Unions Demanding an End to Israel Military Aid Is a Welcome Escalation

As the bombing, sniping, targeted drone killings, nonstop displacement, and starvation campaign dragged on into 2024, the White House became aware it had a perception problem on its hands. Biden, a self identified committed ​“Zionist,” would not stop backing Israel regardless of how many war crimes or global condemnations it racked up, or how much it fractured his coalition and undermined his own re-election campaign. So, the White House viewed what was increasingly called a genocide, as a PR problem to manage, not a tragedy and moral crisis to be ended. The United States staged empty PR stunts, circumventing a blockade that the U.S. government itself supports, with a now defunct ​“humanitarian pier,” and airdropping in aid — an inefficient, token effort that was not only rejected by aid groups, but, in some cases, killed Palestinians. 

Then the White House decided to embrace a ​“ceasefire” by simply redefining the term to mean something else entirely. As already laid out, the term had a widely accepted meaning that Israel must end its current military campaign and withdraw from Gaza, which is why the U.S. State Department, at first, issued a memo banning their staff from using the word ​“ceasefire” and related terms. But the protests escalated, the success of the Uncommitted movement in the Democratic primary embarrassed the president, and the horrors continued to flood the public’s social media timelines. So the White House switched tacks, embracing the term ​“ceasefire” on the eve of the Michigan primary, by simply re-defining it to mean something else than how it had broadly been interpreted.

Now the term would refer to two things: (1) what used to be called a ​“temporary pause,”(like the one last November) where hostages could be exchanged between Israel and Hamas but Israel explicitly insists that after such an exchange they would continue their war to ​“eliminate Hamas” for months, if not years. And (2) a ceasefire was a demand that Hamas and other militant groups surrender. Traditionally — not only in this context but all others — demanding the other side simply give up, hand over their weapons and go into exile (e.g. insisting on winning a war) isn’t what a ​“ceasefire” is. There was a brief flicker of hope immediately after Biden’s May 31 speech where the president used a new term, calling for an ​“end to the war.” But follow-up statements by White House officials made clear that what the president meant was that this would only happen in the event Hamas surrendered or was militarily defeated, despite Secretary of State Anthony Blinken admitting behind closed doors that such an outcomewas impossible.

None of this made any sense or was, at all, in the spirit of ​“ending the war.” It was clear the White House was simply reaffirming the position that the war would only end after Israel was unequivocally victorious, which isn’t a ​“ceasefire” but, instead, a reaffirmation that the bombing and killing won’t stop until Palestinian fighters capitulate. This PR pivot, however, was remarkably successfully, taking the wind out of the sails of protests seeking to end the horrors in Gaza while reframing the United States not as a patron of the the country behind the vast majority of the killing, but a neutral peace broker, a powerless bystander trying to bring Hamas and Israel to the table to hash out an evasive ​“ceasefire deal.” In reality, such a deal remained elusive because Israel, like the United States, would simply reiterate their demand that the other side surrender. 

This is why the shift from calling for a ​“ceasefire” to demands that the United States cut off military aid from mainstream labor unions is both overdue and refreshing. Taking their cue from Palestinian-American activists and other anti-genocide protestors, labor groups are making an unequivocal moral demand to cut off Israel’s war machine, making it clear that Biden’s delay tactics and rhetorical tricks won’t work indefinitely. UE, especially, deserves credit here. Their elected leadership was putting forward this demand on October 13, and was well positioned to do so because of its longstanding strength on the issue of Palestinian rights. The union has supported the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel since 2015, and passed a resolution for a pro-worker foreign policy on September 21, 2023 that included a call to ​“end all military aid to Israel.”

Palestinian deaths have spiked in the past few weeks as Israel uses indiscriminate killing as leverage in the so-called ​“ceasefire negotiations” and the urgency to end U.S. support for these on-going war crimes is greater than ever. Netanyahu’s vulgar speech in front of Congress on Wednesday, and the protests of it, show that this is not an issue that will simply go away by using the right buzzwords.

In addition to keeping heat on the White House, pressure must now be put on the new presumptive Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. There’s debate about whether labor ought to have taken the tact Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) did of withholding support for Harris until assurances were given she would work to actually end the ​“war.” Some leading unions have withheld support, including UE and UAW, the latter, reportedly, in part due to Gaza policy. Several major unions—SEIU, NEA, AFT, CWA, and the United Steelworkers (USW), alongside the labor federation, the AFL-CIO — joined the rush to back Harris in the days after Biden’s withdrawal. 

Team Harris, for their part, has been ambiguous about what her Gaza policy would be. One Wall Street Journal report detailed some ways she would break from the current president, but the language used, and nominal commitments, are equally slippery as those that have come from the White House. The Uncommitted National Movement says it is determined to press the issue until Harris takes ​“a clear stance against weapons for Israel’s war and occupation against Palestinians.” Now, a growing consensus may be forming around the demand for, as the Uncommitted movement puts it, ​“not another bomb.”

This pressure campaign will take on new life when the Democratic National Convention kicks off in Chicago in late August. Labor’s clear stance could potentially serve an essential function of making mainstream what was once a radical demand: ending military aid to Israel. No longer can those who claim to be of the Left, or on the Left, simply utter the ​“ceasefire” shibboleth and call it a day, doubly so now that the White House has twisted the term beyond all comprehension. Desperate situations call for escalatory tactics. Mainstream labor unions have met the moment. The question now is: will Vice President Kamala Harris?