Summit County Labor News

Israeli Honor Hungarians With 15-Minute Sympathy Strike

A nation stopped work in Tel Aviv, Israel, for fifteen minutes "in solidarity with the Hungarian workers' struggle for freedom and human dignity" as Histadrut members laid down their tools throughout this Middle Eastern democracy.

The freedom sympathy strike was called by the Histadrut Executive Committee, representing about 80% of the nation's working men and women. A siren blast at 10 A. M. signalled the halt of all work in the nation.

Traffic stopped for two minutes in silent observation of the gallant Hungarian workers' freedom fight.

The Teachers' Union, an affiliate of Histadrut, asked its members to use the 15 minute strike period to explain to their classes the meaning of the demonstration.

The effect of the strike, the "Jerusalem Post" noted in an editorial on the following day, served as a reminder "that the troubles and anxieties to which we are subject here are not purely local in origin."

"When Israel was involved in the flaring up of a life and death struggle with a dictator," the influential Jerusalem paper declared, "the whole weight of the international organization was brought to bear to prevent the fall of this fascist and his regime and to restore a status quo which had lost all moral content and which was becoming an increasing menace to the peace of the whole world."

"When the workers of Hungary find themselves up against naked force, the same United Nations hesitates, debates and delays, while blood is needlessly shed and the defenders of their own freedom against foreign force wait in vain for help."

Drawing a parallel between Israel's own War for independence in 1948, the "Post" declared that it is not surprising that when the Hungarian workers, in the face of all that is before them, proclaimed a 48-hour strike our workers here should have felt the urgent need to rally with them completely in spirit.