Sewing the Fabric of Statehood: Garment Unions, American Labor, and the Establishment of the State of Israel

Many entities played important roles in the establishment of Israel, but scholars have rarely assessed the American labor movement’s critical part in this endeavor. Historian Adam Howard examines American labor’s crucial role through its support of Histadrut, the General Federation of Jewish Labor in Palestine. In assisting Histadrut, the American labor movement provided vital support to a fellow labor movement that was central to the founding of Israel in 1948.

Adam Howard is the Acting Co-Director at the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Historian. He is also an Adjunct Professor of History and International Affairs at The George Washington University. In 2017, he published Sewing the Fabric of Statehood: Garment Unions, American Labor, and the Establishment of the State of Israel with the University of Illinois Press. He is also the documentary editor of three FRUS volumes, each of which cover U.S. foreign relations in the Middle East during the 1970s.

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is sponsored jointly by the National History Center of the American Historical Association and the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and the George Washington University History Department for their support.