Breaking Ties With the Israeli Histadrut (Michael Letwin’s Presentation)

Hello friends and comrades, it’s an honor to be here with all of you today. 

Sherena, Monadel, Claudio, and Lizbeth have laid out quite clearly how and why Palestinian trade union bodies have called on rank-and-file workers and union bodies around the world to boycott the Israeli “labor” federation known as the Histadrut. This was most recently reaffirmed on May Day 2025, as follows: “We, the undersigned Palestinian trade unions, call on workers and unions around the world to escalate their support for our struggle to end the genocide and dismantle Israel’s colonial apartheid regime by . . . . Cutting all ties with the Histadrut and expelling it from all international fora.” 

In this context, the most fundamental labor principle—an injury to one is an injury to all—means that an injury to *Palestine* is an injury to all. By the same token, the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is a picket line. And as rank-and-file workers and union members know, we never cross a picket line—we walk picket lines. Especially when they are picket lines against the ongoing settler-colonial Nakba inflicted on Palestinians since, and even before, 1948. 

As you’ve heard today, the Histadrut is no minor player in the Zionist genocidal project. The photo of a Histadrut leader writing a message on missiles dropped in Gaza says it all. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, so let’s now sum up the case against the Histadrut, which has used its false image as a “progressive” institution to spearhead—and whitewash—racism, apartheid, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, and genocide against the Palestinian people since the 1920s. While we could not even touch on all of these issues here, this indictment of the Histadrut includes:

• From its founding in 1920, its alliance with Western imperialism, and attacks on workers’ struggles, including the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917.
• Its “Conquest of land” and “conquest of labor” campaigns in the 1920s and 1930s to make way for the Zionist state by evicting Arab peasants from the land and boycotting Arab labor and products.
• When this provoked the 1936 a six-month general strike, the longest in world history, it supplied Jewish labor to replace striking Palestinian railway and port workers, and then helped the British terrorize the Arab population and finally crush the Arab Revolt in 1939, but only after 20,000 Palestinian casualties and many others jailed or deported.
• At the same time, the Histadrut collaborated with the Nazis to bring more Zionist settlers to Palestine, while blocking Jewish flight from Nazi extermination to anywhere other than Palestine.
• Its role in terrorizing and ethnic cleansing of at least eighty percent of the indigenous Palestinian population subsequent to the Nakba of 1947-1948. 
• Its leadership’s command of the new Israeli state and the “Israeli Defense Force,” in which it has played a key role in continuing—and legitimizing—ethnic cleansing and apartheid against the Palestinians. 
• Its conduit for CIA and Mossad participation in colonial wars in Africa, and its cooperation with the AFL-CIO and CIA in El Salvador.
• Its near monopoly over Israeli trade—including weaponry—with apartheid South Africa.
• Its support for each and every Israeli war and occupation.
• Its ongoing segregation, exclusion, and/or exploitation of Palestinian workers in both the 1967 and 1948 areas, including reprisals against Palestinian workers in Israel who participated in Land Day in 1976, when the Labor Zionist government shot and killed six Palestinian strikers.
• Its ongoing role in opposing the BDS movement—or to any other resistance to Israeli genocide.

For all these reasons—and much more—labor bodies in South Africa, the UK, Ireland, Canada, Norway, and elsewhere have honored the BDS picket line by severing ties with the Histadrut. But virtually no US labor body has done the same. So the first question is: Why not?

The short answer is that US labor officials’ adamant Zionism has reflected—on the right—an affinity with settler-colonialism, imperialism, anticommunism, and racism against workers of color in the United States. Meanwhile, labor leaders on the left echoed Stalin’s indispensable military and political support for the Nakba and establishment of the Israeli state. Thus, union leaders across the political spectrum have a long history of supporting Israeli wars, in part through buying huge quantities of Israel Bonds.

Since the end of World War II, this Labor Zionist consensus in US labor officialdom has been maintained largely by the Histadrut’s US mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee. While similarly painting itself as progressive, the JLC has a long history of promoting Israel, US wars of empire, and domestic racism—including the 1968 New York City teachers strike against community control of schools and backlash against affirmative action. Led today by the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union President Stuart Appelbaum, the JLC has mobilized top US union officials to attack the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. 

So how do we change all that? First, by reclaiming and building on the long history of U.S. rank-and-file labor anti-Zionism dating to the late 1960s. In January 1969, the Detroit-based League of Revolutionary Black Workers championed the Palestinian struggle as part of worldwide resistance to racism and colonialism. In 1973, three thousand Arab autoworkers in Detroit led a wildcat strike to protest the United Auto Workers Local 600’s purchase of $300,000 in Israel bonds, and they led the protest against B’nai B’rith’s “Humanitarian Award” for UAW President Leonard Woodcock. 

Toward that end, in 2004, Labor for Palestine was founded to promote respect for the BDS picket line. During the intensified Israeli attacks on Gaza in 2010 and 2014, ILWU Locals 10 and 34 in Oakland refused to unload ships from ZIM, Israel’s leading maritime shipping company. Soon after, UAW Local 2865 graduate students at the University of California (recently renamed UAW 4811), the United Electrical Workers (UE), and a small number of other labor bodies adopted pro-BDS statements, often with vocal support from anti-Zionist Jewish members.

Following renewed appeals from Palestinian unions in 2021, solidarity statements were issued by additional labor bodies. Meanwhile, Block the Boat, a community-labor alliance first launched in 2014 by the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), along with other campaigners, successfully prevented the Israeli ship Volans from docking anywhere on the West Coast, inspiring Block the Boat campaigns in other US and Canadian ports.

In the immediate wake of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza that sharply escalated on October 7, 2023, most labor officials still remained silent—or worse. But that same ongoing genocide, combined with mushrooming rank-and-file activism, together with the Black Lives, immigrant rights, and other movements of recent years, has produced unprecedented labor outcry against the carnage. Once again, the boss—in this case the Zionist entity—has been the best organizer of resistance.

Some of this resistance has come from above, including the seven major unions that have called  for a ceasefire and arms embargo against Israel. This shift from the labor officialdom’s implacable Zionism has encouraged a growing number of labor bodies to speak out against Israeli genocide. However, even these unions have failed to acknowledge the Palestinian trade union picket line—including its call to sever ties with the Histadrut—or to take any concrete steps to divest unions and employee pension funds from Israel Bonds, or to stop the research, manufacture, and transport to US weapons, much of it produced by in union shops, to Israel. 

In the face of relentless U.S.-backed Israeli genocide, that’s not OK. Which is why Palestinian trade unionists recently said: “We, in the General Federation of Trade Unions in Gaza, address this call to you on the eve of International Workers’ Day, affirming that your struggle for workers’ rights in the United States is inseparable from our struggle against occupation and colonialism. True labor solidarity is demonstrated through actions, not just words, and we count on your awareness and determination to take concrete steps to end this tragedy.” 

That’s why we have the Labor for Palestine National Network, founded in January 2024: to organize workers’ unique rank-and-file power from below—in our unions, communities, and workplaces—to actually shut down Israeli genocide and settler-colonialism, through resistance to the bipartisan re-escalation of Israeli genocide in Palestine, and to Trump’s parallel blitzkrieg of repression and destruction at home, not only against Palestine solidarity activists, but against all workers, unions, students, immigrants, people of color, women, LGBTQ+, social services, education, science, free speech, and humanity itself. 

As part of that resistance, we invite both union members and as-yet un-unionized workers to:

1. Learn more about the Histadrut and Labor Zionism by visiting laborforpalestine.net, Steve Zeltzer’s laborvideo channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ @laborvideo, and Jeff Schuhrke’s upcoming book, No Neutrals There: US Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine, which comes out this October 28: https://x.com/JeffSchuhrke/status/1920148166134977023
2. Use L4PNN’s forthcoming model resolution, which calls for union and other bodies to support the Palestinian trade union BDS picket line, including the call to sever ties with the Histadrut.
3. Join us in the Labor for Palestine National Network, with 53 member orgs and counting: https://laborforpalestine.net/labor-for-palestine-national-network-l4pnn-member-groups/