Jewish Working Class & Labor Opposition to Zionism

One of the US Labor Movement’s finest hours was its years of campaigning as part of an international boycott movement against apartheid in South Africa and in solidarity with South African working families who labored in near slave conditions. South Africans have said that apartheid in Gaza is worse than in South Africa, if only because the aim is clearly extermination.

Despite all of this, U.S. labor officialdom -- often without the knowledge or consent of union members -- remains a leading accomplice of Israeli apartheid. In July 2007, Stuart Appelbaum of the Jewish Labor Committee, a Histadrut spokesman, enlisted top officials of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to condemn British union support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.

As historic victims of state-sponsored discrimination and violence, Jews have long stood with the oppressed, including the labor, civil rights and anti-apartheid movements. Zionism betrays this history. Historically, the Zionist movement countered and undermined the Jewish working class struggle in Eastern Europe as part of a broader class struggle. Zionists collaborated with the Nazis in rounding up working class Jews in Eastern Europe in exchange for transport of Zionist leaders and support for the building of the State of Israel. The Zionist movement also undermined the boycott of the Nazis organized by the Jewish working class. Anti-Zionist Jewish labor activists challenge the collusion of US labor with the State of Israel as part of the continuity of this struggle and against the betrayal of Zionism of the Palestinian and Jewish working class, historically and currently.