I remember when people dismissed Walt and Mearsheimer as purveying "monocausal" political science. Well they weren’t monocausal, but the Israel lobby really is monocausal in its thinking. Commentary now dismisses the entire American labor movement because, huh, portions of it seem to be siding with the Palestinians, as in the refusal to cross picket lines to unload the Israeli ship in Oakland on Sunday.
This appears to be an emerging trend. For decades, U.S. unions have been largely inhospitable to the internationalist radicalism of most global labor federations. Their pedestrian, inward-looking character has been a source of frustration to some of their more extremist members and critics. But as international labor aligns itself firmly with the “Palestinian” cause, American organized labor is being presented with the kind of basic choice it hasn’t faced since the 1930s: whether to be politically American and affirm American policy stances, or to adhere to a radical posture that subverts national boundaries and delegitimizes national character. The Oakland work stoppage will not be the last such confrontation we see, as this defining challenge for our union work forces heads to a climax.
