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Israeli Shipping Line Zim Shut Out at Oakland Docks
Long before 5:30 a.m. on June 20 about 800 protesters traveled the mile from West Oakland's BART station, near San Francisco, to Berth 57 of the Oakland docks. The early risers were determined to block the gates and discourage longshoremen from unloading a Zim cargo ship. Zim is an Israeli shipping company.
A second shift of more than 200 hundred protesters kept the gates closed for the 4:30 p.m. work crew too.
Gloria La Riva organized the personal vehicle shuttle service that transported both waves of protesters.
She said, "There is a provision in their contract that states workers do not have to cross a picket line if their health or safety is at stake. The arbitrator -- who is always on call for these kinds of situations -- twice reviewed the lines of protesters in the morning. At about 9:15 a.m. he decided that it wasn't safe for the workers. We consider it a great victory that the arbitrator ruled in the union's favor and the men did not have to work."
Since they had already been dispatched and the arbitration ruled in their favor the men will be paid.
For La Riva this was another full day of dedicated service to her life-long commitment to justice... along with some dejá vu, too.
Back in June 1984, when San Francisco still was a commercial container dock, La Riva supported the ILWU longshoremen who took an official action at Pier 80 and refused to unload apartheid South Africa's Ned-Lloyd ship. Union members held firm for ten days -- the longest political cargo stoppage in West Coast history -- despite the multi-million dollar fines levied against them.
Back then, South Africa's racist apartheid regime was under pressure. As its defense forces cracked down ever more brutally on black South Africans, including women and children, the eyes of the world riveted on images of white policemen shooting black children in school yards and in poverty-stricken segregated townships.
Now Israel is under pressure. On May 31, that country's navy violently boarded ships in international waters and attacked passengers delivering food, building materials, and medical aid. Nine passengers are dead and six are still missing.
But international anger has been simmering for some time against Israel's actions in Palestine. The bombardment of Gaza over Christmas and New Year 2009 was an act of sustained brutality that riveted the world. Since then, images of desperate Palestinians are hard to miss. They include babies and children living in what is referred to by some as the "world's largest open-air prison".
Israel's blockade of Gaza extends beyond its land borders. Fishermen are allowed within only 5.5 km of their own coast. Some sneak into Egyptian waters to fish but doing so puts their lives at risk.
Israeli officials insist there is no humanitarian crisis. United Nations aid workers inside Gaza, however, speak of 80 per cent of the people depending on food hand-outs. UN data draws disquieting images: 14 per cent of children suffer stunted growth due to malnutrition.
At one of three gates blocked at the docks, protester Catherine Orozco puts down her sign (it reads "Let Gaza Live") and says, "I visited Israel and Palestine in 2002. I went to Jenin and saw the results of the massacre and buildings and homes destroyed. I went to Jerusalem and saw people evicted from their life-long homes. I am very concerned about the disaster Israel is visiting upon the people of Palestine. While we Americans tend to be more concerned about our own troubles like the economy and oil spills, it opens up a lot of peoples' eyes to see peace ships carrying humanitarian aid attacked in international waters and human rights activists killed."
As the United States sinks deeper into debt, President Obama insists that Israel is a "true friend" whose security is "top priority...sacrosanct ...non-negotiable." On June 4, less than a week after Israel's act of piracy in international waters, Obama declared a "strong commitment" to ensure "the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, unbreakable tomorrow, unbreakable forever." Then he authorized a further $30 billion in assistance to Israel over the next decade. (President Bush authorized $13 billion during his presidency.)
These days, the word "apartheid" is linked regularly with Israel. Indeed, the parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa are clear to anyone who visited both places or studied this form of politics.
In the clear sunshine that poured over the Oakland docks on June 20, it is apparent that ever more people of all ages and backgrounds are looking into the face of this new version of apartheid. What they see makes them unafraid of the omnipresent threat of being labeled "anti-Semitic" or "self-hating Jew."
If the Israeli government follows the directive of just one sign in evidence on this day - "Boycott Israeli Ships and Goods" - it would consider deeply apartheid South Africa's history. Then it would steer its ship of state toward a different star...and full speed ahead.
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24 Comments so far
Show AllHooray! Maybe the tide will finally turn!!! How courageous!! Now if only the occupation would end and a ONE-state non-theocratic solution were imposed!!!!
omoreexceptionalism said "ONE-state non-theocratic solution were imposed!!!!"
Imposed? Let's hope this can be accomplished in a democratic fashion. Otherwise, how would it be implemented and maintained without foreign troops? Whose troops would be willing to do this anyway? I don't think this is a very practical or desirable way to solve this issue.
This is hopeful news. Israel and the USA should both strive to become normal nations, abiding by international law, keeping their troops inside their own national boundaries, treating all people with justice. They might try following the pledge of "one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all." I am not keen on the God part of the pledge, but I know most Israels and most Americans are religious. Thus, they might try following the Golden Rule: "Treat other people the same way you want them to treat you." That would work well, too.
How far would Israel have to go before the US Government felt it was time to break that "unbreakable bond"...?
BBQ Gazan Babies? (actually done that one already...Willy Pete 2009 special)
Macssacre defencless women and children (umm..done that one too...Sabra and Shatila)
Death camps and gas chambers? (Isn't Gaza just one big death camp?)
The Gewrman Nazis should have had such close allies.....
The components of a two state solution are largely in place. One state is not doable.
Sure it's doable -- mount a big propaganda effort to explain that a great and terrible wrong is finally being undone, rename the country back to Palestine, strip the IDF of its weaponry and uniforms, and seat a Palestinian at the UN (Hanan Ashrawi would be favorite). Refuse to deal with or give a microphone to anyone who tries to claim that it's still Israel. Demand that anyone giving Zionism a propaganda microphone give equal time to anti-Zionists immediately before or after per the rebutter's choice.
No--a one-state solution is NOT doable. It would only pave the war for civil war and more bloodshed between the two peoples in question; the Israeli Jews and the Palestinians. That being said, the two states for two peoples is the only solution to this decades-long conflict, with Jerusalem as a shared capitol between the two states.
And what makes you so sure a two state solution will end the blood bath?? With the West bank peppered with Israeli settlements how are you going to unify it to Gaza? Israel can simply continue to blockage and corral the Palestinians.
Israel must evacuate their rightwing Jewish settlers from West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip and do one of two things with the settlement housing; either dismantle it or hand it over to the Palestinians to do what they want with it.
Listen to yourself!
"No, taking the property back from the home invaders is NOT doable. It would only cause the thieves to fight the legal owners. The thieves have managed to stay in possession for sixty years with the help of crooked cops and crooked courts, so the rightful owners must resign themselves to having only the piece of garden next to the trash cans and the corner of the garage with the leaky roof."
Well, geez, Mairead-- if you're going to put the case so PLAINLY, you take all the disingenuous spin and truthiness right out of the opposing argument!
Is that fair? ;)
I know, OS - but I'm such a simpleminded creature.
I stand by my argument, Mairead.
You made no argument, just an unmotivated assertion.
For it to have been an argument, you'd have had to explain why, for example, the Zionists' aggressive war for complete control of the mythical (see Ze'ev Herzog) Greater Israel would stop even though it's been going on for over a hundred years so far.
AND why whatever forces you imagine would halt the criminal Zionist imperialism wouldn't work in the case of the world renaming the land back to Palestine and supporting Palestinian political control.
*Could* you advance such an argument? I don't think so. There's too much reality against you.
Ten, a hundred, No... A thousand more Israeli ships turned away from all International Ports!
The Zionist Scourge which has poisoned the Heart of the World's Holy Land must be shoveled back under the rock from under which it oooozed so many terrible long years ago!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTDU1zaiRdo&feature=player_embedded
SMASH THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL WELFARE BULLIES!!
I voted for Obama and he has been a great disappointment. He puts on knee pads every morning and grovels in front of every Israeli lobbying group. To make things change he needs to fire Rahm Emanuel and then throw away the kneepads and stand up to the Israelis and stop parroting all the speeches they hand him.
800 protesters? plus another shift of 200. That makes 1000.
How many hours does it take 1000 people to determine if they've been the victim of credit card fraud?
So vat's wrong vit a little Jewish humor?
Shalom, Salaam, Peace
Congratulations to Gloria La Riva and the success of the action at the Oakland port. So often CD posters will complain of people not taking action. She has taken action -- and she has taken action because she & the activists with her know what their animating principles are & what unity undergirds those priciples.
"self-hating Jew"
Labeling someone "self-hating" is a crime itself. The agenda behind the labeling is to stifle egalitarian principles and replace with domineering principles. Stifle cooperation and replace with competition. Stifle justice and replace with oppression.
alert: barnes and nobles, one of america's largest booksellers, refuses to carry norman finklestein's new book, ___"this time we went too far". the book is about the israeli invasion of gaza, and the atrocities that the israeli army and air forces committed with their white phosphorous and uranium tipped shells. no doubt that there should be sanctions against this ruthless state, which went rogue when it killed united nations mediator count folke bernadotte in 1948 and hasn't changed a bit since.
second alert: barnes and nobles will not even order finklestein's new book from the publisher, thereby allowing you to pick it up after you have prepaid for its delivery. does the zionist grasp leave anything untouched? the book has been available for sale since march of 2010.
Viva La Riva!
Eyeless in Gaza.
So much Israeli-American industrial/banking PORK.
Demographics defies the one-state solution.
Israeli politics prevents the two-state solution.
I can still recall Clinton in his final bi-polar days in office, perhaps thinking if he would just pardon rich criminal Jews, (Marc Rich?) the politics might change. Oops. Madoff.
Homeland Security is so busy shutting down secret money to Arabs that they just have no time to look into the diamond biz in, oh, say, that special part of Brooklyn across the Williamsburg bridge.
To say nothing of who is running the Treasury and the Fed.
Who today can name the great dockworker union leader of the West Coast? Hint: it wasn't Marlon Brando.
To return to Robert Fisk's observations at this site, we really do need to explode the "narrative" of the Palestine question. We now have Gaza versus The West Bank, split by illegal Israeli "settlements."
Poor Mr. George Mitchell.
Poor Mr. Tony Blair.
Poor Mrs. () Clinton.
We should all learn how to make sausage. Not that we have to eat it.
Just cook it and touch it with the tip of your tongue. Parsley sage rosemary and thyme.
If your Cause includes the destruction of the infrastructure of your "enemy" (e.g., centuries old olive groves) it cannot possibly be Just. Your Cause has become Entropic. You have become your own worst enemy, for every waking day you are lying to yourself about what, ultimately, it MUST mean to be human.
-30-
The term "Anti_Semitic", when used to describe someone who supports the Palestinians and opposes the policies of the Israeli government (and very likely does not dislike Jews, only Zionists) is incorrect, because the Semitic tribes, of which the Hebrews are only one, cover most of northern Africa.
See the map here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic
Palestinians _are_ Semitic, too.