Adam Howard U. S. Department of State

From the Balfour Declaration’s publication in November 1917 to Israel’s creation in 1948, the American labor movement worked for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.  Successive British governments struggled to reconcile the contradictions of the Balfour Declaration, but American labor's hopes rose in 1945 with the British Labour Party’s historic election victory, and its promises to implement the declaration. Yet the controversial issue of Zionism in British politics frustrated the American labor movement, culminating in a bitter clash.

 

Adam Howard earned a Ph.D. in U.S. history from the University of Florida in 2003. He recently published Sewing the Fabric of Statehood: Garment Unions, American Labor, and the Establishment of the State of Israel (University of Illinois Press, 2017). He currently serves as the General Editor of the Foreign Relations of the United States series at the U.S. Department of State. He is also an Adjunct Professor of History and International Affairs at The George Washington University.