Passed by UPTE CWA 9119 SystemWide Eboard on 6/2/2021
UPTE Resolution in Solidarity with Palestine
Whereas, Israel receives $2,961.04 million in foreign aid from the US to Israel which translates to $367 aid per individual. Nearly all the US bilateral aid given to Israel is military assistance.
Whereas in September 2016, representatives of the two governments assented to a Memorandum of understanding pertaining to military aid to be given from the fiscal year 2019 to the fiscal year 2028. The agreement requires the US to allocate $38 billion to Israel in military aid. It is the single largest pledge made by the US in history.
Whereas, the conflict is a one-sided assault on defenseless Palestinian citizens by overwhelming military force resulting in an obscene difference in the rate at which people are being killed. Tens killed on one side, hundreds killed on the other.
Whereas Israel has targeted and destroyed hospitals, more than 1300 housing units and news agencies, killing women and children in targeted airstrikes, in violation of international law.
Whereas this conflict would be impossible without the United States’ weapons and support, creating humanitarian catastrophes acknowledged time and again by international observers.
Whereas the Palestinian people face restrictions to residency rights, citizenship, civil rights, freedom of movement, allocation of land and resources, access to water, electricity, granting of building permits, and other services (source).
Whereas, Israel has turned Gaza into an open air prison by controlling everything and everyone that is allowed to come in and out of the area including by air and by sea. The population of Gaza Strip is 50 percent children, 97% of the water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption. And the Gaza Strip was said to be unlivable by 2020 by the United Nations.
Whereas, our current social and economic reforms, achieved by labor struggle, are on the chopping block as our unions are under attack under the premise of austerity while our government sends 10 million dollars a day to support the Israeli military apparatus.
Whereas, the AFL-CIO has supported the Israeli state by purchasing bonds from Israel.
Therefore, Be It Resolved, that UPTE CWA 9119 demands that the AFL-CIO divest from the Israeli state in terms of financial support in the form of bonds and other political support.
Be it Further Resolved, that UPTE CWA 9119 expresses its solidarity with the Palestinian’s call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), inspired by the movement that helped end apartheid in South Africa; and
Be it Further Resolved, that UPTE CWA 9119 will call on labor bodies to divest from Israel bonds, and cut ties with the Histadrut, Israel’s racist labor federation that aggressively discriminates against Arab workers; and
Be it Further Resolved, that UPTE CWA 9119 asks AFL-CIO and labor officials to make public the exact amount of money it spends using union member’s pension funds in State of Israel Bonds; and
Be it Further Resolved, that UPTE CWA 9119 will stand in solidarity with dockworkers in Italy, South Africa, India, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, the US west coast, and elsewhere, who refuse to handle military equipment and weapons or any other cargo destined for Israel; and
Be it Further Resolved that UPTE support the CWA in moving to stand with the demands of Palestinian labor for full human rights recognized for all people under the UN agreements.
Pressing elected officials in its networks to lobby the U.S. government to end all aid to Israel until Israel complies with international law as it relates to the treatment of occupied territories and Arab citizens and dismantles all forms of Jewish supremacy and “all forms of systematic domination and oppression that privilege Jewish Israelis and systematically repress Palestinians, and end the persecution of Palestinians.”
Sources
A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid (2021): https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid
A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution (2021): https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution
US Labor Leaders Should Stand With Palestine (2021): https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/05/us-labor-leaders-palestine-israel-bonds-trade-unions
Blacklisted Academic Norman Finkelstein on Gaza, “The World’s Largest Concentration Camp”: https://theintercept.com/2018/05/20/norman-finkelstein-gaza-iran-israel-jerusalem-embassy/
