In Oakland, Anti-Israel Protesters Claim Major Victory--Blocking CHINESE Ship

The headline of the LA Times were typical:

Protesters block unloading of Israeli cargo ship in Oakland

Pro-Palestinian protesters on Sunday created a blockade of their own on Sunday by gathering at the Port of Oakland before dawn to block the unloading of an Israeli cargo ship.

It just so happened that neither the headline, nor the story that followed was actually true.


As it turned out, the protesters only managed to block the unloading of a Chinese ship--but that did not prevent the protesters from still claiming a major victory.

Arutz Sheva reports:

Some 500 anti-Israel protesters arrived at the Oakland, California port early Sunday morning, hoping to block an Israeli ship from unloading its cargo. However, the ship did not arrive, and the crowd prevented workers from unloading a Chinese ship instead.

The protesters say they were protesting the recent Israel-Turkey flotilla incident, though they displayed great ignorance about what actually happened; one of them even compared barely armed Israeli Defense Forces troops with Somali pirates.

All you have to do is listen to the rhetoric to see the amount of ignorance that was being pedaled at the protest:




And just to show how little the facts mattered to the protesters, an entirely fictitious narrative was fabricated for the occasion:

protest organizer Richard Becker actually said, "This is the first time [that] an Israeli ship was blocked from unloading in a U.S. port… We consider this to be a huge victory and a historic moment.”

More importantly, the media not only got it wrong on which ship was blocked--to a large extent, they failed to point out that is was not the longshoremen who organized the protest.

Zombie points out that the entire protest was put together by the same people who helped organize the original flotilla:

The planned protest and blockade were organized by The Free Palestine Movement (one of the same groups which organized the Gaza “flotilla” in the first place) as well as a rogues’ gallery of nearly every communist, anti-Israel and radical Islamist group in the Bay Area:

Oakland, CA: Join the Labor and Community Picket of an Israeli Zim Lines Ship

Sunday, June 20, 5:30am
Port of Oakland,Berth 57, Middle Harbor Rd.
Protest Israel’s Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla!
Boycott Israeli Ships and Goods!
Lift the Blockade NOW – Let Gaza Live!
Bring Down Israel’s Apartheid Wall!

We call on everyone who stands for justice and against occupation and apartheid to join the June 20 picket at the Port of Oakland. This is a moment of great opportunity. In San Francisco in 1984, a picket line and refusal to unload cargo of a ship carrying South African cargo was a key event in mobilizing the anti-apartheid movement worldwide.

Sponsored by: Labor / Community Committee in Solidarity with the People of Palestine:
Arab American Union Members Council, ANSWER- Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, Palestine Youth Network, US Palestine Community Network, Al Awda- Right to Return Coalition, Arab Youth Organization, MECA-Middle East Children’s Alliance, Students for Justice in Palestine, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, International Solidarity Movement, San Jose Peace and Justice Center, International Socialist Organization, Peace and Freedom Party – SF, Transport Workers Solidarity Committee and many labor activists in the Bay Area

There are other elements of the protest that were mis-reported by the media--read the whole thing.

An interesting point made by Zombie: the protesters are nothing if not pragmatic about whose ships they choose to picket:

It’s not a good sign that fringe groups can dictate which countries get to ship goods into the US. What if someone protested at the port against China’s human rights record? Would the longshoremen stop unloading Chinese ships and bring most West Coast imports to a halt? Obviously not. Pragmatism dictates that you can bully a small trading partner, but not a big one.

It remains to be seen where the protesters go from here.

Technorati Tag: Gaza Flotilla and Zin.