The International Union of Food Workers and the Israeli labor federation Histadrut are giving full support to striking employees of a branch of the Coffee Bean restaurant in Tel Aviv.
The workers walked out January 22 after the Coffee Bean’s management refused to enter into negotiations for a collective agreement and began pressuring workers who backed the union organizing drive.
Now while I and (I hope) most other leftists will have no trouble deciding whose side we are on, doesn’t this create something of a dilemma for the virulently anti-Zionist elements of the Left?
Of course their first impulse would be to side with the workers. But what if, as in this instance, most of the workers are Zionists? What if the anti-Zionist “leftists” have essentially declared their solidarity with an organization which believes that Zionist management, Zionist labor and Zionist everyone-else should go back to Germany and that not one Jew should remain in Tel Aviv or anywhere else in the Zionist entity?
What’s their message to the Coffee Bean workers in Tel Aviv? “We stand in solidarity with you in your struggle against the bosses. And get the hell out of Palestine, Zionist scum”?
(Hat tip: LabourStart.)
