AN OPEN LETTER TO THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL

OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS (AFT)

We, the undersigned members of the AFT, call on the AFT Executive Council to demand the U.S. government end all military aid to Israel.

The Executive Council should take immediate action to make AFT policy consistent with the July 2024 convention resolution, which states that our union opposes U.S. aid to Israel if it includes arms that are intended to kill civilians. U.S. arms sales to Israel since August, which total over $20 billion, are indeed intended to – and are – killing civilians.

These sales violate U.S. law, specifically the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Arms Export Control Act (AECA).[1] Contrary to these laws’ stipulations, the weapons have been used indiscriminately in Gaza and account for many of the 40,534 deaths and nearly 94,000 injuries in Gaza so far – 60 percent of whom are women, children, or elderly people. The actual death and injury is likely to be much higher.[2] The AFT also has an urgent responsibility to respond to the systemic destruction of the Palestinian education system, a pattern of attacks on schools, universities, teachers, and students which the UN has described as a scholasticide, a term coined by Prof. Karma Nabulsi.[3]

The resolution passed by delegates at AFT’s July 2024 convention stipulates “American military aid cannot be used in ways that facilitate the seizure of Palestinian land, the violent dispossession of Palestinian communities, and the annexation of occupied Palestinian territory. Nor can U.S. military aid be used to harm civilian populations.”[4]

AFT Executive Council is charged by the AFT Constitution “to obey the instructions of national conventions.”[5] As our convention resolution explicitly opposes U.S. military aid to Israel in the ways it is being used, it is the responsibility of our Executive Council to have our policy align with the will of the convention.

In so doing, our national union will be joining not only dozens of AFT locals that have called for our national union to support the arms embargo, but also other national unions in the National Labor Network for a Ceasefire.[6]

[1] https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/FINAL_Fact-Sheet-Joint-Resolutions-of-Disapproval-for-Israel-arms-sales-003.pdf

[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext

[3] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/04/un-experts-deeply-concerned-over-scholasticide-gaza

[4] https://www.aft.org/resolution/end-war-gaza-and-lasting-peace-security-and-self-determination-israel-and-palestine

[5] https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/2024/AFTconstitution2024.pdf

[6] https://www.laborforceasefire.org/