No Neutrals There

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By Jeff Schuhrke
Haymarket Books

US trade unionists are often told to keep quiet and remain neutral on Palestine because “Palestine has nothing to do with unions” and “weighing in” only distracts from struggles for better working conditions.

No Neutrals There makes a timely and critical intervention against that pervasive sentiment by recounting the history of the US labor movement’s century-long involvement in the struggle for Palestine. Scholar Jeff Schuhrke convincingly demonstrates that unions in the United States have never been silent or neutral on the question of Palestine. In fact, they have played a key role—in the initial Zionist colonization of Palestine, the foundation of the Israeli state in 1948, supporting US foreign policy commitments to Israel, and the ongoing suppression of the Palestinian liberation movement.

In his compelling telling of this history, Schuhrke conclusively shows that US unions helped build and maintain the state of Israel, and also shines a light on important exceptions to this rule: instances of US labor solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle that point the way forward for today’s labor movement.

“No Neutrals There tells the shameful story of how U.S. labor leaders supported and helped fund the century-long Zionist project of colonization, occupation, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.  But it is also a history of labor anti-Zionism, Palestinian labor politics, and the promise of working-class internationalism.  There are no neutrals under colonialism and genocide, just as there are no neutrals in the class struggle.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression

“Historian Jeff Schuhrke—author of the “go-to” book on US labor and foreign policy during the Cold War—explains why the AFL-CIO and other US unions’ elected leaders have long provided unquestioning support for Israel. This despite the fact that the global working-class watches in horror as millions of Palestinians starve and believes they deserve what all humans want: peace, equal rights, and justice. To understand the contradiction at the heart of US foreign policy, read Schuhrke’s book.”—Peter Cole, co-editor of Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW

“Jeff Schuhrke repudiates the Zionism of AFL-CIO ‘leaders,’ and argues that workers should support Palestinian efforts for liberation…This book is excellent, deserves wide attention, and this work, plus his Blue-Collar Empire, has put him in the top rank of today’s labor historians.”—Kim Scipes, editor of Building Global Labor Solidarity in a Time of Accelerating Globalization