The American Labor Movement and the Establishment of Israel

A remarkably large number of nonstate actors played important and often unheralded roles in the creation of the state of Israel. The American labor movement was one such actor, assisting the Jewish community in Palestine to develop a political and social infrastructure in the “Yishuv” years before statehood, and then continuing to do so afterward. This movement, consisting of various labor federations, unions, and fraternal orders, aided the Zionist cause through a unique combination of financial and political resources. American labor organizations, especially those in the Jewish labor movement, helped lay the groundwork for the formation of a Jewish state by nurturing a labor movement in Palestine and influencing the US policymaking apparatus. They aided this process through land purchases for Jewish worker cooperatives in Palestine, the construction of trade schools and cultural centers there, and massive economic aid to the Histadrut, the General Federation of Jewish Workers in Palestine. American labor organizations also lobbied congressional allies, the White House, and local officials to generate policies assisting the Yishuv. They even pressured the British government during its mandate over Palestine and lobbied United Nations (UN) member states to vote for the partition of Palestine in 1947 and Israel’s recognition in 1948. Jewish labor leadership within the American garment industry played the key role in mobilizing the larger labor movement to support a Jewish state. Initially, however, most Jewish labor leaders did not support this effort because many descended from the “Bund” or General Jewish Workers’ Union of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, a Jewish socialist party founded in 1897. Like any other nationalist movement, Bundists viewed Zionism as a diversion of the labor movement’s fight against capitalism. Instead, Bundists emphasized Jewish culture as a vehicle to spread socialism to the Jewish masses. Yet, in time, two practical concerns developed that would move Bundists to embrace assistance to the Yishuv and, ultimately, to the state of Israel. First, finding Jewish refugees a haven from persecution and, second, a commitment to assisting a burgeoning trade union movement in Palestine.

Global Master Workman

This chapter analyzes the story of a transnational figure who hardly ever crossed a national border in his career as labor leader. Terence Powderly (1849-1924) was born in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, in 1849, to Irish immigrants. He entered the labor force as a switchman for the Delaware and Hudson railroad at the age of 13, as the Civil War raged across the United States, and became a machinists’ apprentice at the age of 17. He was marked out very early as a rising star in the American labor movement, rising quickly in the Machinist and Blacksmith’s Union after joining it in 1871. In 1874, a year after the Panic of ’73 brought economic depression to the United States and forced Powderly west to find work, he joined a relatively new, secret union that he would be associated with for the rest of his life: The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor.