No Neutrals There: Us Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine by Jeff Schuhrke

at one facet of America's deep relationship with Israel."
--Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review

"By assembling a record of misdirected solidarity -- solidarity with the coloniser rather than the colonised -- Schuhrke shows how betrayal can be organisational, structured, and bureaucratised...His book is both an indictment and a summons, calling on workers -- and on all of us -- to recognise that the struggle for Palestine is inseparable from the struggle for justice."
--Yahia Lababidi, The New Arab

"Jeff Schuhrke repudiates the Zionism of AFL-CIO 'leaders, ' and argues that workers should support Palestinian efforts for liberation...This book is excellent, deserves wide attention, and this work, plus his Blue-Collar Empire, has put him in the top rank of today's labor historians."
--Kim Scipes, Countercurrents

"Schuhrke's sweeping and accessible book offers a detailed history of U.S. labor's century-long alliance with the Zionist movement and the State of Israel, examining the forces and developments that built and sustained that alliance as well as those that opposed it. This is a critical resource for organizers within both the U.S. labor and Palestine solidarity movements as they work to strengthen efforts to build an anti-militarist labor politics that can win justice for workers and oppressed people both at home and abroad."
--Derek Seidman, Truthout

"The book is incredibly timely and impressively detailed. Schuhrke proves his worth as a historian by telling a meaningful story about U.S. labor with a lesson to be learned."
--Samantha Cooney, UE News

"A needed resource for international trade unionism. In order for us to propel and grow the labour movement we need clarity in a time of deliberate obfuscation...Schuhrke's book explains how labour officials have sabotaged solidarity towards Palestine under the guise of 'neutrality' while continuing to support Israel. This book helps every reader understand how we got to where we are, and how we move forward in our organizing for solidarity with the people of Palestine."
--Aminah Sheikh, Spring Magazine

The definitive history of the US labor movement's complicity in Zionist settler colonialism, and a call for today's labor militants to organize in solidarity with Palestinians.

US trade unionists are often told to keep quiet and remain neutral on Palestine because "Palestine has nothing to do with unions" and "weighing in" only distracts from struggles for better working conditions.

No Neutrals There makes a timely and critical intervention against that pervasive sentiment by recounting the history of the US labor movement's century-long involvement in the struggle for Palestine. Scholar Jeff Schuhrke convincingly demonstrates that unions in the United States have never been silent or neutral on the question of Palestine. In fact, they have played a key role-in the initial Zionist colonization of Palestine, the foundation of the Israeli state in 1948, supporting US foreign policy commitments to Israel, and the ongoing suppression of the Palestinian liberation movement.

In his compelling telling of this history, Schuhrke conclusively shows that US unions helped build and maintain the state of Israel, and also shines a light on important exceptions to this rule: instances of US labor solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle that point the way forward for today's labor movement.

Jeff Schuhrke is a labor historian and assistant professor at the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies, SUNY Empire State University. He is the author of Blue-Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's Global Anticommunist Crusade. His writing appears frequently in Jacobin, In These Times, Jewish Currents, and Labor Notes.

2025