[ Many U.S. unions have longstanding ties to the State of Israel.
What is the Teamster connection? Author Joe Allen uncovers ties going
back to Israels founding, Hoffa, organized crime and gun-running to
the new state from Detroit and Cleveland.]
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THE TEAMSTER CONNECTION: APARTHEID ISRAEL AND THE IBT  
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Joe Allen
December 29, 2023
CounterPunch
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_ Many U.S. unions have longstanding ties to the State of Israel.
What is the Teamster connection? Author Joe Allen uncovers ties going
back to Israel's founding, Hoffa, organized crime and gun-running to
the new state from Detroit and Cleveland. _

Jimmy Hoffa with Golda Meir in Israel, 1956.,

 

At the December 17 monthly membership of Teamsters Local 705 in
Chicago, a resolution was put forward by several members of the
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) calling for a ceasefire in
Gaza. I was told by several people present that while the resolution
was voted down decisively, it was not overwhelming. They estimated on
a voice vote that around 65% to 70% percent voted against it, while
35% to 40% voted for it.

While I was heartened to see that an sizable minority of the meeting
was for a ceasefire, I was also saddened that my old local union
couldn’t a make the smallest gesture towards opposing genocide. In
sharp contrast, two decades ago, Teamsters 705 pioneered labor
opposition to the Iraq War, when it passed a resolution condemning
President George W. Bush’s war drive. I’ve written about this
recently here
[[link removed]].

The Teamsters 705 vote followed the tabling of a ceasefire resolution
at the Teamsters for a Democratic (TDU) convention in early November,
and many activists are wondering what comes next for Palestine
solidarity in the Teamsters? Israel’s ongoing genocidal war shows no
sign of abating. Opposition to the U.S. backed war is growing but also
faces determined resistance from the Democratic and Republican Party
establishments and slander from the media.

Many U.S. unions have longstanding
[[link removed]] ties
to the State of Israel. What is the Teamster connection?

JIMMY HOFFA: “CRITICAL SUPPORT TO A STRUGGLING JEWISH STATE.”

One of the least known aspects of Teamster history is its long
relationship with the State of Israel, right from its very origins.
Something I was surprised to discover until I started looking into it
over the past few weeks. During a 2008 fundraiser held in Washington,
D.C. organized by the American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center
[[link removed]], the Jewish Telegraphic
Agency (JTA) reported
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“A little-known chapter in the life of the legendary Teamsters
leader [Jimmy Hoffa] is about to come to light in a tribute planned
for Feb. 13, when the American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center
will have a commemorative dinner. Former President Bill Clinton will
address the gathering.”

What was this little known chapter? General President James P. Hoffa,
Jr, son of Jimmy, told the JTA:

“They were not only fighting for working people but fighting for
independence,” adding that his father was influenced by Israel’s
struggle against the British and the Arabs. “He became involved in
that and in facilitating arms for the struggle.”

The JTA straightforwardly commented, “Facilitating” in this case
is a euphemism for “smuggling.” Stuart Davidson, of the American
Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center, said
[[link removed]] that
Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters “provided critical support to a
struggling Jewish state rising from the ashes of the Holocaust.”

Hoffa in the late 1940s was president of Local 299 in Detroit, as well
as a prominent Michigan Teamster leader well-known for his political
ambitions. He was still a decade away from becoming the union’s
national leader, and two decades away from going to federal prison.
Yet, he already had extensive ties to organized crime in Detroit, that
were well documented in the 1950s by the Senate Rackets Committee, and
later popularized by Dan Moldea for a younger generation of Teamster
activists in his classic book _The Hoffa Wars_
[[link removed]]published
in the late 1970s.

It was these connections to organized crime that most likely explain
how Hoffa smuggled American weapons illegally into the hands of
Zionist militias and nascent Israeli military. If these claims are
true, they are disturbing because they mean that Hoffa smuggled
weapons to Zionist militias involved in ethnic cleansing
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Palestinians, during what Palestinians’ call the “Nakba,”
meaning catastrophe. Over 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their
ancestral homes during this period of time.

Jimmy Hoffa also helped burnish Israel’s image internationally as a
caring society during the 1950s, while Palestinians were struggling
for their very existence in Gaza and other territories. The JTA
reported:

“In 1955, Hoffa held a dinner that raised $300,000 — a phenomenal
sum at the time — for an orphanage in Ein Kerem, a Jerusalem suburb.
He visited Israel in 1956 to dedicate the orphanage; a year later he
became Teamsters president.”

Hoffa visited the orphanage that during his 1956 visit to Israel he
had his picture taken with then Minister of Labor and soon to be
appointed Foreign Minister of Israel Gold Meier. Meir was a hardened
Labor Zionist, who was later quoted as saying
[[link removed].],
“They [Palestinians] did not exist.” He also met with Israeli
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, considered one of the “Founding
Fathers” of Israel.

THE RABIN CENTER: “BREAKING THE BONES OF PALESTINIANS”

Hoffa Senior’s contributions to the creation of the Zionist state
were honored in Washington by the American Friends of the Yitzhak
Rabin Center. Soon after the election of Barack Obama to the
presidency, Teamster General President James P. Hoffa traveled to
Israel. According to the Jerusalem Post
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“The Younger Hoffa raised $2.5 million for the Yitzhak Rabin Center.
During his visit, a room at the center will be dedicated to the
Teamsters. Hoffa said he had been looking for a way to strengthen his
ties to Israel, and began to work for the Rabin Center on the advice
of friends. During his time here, he plans to visit the Histadrut-run
Alumim Youth Village in Kfar Saba, whose original Jerusalem facility
was built by a $300,000 donation from his father.”

The Rabin Center
[[link removed]],
created by an act of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, is a
favorite of American trade union leaders
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including the Teamsters. What makes it possible for U.S. trade union
leaders to so enthusiastically embrace the Rabin Center? Along with
their general subservience to U.S. foreign policy, it also has to do
the with Rabin’s affiliation with the Israeli Labor Party and the
thinning gloss of “Labor Zionism” covering some of Israel’s
institutions, notably the Histadrut
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Israelis racist trade union federation.

John T. Coli, the former head of the Teamsters in Chicago, soon to be
released from federal prison
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led one union delegation to the Rabin Center in 2013, where
he enthused
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“There wasn’t a nation here. Now it’s totally different. [Tel
Aviv] is a modern city. People have access to health care, to
education. That’s what we want to build everywhere.”

Add to this Rabin’s image as a fallen hero for peace. He was
assassinated in 1995 following the signing of the now
discredited Oslo Accords
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J. David Cox, the president of American Federation of Government
Employees, who led another union delegation in 2013, couldn’t say
enough about Rabin the peace maker, his “commitment to peace in not
just Israel but the world is amazing.”

However, the image and reality of Rabin the peacemaker are two
different things. Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, in _The Ethnic
Cleansing Of Palestine_, wrote of Rabin’s military and political
career:

“Yitzhak Rabin who, as a young officer, had taken an active part in
the 1948 cleansing [Nakba] but who had now been elected [1992] as
prime minister on a platform that promised the resumption of the peace
effort. Rabin’s death came too soon for anyone to assess how much he
had really changed from his 1948 days; as recently as 1987, as
minister of defense, he had ordered his troops to break the bones of
Palestinians who confronted his tanks with stones in the first
intifada ; he had deported hundreds of Palestinians as prime minister
prior to the Oslo agreement, and he had also pushed for the 1994 Oslo
B agreement that effectively caged the Palestinians in the West Bank
into several Bantustans.”

Bantustans are a reference to one of the methods that the old
Apartheid regime in South Africa used to divide and disenfranchise the
majority Black population. As one online South Africa history website
[[link removed]] puts it succinctly,
“Bantustans were established for the permanent removal of the Black
population in White South Africa.” This was a model for the type of
“peace” that Rabin offered the Palestinians.

The _Times of Israel_ reported
[[link removed]] in 2013 that, “Members of
U.S. labor unions raised $1.4 million for the Yitzhak Rabin Center in
Tel Aviv last year, 45 percent of the center’s total 2012
fundraising. Since 2005, American unions have raised $12 million for
the center.” It also reported, “Cox’s group met with
Arab-Israeli union members, but did not meet with Palestinians despite
visiting religious sites in Bethlehem, a Palestinian city in the West
Bank. Coli’s delegation did not have any meetings with Palestinians
or Arab-Israelis.”

A dinner in honor of Coli raised
[[link removed]] $700,000
for the Rabin Center in 2012, alone. He returned to Israel in 2015,
with injury lawyer Michael Goldberg, who referred to “as a guest of
the Teamsters union.” Goldberg’s firm donated
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$750,00 to the Rabin Center. It should be noted that John Coli was
sentenced to federal prison for extortion in 2019, and in the
following year, J. David Cox resigned
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office charged with misuse of unions funds and sexual harassment.

Teamster General President James P. Hoffa apparently screened a
showing of a film made by Yitzhak Rabin’s daughter Dalia
Rabin-Pelossof about her father to the union’s General Executive
Board . He told
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JTA that , “People were visibly moved by the story and the
connection of the Teamsters” to the Zionist movement. At the end of
the day, Hoffa’s gun running to Zionist militias may turn out to be
exaggerated boasts from the Hoffa family or flattery from Israeli
officials eager to curry favor, but Jimmy Hoffa established a
connection that has continued for decades.

ISRAEL BONDS: “GREAT PR VALUE”

Teamster magazine June 1973, Internet archive.
The purchase of Israel bonds have been an important method for
financing construction projects, and more importantly demonstrating
political support for the State of Israel. As the Israel Bonds
website reports [[link removed]]:

For 72 years, Israel Bonds has generated $50 billion worldwide.
Additionally, Israel Bonds has doubled its annual global bond sales
for 2023, surpassing $2 billion. Israel bonds are a smart investment,
with strong rates, and are meaningful investments, serving as a
symbolic connection with Israel and the people of Israel for Jews
worldwide.

The Teamsters saw a big public relations value for themselves with
purchases and selling Israel bonds beginning in the 1970s. In May
1973, then Teamster General President Frank Fitzsimmons accepted the
25th Anniversary Medal of the State of Israel on behalf of the
Teamsters. The Black tie event in Washington, D.C. drew members of
President Richard Nixon’s cabinet and the Israeli Ambassador to the
United States, Simcha Dinitz, who presented the award to Fitzsimmons.
Messages of tribute from Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir
to Frank Fitzsimmons were read.

The following month, Fitzsimmons boasted
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his column in the June 1973 _Teamster _magazine:

“In conjunction with the dinner, $26 million in Israeli Bonds were
sold. The money is an Investment in Israel’s ability to defend its
freedom, and it is an investment that provides a secure return in
interest paid on the bonds.”

Jackie Presser, the mobbed-up leader of the Cleveland Teamsters and
future General President, was placed in charge of a public relations
campaign by Teamsters to combat its negative image in the media with
Israel Bonds. Steve Brill in his classic book _The
Teamsters_ recounted
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1975 dinner in Cleveland, Ohio,

“honoring Jackie Presser for his extraordinary work in selling
Israel bonds. Supporting Israel had been a favorite, if not the only,
Teamsters public relation strategy since the night in 1956 when [St.
Louis Teamster leader] Harold Gibbons convinced Hoffa that $265,000
collected at a testimonial dinner should be donated for the
construction of a children’s home in Israel. Since then [Brill’s
book was published in 1978] the Teamsters have been the biggest union
buyers of Israel bonds. By 1977, they had bought $26,000,000 worth out
of a total of American union purchases of $100,000,000.”

Meyer Steinglass, an Israel Bonds spokesperson, said
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the bonds had “great PR value…these people [the Teamsters] are
looking for respectability and this is one way to get it…And, in
this union the guys at the top can make the locals buy the bonds. I
mean, you know what they say, ‘You can find yourself under a truck
if you don’t obey.’”

All of this enhanced the reputation of Jackie Presser. “Just about
everyone who was anyone in Cleveland politics or business turned
out,” Brill wrote. “At the dinner, Israeli Ambassador Simcha
Dinitz inducted the guest of honor into the Prime Minister’s Club, a
group made up of people who personally (or in Presser’s case,
through his union) bought more than $25,000 worth of bonds.” At one
point, the Teamsters owned more than a quarter of all Israel bonds
held by U.S. unions.

TODAY

There is a lot we don’t know about the current relationship between
the Teamsters and the State of Israel. Educating the Teamster
membership on the long relationship between the U.S. labor movement,
including the Teamsters, and Israel will be vitally important.
Researching the financial investments that the Teamsters and its many
pension funds may hold in U.S. based corporations
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State of Israel Bonds that support Israeli Apartheid will also be
crucial. There will be further opportunities to put forward for
ceasefire resolutions in local union meetings in the months to come
across the country.

_[JOE ALLEN is the author of The Package King: A Rank and File
History of United Parcel Service.
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* Teamsters
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* IBT
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* Jimmy Hoffa
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* Detroit Teamsters
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* Cleveland Teamsters
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* Israel
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* Israel founding
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* Zionist militias
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* Nabka
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* Israel Bonds
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* gun-running
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