At its Constitutional Convention in Detroit in June 2026, the United Auto Workers voted 321 to 287 to divest its holdings in Israel Bonds — making it the first major US union to do so. The UAW holds at least $400,000 in Israel Bonds. The vote means the union's constitution will potentially prohibit any future purchase of them.

The vote did not come easily. UAW leadership initially removed the divestment amendment from the Convention agenda. It took a motion from the floor — by Olga Karounos, a legal services worker from New York — to pull the amendment out of committee and force a floor vote. Even then, it passed by just 34 votes.

But it passed. And the walls are coming down.

Pro-Palestinian protesters carrying signs reading UAW Rank-and-File for Palestine and Free Palestine marching outside a UAW building

The Push Came From Below

The divestment campaign was organized by two forces within the UAW: Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), the reform caucus that helped elect current president Shawn Fain, and UAW Labor for Palestine, part of the broader Labor for Palestine network that has been pushing US unions to endorse BDS for over two decades.

Shelly Pires, a legal services worker in New York City and member of UAW Local 2325, told Mondoweiss what organizers already knew: the base was ready.

"When I speak to people outside of my sector, at this moment in time, Israel's actions are extremely unpopular," Pires said. "People across the working class spectrum, for many different reasons, do not support what Israel is doing. They're sick of seeing children being killed and oppressed. They are learning more about this apartheid state, and they don't want to support it."

Karounos was blunter after the vote. "This is going to send a message to — not just the billionaire class — but to politicians and any single person who is not afraid to stand up to genocide, to Netanyahu, to the United States government, and will put the UAW again on the map for standing up for international solidarity."

The UAW's leadership, like most major US unions, has historically been economically entangled with Israel and politically supportive of the state. A 2024 UAW Executive Board vote on divestment failed. The 2026 vote is what makes this different: it came from the floor, from the rank and file, and it passed despite leadership resistance.

The Long History

The UAW's Palestine solidarity has deep roots in Detroit's Arab-American working class.

In November 1973, Arab-American auto workers in Detroit walked off the job to protest the union's purchase of $300,000 in Israel Bonds — the same bonds the union has now voted to divest from more than 50 years later. The 1973 action was organized by the Arab Workers' Caucus within the UAW and targeted the union's complicity in financing the Israeli military during the October War.

In 2014, UAW Local 2865, representing student workers at the University of California, became the first major US labor union to endorse the BDS movement by vote — though union officials undemocratically overruled the decision. In 2023, the UAW became the largest US union to back a ceasefire in Gaza. Now, in 2026, it has become the first to put its money where its mouth is.

Labor historian Jeff Schuhrke, author of No Neutrals There: U.S. Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine, said the vote confirms that the UAW rank-and-file is moving far faster than the leadership on Palestine — and that the movement is growing.

This Is Not an Isolated Act

The UAW vote is part of a rapidly accelerating divestment wave that is cutting into the financial architecture of the Israeli state.

Israel Bonds — formally the Development Corporation for Israel (DCI) — is the mechanism by which the Israeli treasury raises money from foreign investors and institutions. Founded by David Ben-Gurion, it solicits loans that fund Israel's economy and, by extension, its military and settlement apparatus. In 2023, the human rights group DAWN called on Israel Bonds to register as a foreign agent, saying the organization was "a sophisticated operation to enlist American public support for Israel's political projects while dodging the minimal transparency and scrutiny our laws require."

That architecture is now being dismantled, piece by piece:

• Michigan divested all state pension investments in Israel Bonds in 2025 — a direct blow from the UAW's home state.
• Maryland forced its state pension fund to divest $73.7 million in Israeli bond holdings.
• The UK's largest public pension fund sold Israeli government bonds worth approximately $29.2 million in May 2026 after sustained campaign pressure.
• Brooklyn's Park Slope Food Coop, which we covered in depth, voted in May 2026 to boycott Israeli products — one of the oldest and largest food cooperatives in the United States, with over 17,000 members, taking a stand with teeth.

The divestment movement is following the same trajectory as the South Africa anti-apartheid boycott campaign of the 1980s: starting with students, spreading to cultural institutions and cooperatives, and eventually reaching labor unions and pension funds — the financial heavyweights that can actually move markets.

What Workers See That Politicians Won't

The UAW rank-and-file didn't need to be convinced. They've been watching the same footage the rest of the world has been watching.

They watched Israel bomb a tent camp and wipe out an entire family — then call it a ceasefire. They watched Israel kill 6-year-old Menna Allah Abu Labda in a helicopter strike on a displaced families' encampment. They watched four apartments destroyed, nine martyrs, one nine-year-old girl left alive — and Israel called it a ceasefire.

They watched Israel's "Yellow Line" expand across Gaza in a de facto reoccupation, building permanent military infrastructure while the world looked away. They watched Trump and Netanyahu's "Board of Peace" plan to complete the Nakba. They watched settlers kill or steal 8,000 sheep and goats in the West Bank — starvation as a weapon — and kill a child in a school.

They watched Israel legalize the death penalty for Palestinians while expanding its torture regime. They watched Israel kidnap 426 humanitarian activists from 44 countries in international waters aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla — and watched Spain beat those same activists upon their return. They watched Israel admit to photoshopping evidence to justify killing a journalist.

They watched over 900 Palestinians killed since the so-called ceasefire — and they watched their own government continue to arm the state doing the killing. They watched Trump blow a hole in an Iranian cargo ship and brag about it, while veterans who protested the Iran war were arrested at home.

This is what the UAW rank-and-file sees. This is why they voted to divest. Not because of ideology — though the analysis is sound — but because workers, more than any other demographic in America, understand that the money extracted from their labor should not be used to finance the slaughter of other workers across the world.

Palestine's Unions Responded

The Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions–Gaza issued a statement praising the vote:

"While expressing our sincere gratitude and appreciation for this bold step, we affirm that it reflects the living conscience of the working class, which refuses to allow its membership dues to serve as a means of financing genocide and injustice. Your decision places you on the right moral path and underscores the power of cross-border labor solidarity."

Cross-border labor solidarity. That is the phrase that matters.

When the UAW — a union with a million members, headquartered in the country that arms Israel to the teeth — votes to stop financing that arming, it is not a symbolic gesture. It is a material break in the chain that connects American working-class money to Israeli state violence. It is what BDS was always designed to produce: a withdrawal of complicity.

UAW union delegates wearing convention lanyards standing together in front of a banner at the 2026 Constitutional Convention in Detroit

What Comes Next

The UAW vote opens a door. The question is whether other unions will walk through it.

The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States, has remained steadfastly pro-Israel for decades. But rank-and-file pressure is mounting. The UAW, one of the most powerful unions in the federation, has now broken ranks. The writing is on the wall.

The divestment movement needs to expand — to other unions, to other pension funds, to city and state governments that hold Israel Bonds in their portfolios. Every divestment vote weakens the financial infrastructure of apartheid. Every public divestment decision legitimizes the next one.

The UAW rank-and-file showed that working-class people in the heart of the American empire understand something that their politicians do not: that solidarity with Palestine is not a charitable act but a class position. That the money workers produce should not finance the destruction of workers elsewhere. That internationalism is not optional for a labor movement that claims to represent the interests of all working people.

In 1973, Arab auto workers in Detroit walked off the job over Israel Bonds. Fifty-three years later, the union finally caught up with them. The next step is to make sure it doesn't take another 53 years for the rest of the American labor movement to do the same.