued a statement
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Friday expressing support for BDS and saying, ​“The violence that
comes out of the open-air prison of Gaza is a consequence of the
colonial violence that its people have endured for years. All military
escalation in Palestine, including the tragic loss of countless
Palestinian and Israeli lives, must be understood in light of
this context.”

The leadership of the National Writers Union — which represents
1,300 freelance writers — also put out a statement on Friday
noting
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that at least nine Palestinian journalists have been killed in the
current assault on Gaza and criticizing how Western media outlets have
been covering the violence. ​“As of this writing, in a massive
ethnic cleansing, Israel is forcibly displacing more than a million
people as it prepares a ground invasion,” the union’s leaders
said. ​“All of this violates international law, which the Israeli
government has done with impunity for decades and with the material
and political support of the U.S.”

It is partly because of many U.S. labor leaders’ unflinching support
for Israel that many rank-and-file unionists often feel compelled to
speak up for the rights of Palestinians. While some might argue that
Palestine is not a labor issue and that union members should not
weigh in, Brisack says such arguments would be ​“disingenuous.”

“Many unions actually have taken a stance on this by previous and
current statements that either ignore Palestinians or are
fundamentally opposed,” they explain. ​“I think boycott,
divestment and sanctions and other strategies like that are fantastic
tactics, but the labor movement is not only not particularly
interested in those, but is actively invested in Israel.”

Amira A. says, ​“I really hope more unions will realize this is
not theoretical, they are actively involved in the oppression, if not
genocide, we are witnessing. … We need to be making a call to
action for all labor unions to be divesting their money from Israel
state bonds, and we need to be very loud and bold about it, especially
at a time like this.”

Meanwhile, Google and Amazon Web Services workers with the
#NoTechForApartheid campaign [[link removed]]
have reiterated their calls
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for the two companies to cancel ​“Project Nimbus,” a $1.2
billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli military providing
advanced AI tools. Launched two years ago, the campaign has been
supported by the Alphabet Workers Union
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the Amazon Labor Union [[link removed]].

“We refuse to create tech tools for the Israeli military and
government to continue surveilling, segregating, and killing
Palestinians — tools that have powered the system of racial
domination and brutal military occupation that have led us to this
moment of violence,” the campaign said in a statement
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on Tuesday.

The statement continued, ​“As long as their tech continues to
power the Israeli apartheid government and military, Amazon and Google
are complicit in devastation, including the recent indiscriminate
bombings of residential buildings that have wiped out entire
Palestinian families and neighborhoods in Gaza. As workers, we refuse
to be complicit in ethnic cleansing.”

Asked how UE’s resolution is landing in light of recent events,
Dinkelaker says, ​“We know it’s going to come up as part of
discussions in our locals. That’s what all these policies are for.
This resolution helps provide context for how we as an organization
think about this.”

“We hope,” he adds, ​“this inspires people to have more
discussion around foreign policy, the role of the military, and how
conflicts tend to harm workers more than anyone else. We’re in the
working class, and we need to keep thinking about how to move in
a positive direction no matter what your nationality, race, or creed,
through economic justice.”

===

Jeff Schuhrke [[link removed]] is
a labor historian, educator, journalist and union activist who
teaches at the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies, SUNY
Empire State University in New York City. He has been an_ In These
Times _contributor since 2013. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSchuhrke.

Sarah Lazare [[link removed]] is the
editor of Workday Magazine and a contributing editor for _In These
Times_. She tweets at @sarahlazare.

===

* Union Voices on Israeli/Palestine; Labor and US Foreign Policy;
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