Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian General Strike
Thursday, October 01, 2009
In
the long tradition of Jewish working class involvement in and support
for liberation struggles, IJAN-Labor stands in solidarity with the High
Follow-up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel, the National
Committee of Local Authorities, and all parties, movements and
institutions of Palestinian civil society in Israel, who have called a
general strike for today, October 1, 2009.
This strike marks the ninth anniversary of the Jerusalem
and Al Aqsa Day in October 2000 when Israeli authorities massacred 13
Palestinian protesters. The killers have never been brought to justice.
IJAN-Labor also welcomes the Trades Union Congress (U.K.) resolution of 17 September, which endorses the growing movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid, and calls for reconsideration of the TUC's relationship with the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation whose latest crime was to support Israel's attacks on Gaza.
In the United States, despite growing support from labor organizations and populations across the globe, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win fail to recognize what their British counterpart has now acknowledged: that Israel is a state built on defeating the aspirations and solidarity of working families not only in Israel but internationally.
Often without the knowledge or consent of union members, US Labor officialdom remains a leading accomplice of Israeli apartheid and the Zionist colonialism of which it is part. For more than sixty years, it has closely collaborated with the Histadrut, which has spearheaded — and whitewashed — apartheid, dispossession, ethnic cleansing and exploitation of the Palestinians since the 1920s.