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If it seemed like a disproportionate response to an obscure three-page pamphlet, it is partially because Jewish groups, among others, had learned to keep a close eye on the postal workers.

In 2008, CUPW was the first national Canadian union to label Israel an “apartheid state” and call for a boycott of Israeli goods; they have dispatched CUPW representatives on Gaza blockade-runners and in 2010, they even publicly denounced a Canada-Israel friendship stamp.

But its Israeli activities are only the tip of the iceberg for the surprisingly radical union tasked with representing one of Canada’s meeker professions. Be it women’s conferences in Bolivia or peace gatherings in Toronto, CUPW has long helped to fund a litany of international causes that, admittedly, may have only the most peripheral connection to the business of delivering mail. Critics may charge that union stepped “beyond its mandate” in its latest Israeli condemnation, but really, it sounds just about right for the CUPW.

The writer of the “war crimes” post is Ruth Breen, a Fredericton mail carrier who in 2011 was among a group of postal workers — some of them shouting “Heil Harper!” — who had the police called on them when they refused to leave a Conservative constituency office.

Her post for The Rose was written following a CUPW-funded trip to Gaza; the second international trip she appears to have taken on behalf of the union. Two years before, she jetted 12,000 km to join marchers outside the UN Climate Change Conference.