{"id":49275,"date":"2014-11-03T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=49275"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:29:35","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:35","slug":"a-small-band-of-activists-is-humiliating-an-israeli-shipping-giant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/11\/a-small-band-of-activists-is-humiliating-an-israeli-shipping-giant\/","title":{"rendered":"A Small Band of Activists Is Humiliating an Israeli Shipping Giant"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Capping<\/a>

Capping a series of victories by a modest band of pro-Palestinian activists, an Israel-based shipping company has re-routed a container ship from the Port of Oakland, where protestors had vowed to keep the ship from unloading, to an alternate destination in Russia.<\/p><\/div>\n

The company, Zim Integrated Shipping Services<\/a> is\u00a0one of the largest cargo shipping outfits in the world, but of late it has seen its operations seriously disrupted by a small group of activists motivated by the global Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement (BDS), which targets companies implicated in Israel\u2019s occupation of the Palestinian Territories. Zim is an Israel-based company, and the \u201cBlock the Boat<\/a>\u201d movement \u2013 a combined effort of labor activists and Palestinian solidarity groups \u2013 has successfully stopped its\u00a0ships from docking at Oakland ports several times since this summer.<\/p>\n

Zim has drawn particular ire for its role in shipping Israeli armaments. In the words of Block the Boat organizer Lara Kiswani in an interview about the movement earlier this year<\/a>: \u201c\u2026Zim also transports weaponry: Israeli-made weaponry and Israeli-made military vehicles into the United States\u201d, adding that, \u201csome of the more consumer-based products are not Israeli, but the weaponry and the military products are Israeli.\u201d<\/p>\n

Activists associated with the movement at least temporarily prevented Zim ships from unloading in August<\/a>, when a ship was blocked from unloading and headed toward Los Angeles before turning back and successfully unloading<\/a>, and again in September<\/a>. But what appears\u00a0to be their greatest victory came this week<\/a>, when Zim decided reroute its cargo Russia rather than attempt to dock in Oakland once more. Their decision came just nine days after the company\u00a0vowed to dock<\/a>, in defiance of protests.<\/p>\n

The protests appear to be aided by sympathetic longshoremen. Some of Oakland\u2019s unionized dockworkers have expressed sympathy for the demonstrators\u2019 position in the local press, and have at times declined to unload Zim ships during protests, citing safety concerns.<\/p>\n

The company claims\u00a0that their last-minute decision to reroute was unrelated to the protests<\/a>. But its foes aren\u2019t buying it. \u201cWhen a country\u2019s shipping concern can\u2019t come to the port because of the popular resistance it will face there, you can feel that the tables are turning,\u201d said Jamie Omar Yasin, a Block the Boat activist.<\/p>\n

The successful protest action against Zim is part of a global movement for an economic boycott of Israel. Modeled after similar efforts conducted in the past against apartheid South Africa, the BDS movement seeks to put pressure on the Israeli government to end its occupation of Palestinian lands. \u201cThey can look forward to more and more resistance wherever they try and operate,\u201d Yasin says.<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Photo: David McNew\/Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n

Email the author: murtaza.hussain@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Capping a series of victories by a modest band of pro-Palestinian activists, an Israel-based shipping company has re-routed a container ship from the Port of Oakland, where protestors had vowed to keep the ship from unloading, to an alternate destination in Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}