Ashistoric victims of state-sponsored discrimination and violence, Jews have longstood with the oppressed, including the labor, civil rights and anti-apartheidmovements. Many of us in the Labor Movement today are the descendants ofparents and grandparents who considered the struggles of working families theirlife's work as many of us still do.  Inthat spirit, the Labor Network of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network(IJAN) wholeheartedly supports the growing movement for Boycott, Divestment andSanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid.

TheBDS campaign was initiated by Palestinian civil society, including its entirelabor movement. It calls for an end to Israeli military occupation andcolonization of historic Palestine, the right of Palestinian refugees to returnto the land from which they have been ethnically cleansed since the Nakba of1947-1948, and equal rights for all throughout historic Palestine.

Thiscampaign has been endorsed by numerous labor bodies, including the Congress ofSouth African Trade Unions (COSATU), UNISON (UK), Transport and GeneralWorkers' Union (UK), Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Canadian Union of PublicEmployees-Ontario, six Norwegian trade unions, Irish Congress of Trade Unions,Scottish Trades Union Congress, and Intersindical Alternativa de Catallunya(Spain).

The campaign gainedstill greater urgency after the Gaza pogrom launched by Israel on December 27,which left 1,400 dead and 5,000 wounded; nearly all were civilians, hundreds ofthem children. Gaza remains under Israeli siege.

Oneof the Labor Movement's finest hours was its years of campaigning as part of aninternational boycott movement against apartheid in South Africa and insolidarity with South African working families who labored in near slaveconditions.  For those of us who areJewish, fighting against apartheid was a continuation of a long Jewishtradition of fighting against exploitation and oppression. South Africans havesaid that apartheid in Gaza is worse than in South Africa, if only because theaim is clearly extermination, something else with our history we easilyrecognize.

It is notsurprising that the strongest labor solidarity has come from the South AfricanTransport and Allied Workers Union in Durban, which refused to handle Israelicargo. The Western Australia Branch of the Maritime Union of Australia hasjoined them. And most recently, the Trade Union Congress, the governing UnionFederation in Britain has endorsed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctionscampaign.

COSATU,in turn, has "call[ed] on other workers and unions to follow suit and to do allthat is necessary to ensure that they boycott all goods to and from Israeluntil Palestine is free."  They have notforgotten nor should any of us that Israel was apartheid South Africa's

Despiteall of this, U.S. labor officialdom -- often without the knowledge or consentof union members -- remains a leading accomplice of Israeli apartheid.

For more than sixtyyears, it has closely collaborated with the Histadrut, the Zionist laborfederation that has spearheaded - and whitewashed -  apartheid,dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians since the 1920s. Indeedthe Histadrut (as both employer and union) produced weapons for sale to the whiteSouth African government for use against Black working families, while at homeit either refused to allow Arab workers to join or shunted them off into theirown segregated section of the union.

Today, U.S. laborleaders have at least $5 billion of union pension funds and retirement plans investedin State of Israel Bonds.

In April 2002,while Israel butchered Palestinian refugees at Jenin in the West Bank, AFL-CIOPresident John Sweeney was a featured speaker at a belligerent "NationalSolidarity Rally for Israel."  In July2007, Stuart Appelbaum of the Jewish Labor Committee, a Histadrut spokesman,enlisted top officials of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to condemn Britishunion support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.

In so doing, U.S. labor bodies support:

* The murderous Israeli war on and siege ofGaza.

* Exploitation of undocumented workers, thevast majority people of color -- something we oppose and call racist at home.

* State-sponsored pogroms againstPalestinians - something we oppose and call racist at home.

* Residential, workplace and trade union segregationof workers by ethnicity and religion - something we oppose and call racist athome.

* The infamous apartheid wall, that separatesPalestinians from each other and from their means of sustenance - something weoppose and call racist at home.

* Wage differentials between Jewish andArab workers - something we oppose and call racist at home.

*A state and an ideology backed by the most right-wing, racist, sexist anti-laborpolitical and military leaders both in "Israel" and at home.

Thistreacherous role echoes U.S. military and financial support, without which theZionist system could not exist.

As with the wars inIraq and Afghanistan, workers in the United States pay a staggering human andfinancial price, including a deepening economic crisis, for U.S.-Israeli warand occupation.

Upholdingour Jewish heritage of fighting oppression, and reaffirming the principle oflabor solidarity, we in IJAN-Labor call on labor bodies everywhere to join us indemanding an immediate and total:

1. Divest from State of Israel Bonds.
2. Boycott Israeli goods, and support workers' refusal to handle Israeli cargo.
3. Break ties with the Histadrut (Israeli Federation of Labor, a founding party of the State of Israel and part of the current Israeli government)

IJAN-Atlanta members are involved in the Movement to EndIsraeli Apartheid-Georgia (www.meia-g.net).   MEIA-Gis currently leading a BDS campaign calling on Georgia State University to endthe Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE), a program currentlyhoused at GSU.   The purpose of the program is to facilitatetraining exchanges between Georgia police departments and others around theworld, primarily Israel.  IJAN-Atlantajoins MEIA-G is calling on GSU to divest from Israel by first breaking its tieswith GILEE!

In April, IJAN-Atlanta worked with MEIA-G and others insponsoring DAM, a Palestinian hip-hop group. DAM spoke at Kennesaw State University after a screening of the film,Slingshot Hip Hop, and then performed the next day at a local venue in Atlantawhere over 200 people packed the place!