The fact that Israel's Gaza invasion is wrong (it is) doesn't mean it's ok for protesters to break the law, chant anti-Semitic crap, shut down campuses (who have no impact on the war whatsoever).
The UAW leader can't figure that out. I don't see him criticizing Biden who's the guy leading the US support for this crazy military operation.
Nope. he chooses to conveniently kick law enforcement and law-abiding students under bus. What a patriot.
The UAW Has a Gaza Policy
Auto workers chief Shawn Fain signals the union’s solidarity with violent protesters.
By The Editorial Board
May 3, 2024 6:16 pm ET
The United Auto Workers’ newest members are already getting more than they bargained for, but not in the way they were promised. The union’s leader is all in for campus lawbreaking and he’s denouncing Israel for its war against Hamas.
UAW President Shawn Fain chose to dive into the debate over anti-Israel campus protests this week and how police should respond. Writing on X (formerly Twitter), he said his union opposes “the mass arrest or intimidation of those exercising their right to protest, strike, or speak out against injustice.” That would be a fine statement in a vacuum. In the context of the protests, it’s a defense of mass trespassing and harassment of Jewish students at Columbia, UCLA and elsewhere.
Mr. Fain foreclosed any doubt about where his sympathies lie. “This war is wrong,” he said of Israel’s campaign to root Hamas out of Gaza. He said the UAW “has been calling for a ceasefire for six months,” meaning the union wished to halt Israel’s war of self-defense not long after Hamas mutilated women and killed 1,200 Israelis in a surprise assault.
Those views may come as a surprise to Volkswagen workers in Tennessee, who chose to unionize last month, or Mercedes workers in Alabama, who will decide whether to join the UAW by May 17. The union is eager to organize workers at fast-growing southern plants, and it’s promising higher wages. But it’s pitch is conspicuously light on solidarity with Hamas and Ivy League delinquents, though worker dues will support Mr. Fain’s ideological causes.
Mr. Fain’s anti-Israel policy may be aimed at appeasing a separate, growing constituency within the UAW: graduate students. By last year more than a quarter of the union’s 400,000 members were university employees, mostly assistants and adjuncts. Columbia’s chapter demanded that the university divest from Israel, and its members showed up to the protest. UAW members were among those arrested when police swept campuses Tuesday night.
Mr. Fain’s leftist politics are far removed from 20th-century union leaders like George Meany and Lane Kirkland, who were stout anti-Communists. Auto workers should know the radical politics they’re being recruited to endorse.