Disrupting Apartheid's Supply Chain

In Oakland, Seattle and Prince Rupert, Canada, residents showed their support for Palestine in June by picketing cargo ships from the Israel-based Zim shipping company. Protesters tried to prevent the docking and unloading of Zim ships at local ports and were successful in either delaying or totally blocking the ships.

But the protests also did something else: They revealed a powerful coalition taking shape.

The pickets in Oakland and Prince Rupert were successful thanks to solidarity from local unionized dock workers and First Nation Indigenous protesters, united in an international campaign called Block the Boat. The demonstration is part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, a Palestinian-led grassroots effort to put economic pressure on Israel until apartheid ends.

AJ+ producer Iliana Hagenah spoke with Lara Kiswani, a leader with Block the Boat and executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) in the Bay Area, about the campaign. The movement is declaring, says Kiswani, that “in our ports, we're going to stop aiding Israel. Our workers are going to stop aiding Israel, and not allow it to do business as usual.”

Block the Boat began with worker solidarity

The original Block the Boat demonstration was held in 2014, during the weekslong war on Gaza, Kiswani said. It drew inspiration from a 2010 community picket line at the Port of Oakland against Israel’s attack on an aid flotilla. Dock workers with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 had refused to cross the community picket line to unload cargo from Zim Integrated Shipping Services Ltd., the oldest and largest Israeli-owned shipping company. At the time, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions had also put out a call for workers to support their struggle against “Zionism, occupation, militarism and apartheid,” Kiswani continued.

“Knowing that the Israeli Zim ship would dock at the port of Oakland every weekend, and understanding that apartheid profiteering was something that our local Longshore Warehouse Union had historically opposed during apartheid South Africa, and building on the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, we called for Block the Boat,” Kiswani said.

To organize the effort, they mobilized in the thousands and reached out to workers at union halls. For five consecutive days, hundreds to thousands of people picketed at the Port of Oakland, and the ILWU Local 10 didn’t cross the picket lines. The protest continued for another three months. Beginning in October 2014, Zim ceased to attempt docking at the Port of Oakland. That was, until this June.

An international movement revived

When the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions called for labor solidarity again during Israel’s attacks on Gaza and Jerusalem this spring, activists renewed their calls to block the boats, too. In the Bay Area, Kiswani said organizers heard the Zim shipping company would try to come back to Oakland for the first time in seven years. So for two weeks, thousands of people protested at the Port of Oakland. The ship stayed in the bay, but never attempted to dock.

Protesters also called for international support for workers to stand in solidarity with Palestine and ILWU Local 10. Supporters responded across the globe, including from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), South Africa’s largest federation of trade unions. Protesters also resisted the docking of another Zim ship at the Port of Seattle.

The protest continued hundreds of miles north. Unable to dock its ship, Zim sailed it to Prince Rupert, Canada, a majority Indigenous and First Nations community with a total population of 12,000. Though Zim likely thought the ship could unload there unnoticed, Kiswani said, First Nations people and port workers continued the picket, preventing that same ship from docking and unloading for two days.

“It's incredible what we're seeing. The First Nation siblings in Prince Rupert were able to demonstrate what international solidarity is, and what's at stake for us to stand in solidarity with Palestine, because they understand settler colonialism,” Kiswani said.

Policing apartheid

The Block the Boat protest in Seattle was less successful.

For five days protesters were able to keep that ship at bay. On the sixth day of picketing, the Seattle Police Department attacked protesters, allowing for the ship to dock and unload, Kiswani said.

“At this juncture, we're exposing what apartheid Israel is — its relationship to policing and militarism, and the very fact that workers are standing in solidarity, the only way Zim is being able to work [is] if it's forced to by law enforcement, which really shows the relationship between state violence and apartheid Israel, and also at the receiving end of it, our community and our solidarity and the workers and the city council members who've all stood up and said, this is the time to disrupt apartheid,” Kiswani said.

Kiswami noted that this violence extends across the world: The Zim company has been instrumental in exporting weapons across the Global South, with Israel using U.S. dollars to make weaponry and then exporting weaponry to be used by “repressive regimes and law enforcement agencies to use against other poor working class Black and brown Indigenous communities across the world.”

A whole world to win

By blocking the largest shipping line from the state of Israel, Block the Boat is “not only showing and demonstrating solidarity with Palestine. We are also interrupting international commerce and global capitalism, and isolating Israel economically and politically. And lastly, we're building international community and worker solidarity,” Kiswani said.

"Blocking the boat not only shows that the world supports BDS, that we can actually have a tangible impact on the state of Israel, but also shows the power of labor, the power of labor solidarity, the power of community and worker solidarity.”