Top trade union officials today declared continuing full support for the State of Israel “come what may” and urged that President Ford’s “reassessment” of U.S. Middle East policy be extended to include the Soviet-American detente.
“Come what may–Geneva or a new shuttle on the Potomac, reassessment or no–I am sure the Israelis will hang on with great determination to the idea that they have a right to live as a free people,” declared AFL-CIO President George Meany. “And insofar as I can speak for American labor, Histadrut and the people of Israel will have the help and cooperation of America’s workers the same as they have had since 1920.”
Earlier in his address, Meany said that Israel is unique” in that “it is the only nation I know that is the creation of a free trade union –the Histadrut, or Israeli Federation of Labor –formed more than fifty years ago by David Ben Gurion.” Meany devoted his half-hour address at a luncheon of the AFL-CIO’s Maritime Trades Department to foreign policy, criticizing the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy, urging support of Israel, and attacking Soviet performance under detente. He received a standing ovation from the approximately 400 present.
Paul Hall, president of the Seafarers International Union, declared that “the oil companies should buckle down because we’re going to give you a bad, bad time” and Thomas W. Gleason, president of the International Long-shoremens Union, said that should another Arab boycott take place the union will “boycott every Russian and Soviet satellite ship and stop shipment of everything to them.”
SIGNIFICANT TIMING OF STATEMENTS
The speeches by the labor leaders were seer as significantly timed since President Ford addresses a joint session of Congress Thursday night on foreign policy.
Speaking of detente, Meany said that perhaps the most-disastrous policy sold to the American people” by Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and former President Nixon “was this thing called detente” and that “nowhere in the world is the policy of detente exposed as a fraud to any greater degree than in the Middle East.”
“When we talk of intransigence or lack of flexibility on the part of the Israelis, we should do so in the light of Israel’s history,” Meany said. “We should keep in mind the one over-riding desire of the Israelis–the determination to retain their sovereignty–in other words, their simple determination to stay-alive–to resist extermination. In return for the right to live, the Israelis. I am sure, are willing today–have been willing all along–to make real, meaningful concessions.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
