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Israeli leftists in New York chart their own path with calls for a ceasefire

(New York Jewish Week) — A crowd of activists gathered in the bitter cold in Columbus Circle. To the beat of a snare drum, they chanted in Hebrew and English for a ceasefire and the return of Israeli hostages
“Safety is what peace delivers, war never has a winner,” around 100 demonstrators chanted at the rally earlier this month. Some protesters carried signs that read, “Israelis say there is no military solution” and “Not one more drop of blood.”
The protesters, loosely organized as the Anti-Occupation Bloc, are Israeli Jews who came together a year ago to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to overhaul Israel’s judiciary. After the deadly Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 and weeks of bloody fighting, members pivoted to create a distinctly left-wing Israeli response to the war: a deep distrust of Netanyahu, an empathy for those suffering on both sides, a belief in coexistence and the conviction that the West Bank occupation is detrimental to both Israelis and Palestinians.
“We’re arguing that pro-Palestine and pro-Israel is one and the same. [We] Israelis are not benefiting from living in eternal war,” said Tamar Glezerman, an activist with the group.
“I myself have not benefited from that, I’ve only lost,” said Glezerman, a filmmaker whose aunt was killed on Oct. 7 at Kibbutz Be’eri.
The activists say they do not feel aligned with other protest groups in the city, who on one side they consider unsympathetic to Israelis, and on the other, uncaring toward Palestinians.
They advocate for both Israelis and Palestinians in the conflict, even as they work to process the Oct. 7 attack and its aftermath themselves.
The goal of their events is to show “there’s pain on both sides, that we don’t try to compare,” said activist Tzlil Rubinstein. “This is not a competition of who suffers more.”
Left-wing Israelis protest in support of a Gaza ceasefire and the release of Hamas hostages, in midtown Manhattan, Dec. 20, 2023. (Luke Tress)
The group started a year ago, after efforts by Israel’s right-wing and religious ruling coaliton’s plans to weaken Israel’s judiciary set off sustained, massive protests in Israel. The leftist Israelis joined weekly rallies in Washington Square Park, but did not feel completely aligned with other protesters’ pro-Israel patriotism. The early rallies were led by activists from Israel’s left, but were focused on the judicial overhaul and democratic rights, and not on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
“It was just very awkward for us to stand in demonstrations in the center of New York full of Israeli flags, very, very Zionist. It’s just not our politics,” said Maya Herman, a PhD student in sociology at the New School and a co-founder of the Anti-Occupation Bloc.
“It’s not that we’re against the State of Israel, but we don’t associate with that,” she said, arguing that Israel is not a “clear-cut case of liberal democracy” due to the control it asserts over West Bank Palestinians.
Members of the leftist faction decided to organize a protest group of their own. They set up a WhatsApp group called “Israelis in New York – the radical group,” and added 15 acquaintances, Herman said. The group slowly grew as members enlisted friends and met like-minded activists at events, but it remained part of the larger pro-democracy protest movement.
“We never tried to make our own demonstrations. The point was to be part of the mainstream movement and make sure the mainstream thought about the radical left side,” Herman said.
That approach changed ahead of New York City’s annual Celebrate Israel Parade, which in June drew a contingent of prominent Israeli government ministers, including Knesset member Simcha Rothman, a leading force in the judicial overhaul legislation. Rather than march in a parade that included government ministers and right-wing American groups, including pro-settlement organizations, the “radical group” decided to hold their first separate demonstrations, which drew between 100 and 150 participants, Herman said. The activists heckled Rothman and other ministers from the sidelines of the parade with shouts of “Shame” in Hebrew and held a rally near the hotel where Netanyahu was staying for the U.N. General Assembly.
Left-wing Israelis protest against visiting Israeli government ministers during New York’s annual Celebrate Israel Parade, in midtown Manhattan, June 4, 2023. The signs read “shame” in Hebrew. (Luke Tress)
“It was a boost of adrenaline for the group,” said Herman, stressing that the activists still backed the larger pro-democracy protest movement and its organizers. “That moment in June really made the group much bigger and a group that is doing things by itself.”
Around the same time, the activists decided to call themselves the Anti-Occupation Bloc, affiliating with a group of the same name in Israel. As the bloc came together, members became friends outside of demonstrations, sometimes going out for drinks or having picnics around the events.
“It’s people who actually are Israelis in their identity, that they can hate it or love it, but that’s part of who they are,” Herman said. “I think that was something that was really missing — Israelis thinking left politics with other Israelis.”
Members of the group are generally politically active, but vary widely in their political views, age and the length of time they have been in New York. The core principles are non-violence and a focus on equal rights for all Israelis and Palestinians, even if opinions differ about how to achieve those aims, said Rubinstein. The group is informal, loosely organized and does not have a charter or official talking points. Rubinstein said the group’s members support Knesset parties ranging from the Arab-led factions to the center-left Labor.
The New York Anti-Occupation Bloc continued to coalesce ahead of Netanyahu’s visit to New York in September for the General Assembly and a meeting with President Joe Biden. The activists’ WhatsApp group grew to around 190 members during those events, and around 30 protesters turned out for some rallies, the last demonstrations before the Oct. 7 attack.
Left-wing Israelis protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to New York for the U.N. General Assembly, in midtown Manhattan, Sept. 19, 2023. (Luke Tress)
The enormous horror of the Hamas onslaught rocked the group along with the rest of the Jewish world. Some members of the bloc have friends or family members who were murdered or kidnapped; others became isolated from friends in New York who couldn’t or wouldn’t appreciate their pain. Herman was horrified by the images of destroyed communities in southern Israel that reminded her of the kibbutz in central Israel where she grew up. The activists had believed the occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza would lead to a disaster, but never envisioned the tragic dimensions of Oct. 7.
Protest activities halted, but the WhatsApp group buzzed with hundreds of messages a day, and kept drawing new members. Many of the activists were distraught and having a hard time getting through the day. “It’s a collective grief even if you’re not in Israel,” Herman said. The group became an emotional space where the activists could commiserate, start to process their shock and grief, and grapple with fundamental questions.
“We got to these really crazy moments of retrospective thinking,” Herman said. “Does it even matter to be political, to be activists, to do demonstrations? Can we change the reality?”
“It was a really deep existential crisis that is still bubbling beneath,” she said.
The war immediately put an end to the judicial overhaul legislation in Israel, and the protests against the process. The mainstream Israeli protest groups in Israel and the U.S. shifted their focus to supporting victims of the Hamas attacks, displaced Israelis, grieving families and the war effort, as the government floundered in its initial response.
As the shock of the attack wore off and the Anti-Occupation Bloc activists started to get back on their feet, they struggled to find a place among the array of protest groups taking to the streets around New York. Other Israeli protesters in the U.S. dedicated themselves to freeing the more than 200 Israelis held hostage by Hamas. The captives are also a priority for the Anti-Occupation Bloc, but the group wanted to push for a ceasefire. That ostensibly aligned them with far-left Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, but members of the Anti-Occupation Block felt these other leftist groups were unsympathetic to Israelis immediately after Oct. 7.
“We were just invisible to a lot of these groups when it all started on Oct. 7. A lot of these groups didn’t even mention what happened to Israelis,” Rubinstein said.
Herman said many leftist groups “immediately went to their regular spiel of Nakba [“disaster,” the Palestinian term for the founding of Israel] and occupation.”
“We were like, ‘We agree on all of those concepts and all of those historical facts,’ but we also think Oct. 7 was a different moment,” Herman said. “You have to understand what happened there was an insane terrorist attack on civilian society.”
Left-wing activists led by American Jewish rabbis rally in support of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on the first night of Hanukkah in Columbus Circle, New York City, Dec. 7, 2023. (Luke Tress)
“To attack women, children, and to mutilate and use sexual violence? What happened there is legitimized political resistance? Not according to us,” she said. “It was a conversation that we never had in the past.”
The Israeli activists also conceptualize the conflict differently than the American Jewish left, where contentious divides yawn between Zionist and anti-Zionist positions and other rhetorical fault lines. The framework is alien to most Israelis, who “don’t necessarily think in these concepts,” Rubinstein said.
“At this point, I don’t even know what people mean here when they say ‘Zionism,’” Glezerman said. The terms and rhetorical battles are “much more relevant to identity politics here and it’s not really a discourse that we need to take a part in,” she said. The activists do not use any flags at their protests.
Non-Israeli groups on both sides also seemed disconnected from the actual situation on the ground in Israel and Gaza, and did not include Israeli voices, the activists said.
“When American Jews are calling, ‘Not in our name,’ Israelis stand on the side and say, ‘Who says it’s in your name?’” Herman said. “The State of Israel now is really trying to protect its citizens. It’s probably not doing a good job of it, as always, but that’s the realpolitik.”
As for the pro-Palestinian protests that draw thousands to the streets of New York on a regular basis, the Israeli leftists reject them for condoning violence and atrocities against Israelis. The protest group leading most of the events, Within Our Lifetime, endorsed the Oct. 7 attacks and marches with banners that read, “By any means necessary.” Some anti-Zionist Jewish groups have joined or endorsed the events, such as student groups from the City University of New York. The Anti-Occupation Bloc activists are overwhelmingly opposed to joining the protests, despite their shared support for Palestinians.
“Do you think it’s ok to kill all those people in the name of national liberation?” Herman said. “This is your vision for the future? Do you even have a vision for the future?”
Pro-Palestinian protesters near Bryant Park following a high school student walkout in New York City, Nov. 9, 2023. Many Israeli leftists reject the large pro-Palestinian groups for condoning violence and atrocities against Israelis. (Luke Tress)
“You have so many things to say, all those words, like Israeli colonialism and settler violence and this and that, but no stakes in the game,” she said.
At the Columbus Circle rally, several hecklers in keffiyehs, the traditional Palestinian garment, shouted “Free Palestine” at the protesters, apparently identifying them as Israeli or pro-Israel supporters of the government. The Israeli demonstrators voiced their assent and responded with chants of “Ceasefire now.” The hecklers then switched to shouting “From the river to the sea” and “F–k Israel.”
The Anti-Occupation Bloc decided to hold another rally in early December at the Brooklyn Museum. The somber event was billed as a vigil for a ceasefire and release of hostages. The organizers said their demands also included humanitarian aid for Gaza, protection for West Bank Palestinians facing retribution from Jewish settlers and support for Arab citizens of Israel and activists on the ground. Glezerman said the different groups on all sides had omitted “parts of the narrative,” and that the Anti-Occupation Bloc was a “third alternative.”
The activists also said they have an opportunity to amplify the message in New York, where their leftist views are more widely accepted than in Israel, which has shifted toward the right in recent years and even more so since Oct. 7. Last month, Israeli police blocked a ceasefire rally in Tel Aviv, but later allowed the event after court intervention. Police in Israel have also detained social media commentators for backing the Palestinians, saying their posts could incite terrorism.
The leftists’ views, especially in calling for a ceasefire, remain unpopular both in Israel and among U.S. Jews. A poll released earlier this month found that 72% of American Jews approved of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks. Support for leftist parties in the Knesset has cratered in recent years, and has remained low since the war, according to recent polls. The dovish Meretz party did not win enough votes to secure Knesset representation in the last election. The bloc is also a small part of the tens of thousands of Israelis in New York, with around 270 members in its WhatsApp group today.
Israelis and supporters, outside the United Nations, rally in support of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas, Oct. 24, 2023. Many Israelis abroad rally around the hostages, but consider calls for a ceasefire premature. (Luke Tress)
Avital Shimshowitz, 54, an activist with the mainstream Israeli protest movement in New York, said she knows the Anti-Occupation Bloc protesters, and is “with the bloc in my heart.” But while she is also against the occupation, Shimshowitz has refrained from joining the group’s events because she believes they place too much blame on Israel for the current hostilities. She noted that the Anti-Occupation Bloc’s invitations for their events call for a ceasefire, the release of hostages and Netanyahu’s resignation, but don’t make demands on the Palestinian side.
“There’s no mention of Hamas, there’s no mention of any terror group, and for me, the terror group took our hostages and is also holding Palestinians hostage in Gaza,” said Shimshowitz, who protested against Netanyahu as part of the pro-democracy group UnXeptable and the Anti-Occupation Bloc before Oct. 7, and is also active in the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. “It points at Israel as the only player that can end this.”
Shimshowitz joined the Anti-Occupation Bloc for a protest in August after a settler killed a Palestinian and during the Celebrate Israel Parade, “but right now I don’t think that their message aligns with what needs to be done,” she said.
Beyond the immediate war, the Anti-Occupation Bloc activists are looking past a potential ceasefire toward a long-term solution to the conflict, even if the way forward is not yet clear. The repeated rounds of violence in recent decades were evidence, they said, that Israel’s approach was not working and new leadership was needed.
“We can’t continue doing this over and over again and expect something to change,” said Rubinstein, adding that most of the activists saw their future back in Israel. “We have to go back to the negotiating table to push for a solution, to be creative.”
The activists said that all sides need to accept that both Israelis and Palestinians are remaining on the land and will need to coexist. They also hope to enlist more American Jews in their movement, Herman said.
“I believe in a better future and it has to come with us demanding it,” she said.
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The post Israeli leftists in New York chart their own path with calls for a ceasefire appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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As Gaza War Continues, Hamas Calls for Global Protests While Israel Marks Breakthroughs in Medical Innovation

A pro-Hamas march in London, United Kingdom, Feb. 17, 2024. Photo: Chrissa Giannakoudi via Reuters Connect
As the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas calls for global protests amid stalled Gaza ceasefire talks, Israel has broken new ground despite the ongoing conflict, achieving a major medical breakthrough in synthetic human kidney development.
The contrast illustrates a stark contrast between the priorities of Hamas, an international designated terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, and Israel, the lone democracy in the Middle East that has long been a leader in tech and medical innovation.
On Wednesday, Hamas urged worldwide protests in support of Palestinians, calling on the international community “to denounce Israel’s genocidal war and starvation policy in Gaza.”
“We call for continuing and escalating the popular pressure in all cities and squares on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday … through rallies, demonstrations and sit-ins outside the embassies of the Israeli regime and its allies, particularly in the US,” the statement read.
The Palestinian terrorist group also called to expose what it described as “the terrorism of the Zio-Nazi occupation against defenseless civilians.”
Hamas’s latest move against Israel comes amid stalled indirect negotiations over a proposed 60-day ceasefire and hostage release deal, which collapsed last month after the group vowed it would not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established — rejecting a key Israeli demand to end the war in Gaza.
In its statement, Hamas demanded the opening of all border crossings to allow immediate aid into the war-torn enclave and urged a global condemnation of “the international community’s inaction on the Israeli crimes.”
Amid mounting international pressure to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israel announced new measures to facilitate the delivery of aid, including temporary pauses in fighting in certain areas and the creation of protected routes for aid convoys.
Israeli officials have previously accused Hamas of diverting aid for terrorist activities and selling supplies at inflated prices to civilians, while also blaming the United Nations and other foreign organizations for enabling this diversion.
Hamas’s statement also emphasized that the “global resistance movement must continue until Israeli aggression on Gaza ends and the siege on the coastal strip is lifted.”
Meanwhile, as Israel faces escalating hostilities and the heavy toll of war, the Jewish state continues to push the boundaries of innovation and resilience, achieving new medical breakthroughs while confronting ongoing challenges.
In a major medical breakthrough, scientists at Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University have successfully grown a synthetic 3D miniature human kidney in a lab using specialized stem cells derived from kidney tissue — one of the most promising advances in regenerative medicine.
Dr. Dror Harats, chairman of Sheba’s Research Authority, described this achievement as a reflection of Israel’s leading role in global medical innovation.
“Despite growing efforts to isolate Israel from international science, breakthroughs like this prove our impact is both lasting and essential,” he said.
In a landmark study, a team from Sheba’s Safra Children’s Hospital and Tel Aviv University’s Sagol Center for Regenerative Medicine created synthetic kidney organs that matured and remained stable for 34 weeks — the longest-lasting and most refined kidney organoids developed to date.
Nearly a decade ago, the research team became the first to successfully isolate human kidney tissue stem cells — the cells responsible for the organ’s development and growth.
Previous attempts to grow kidneys in a lab using general-purpose stem cells were short-lived, typically lasting only a few weeks and often producing unwanted cell types that compromised research accuracy.
However, this Israeli research team used stem cells taken directly from kidney tissue — cells that naturally develop into kidney parts — allowing them to create a much purer and more stable model with key features found in real kidneys.
This medical breakthrough could have far-reaching implications, redefining the current understanding of kidney diseases and advancing the development of innovative treatments.
Researchers believe the model could help assess how medications impact fetal kidneys during pregnancy and move science closer to repairing or replacing damaged kidney tissue with lab-grown cells.
The discovery came days after researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and international partners discovered a way to boost the immune system’s cancer-fighting ability by reprogramming how T cells, which are white blood cells critical to the immune system, produce energy.
The researchers explained in a study published in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications that disabling a protein known as Ant2 in T cells greatly enhances their effectiveness against tumors.
“By disabling Ant2, we triggered a complete shift in how T cells produce and use energy,” Prof. Michael Berger of Hebrew University’s Faculty of Medicine, who co-led the study with doctorate student Omri Yosef, told the Tazpit Press Service. “This reprogramming made them significantly better at recognizing and killing cancer cells.”
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Netherlands to Push EU to Suspend Israel Trade Deal but Won’t Recognize Palestinian State ‘At This Time’

Netherlands Foreign Affairs Minister Caspar Veldkamp addresses a press conference, in New Delhi on April 1, 2025. Photo: ANI Photo/Sanjay Sharma via Reuters Connect
The Netherlands is spearheading efforts to suspend the European Union-Israel trade agreement amid rising EU criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, while simultaneously refusing to recognize a Palestinian state, contrasting with other member states as international pressure mounts.
On Thursday, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp announced that the Netherlands will push the EU to suspend the trade component of the EU-Israel Association Agreement — a pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with the Jewish state.
This latest anti-Israel initiative follows a recent EU-commissioned report accusing Israel of committing “indiscriminate attacks … starvation … torture … [and] apartheid” against Palestinians in Gaza during its military campaign against Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.
Following calls from a majority of EU member states for a formal investigation, this report built on Belgium’s recent decision to review Israel’s compliance with the trade agreement, a process initiated by the Netherlands and led by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas.
According to the report, “there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations” under the 25-year-old EU-Israel Association Agreement.
While the document acknowledges the reality of violence by Hamas, it states that this issue lies outside its scope — failing to address the Palestinian terrorist group’s role in sparking the current war with its bloody rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israeli officials have slammed the report as factually incorrect and morally flawed, noting that Hamas embeds its military infrastructure within civilian targets and Israel’s army takes extensive precautions to try and avoid civilian casualties.
In a Dutch parliamentary debate on Gaza on Thursday, Veldkamp also announced that the government would not recognize a Palestinian state for now — a position that stands in sharp contrast to the recent moves by several other EU member states to extend recognition.
“The Netherlands is not planning to recognize a Palestinian state at this time,” the Dutch diplomat said.
“This war has ceased to be a just war and is now leading to the erosion of Israel’s own security and identity,” he continued.
This latest decision goes against the position of several EU member states, including France, which has committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood in September.
The United Kingdom has likewise indicated it will do so unless Israel acts to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and agrees to a ceasefire.
For its part, Germany said it was not planning to recognize a Palestinian state in the short term, and Italy argued that recognition must occur simultaneously with the recognition of Israel by the new entity.
Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Slovenia all recognized a Palestinian state last year.
Israel has been facing growing pressure from several EU member states seeking to undermine its defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
On Thursday, European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera strongly condemned Israel’s actions in the war-torn enclave, describing the situation as a “grave violation of human dignity.”
“What we are seeing is a concrete population being targeted, killed and condemned to starve to death,” Ribera told Politico. “If it is not genocide, it looks very much like the definition used to express its meaning.”
Until now, the European Commission has refrained from accusing Israel of genocide, but Ribera’s comments mark one of the strongest European condemnations since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
She also called on the EU to take decisive action by considering the suspension of its trade agreement with Israel and the implementation of sanctions, while emphasizing that such measures would require unanimous approval from all member states.
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Graduate Student Unions Promoting Antisemitism, Reform Group Says

Students listen to a speech at a protest encampment at Stanford University in Stanford, California US, on April 26, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
Higher-education-based unions controlled by United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) are rife with antisemitism and anti-Zionist discrimination, according to a new letter imploring the US Congress’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce to address the matter.
“Tracing its roots to communism in the 1930s, the UE is a radical, pro-Hamas labor union that has a long history of antisemitism,” the National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), one of the US’s leading labor reform groups, wrote on July 30 in a message obtained by The Algemeiner. “The UE openly supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is designed to cripple and destroy Israel economically. Today, the UE furthers its antisemitic agenda by unionizing graduate students on college campuses and using its exclusive representation powers to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. The hostile environment includes demanding compulsory dues to fund the UE’s abhorrent activities.”
NRTW went on to describe a litany of alleged injustices to which UE members subject Jewish student-employees in the US’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Cornell University. At MIT, the letter said, “union officers” aided a riotous group which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings. UE members at Stanford University, meanwhile, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the BDS movement. And Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”
The situation requires federal oversight and intervention, NRTW said, including Congress’s possibly clarifying that student-employees are not traditional employees and are therefore afforded protections under sections of the Civil Rights Act which apply to the campus.
“These continuing patterns of antisemitism are illegal, immoral, and must be stopped,” the letter continued. “We encourage you to do all that is in your power to investigate and help bring an end to the UE and its affiliates’ nonstop harassment and intimidation of Jewish students … The Trump administration can also use tools available to it under Title VI and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act against colleges who work with unions to create a hostile environment for Jewish students.”
July’s letter is not the first time NRTW has publicized alleged antisemitic abuse in unions representing higher education employees.
In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.
That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.
“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.