Pro-Palestine protesters block Israeli cargo ship at the port of Oakland, California. (Photo: via AROC Twitter Page)
Oakland, June 6 (RHC)-- Dockworkers in the U.S. Port of Oakland have refused to unload an Israeli cargo ship as part of an international boycott campaign against Israeli atrocities against Palestinians.
Pro-Palestine Americans protesting the Israeli aggression against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip banned the Israeli ship docked on Friday morning in the port of Oakland in California from unloading its cargo, forcing it to leave the US harbor.
More than a week into the Israeli aggression against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, despite more and more civilians falling victim to such attacks, the US has approved the sale of $735 million of precision guided missiles to Israel.
In a show of solidarity with the Palestinian people in the aftermath of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, the protesters held banners and waved Palestinian flags in support of the movement to impose an economic boycott on the Israeli regime.
“Back up! Back up! We want Freedom, Freedom! All these Zionist attacks, we don’t need ’em, need ’em,” demonstrators chanted, calling on the Israeli ZIM-operated cargo ship Volans to leave port.
“Our goal today is to show the city of Oakland that we do not want them to do business with and allow Israeli apartheid money to come into our city,” Wassim Hage, a spokesman for the demonstrators, told reporters.
“It’s part of an international picket movement at port cities around the world that will be going on over the next couple of weeks,” he pointed out. According to Hage, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse’s Union Local 10 were amid the picketers at the Port as “a huge show of solidarity between organized working people and the struggle for Palestine liberation.”
In related news, dock workers in the South African port city of Durban refused to offload cargo from an Israeli container ship on Friday in solidarity with Palestinians and in protest against Tel Aviv’s hostilities on Gaza.
Pro-Palestinian activists across the globe have launched a coordinated campaign against Israeli atrocities against the besieged Palestinians suffering under Tel Aviv's aggressive military actions killing defenseless innocent civilians.