Labor for Palestine Salutes West Coast Dockers for Embargo on Israeli Cargo

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Labor for Palestine Salutes West Coast Dockers for Embargo on Israeli Cargo

ILWU President Bob McEllrath
robert.mcellrath@ilwu.org

Dear Pres. McEllrath:

Labor for Palestine salutes ILWU Local 10 and its members for refusing to unload the Israeli ship that arrived in Oakland on June 20 (see reports below*).

Their action is in direct response to Israel’s May 31 brutal assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Taking place in international waters under cover of darkness, the Israeli attack targeted 750 unarmed volunteers from 40 countries seeking to relieve the humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s siege of collective punishment against the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Because of Israel’s attack on the Flotilla, scores were killed and wounded, while hundreds of survivors were abducted, jailed and deported. This act of piracy is a direct extension of the 2008/2009 Gaza massacre that killed 1400 people, most of them civilians, which has been condemned by the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations, including those that are Israeli.

Workers in the United States have particularly good reasons to act. In the past ten years alone, the US government — with overwhelming bipartisan support — has given Israel $17 billion in military aid; over the next decade, it will give another $30 billion.

Top US labor officials — often without the knowledge or consent of union members — collaborate with the Histadrut, the segregated Zionist labor federation, and its mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee, that defend every attack on Palestinian rights, including the Flotilla Massacre.[1] These same leaders invest billions from our union pension and retirement funds in State of Israel Bonds.

Noting that “Gaza today has become the test of our universal morality and our common humanity,” the Palestinian trade union movement has specifically called on dockworkers around the world to refuse to handle Israeli cargo. Local 10 now joins with dockworkers in South Africa, western Australia, Sweden and Norway, who have answered this call.

This action stands in the proud tradition of West Coast dock-workers who refused to handle cargo for Nazi Germany (1934) and fascist Italy (1935); those in Denmark and Sweden (1963), the San Francisco Bay Area (1984) and Liverpool (1988), who refused shipping for apartheid South Africa; those in Oakland who refused to load bombs for the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile (1978); and those at all twenty-nine West Coast ports who held a May Day strike against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (2008).

Israel deliberately carried out the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Massacre in order to silence opposition to its strangulation of Gaza. But just as the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre and the 1976 Soweto Massacre spelled the ultimate doom of South African apartheid, Israel’s attack has already had the opposite effect.

New waves of volunteers are coming forward to break the siege, which is already beginning to crack. The movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel is spreading. Already, it is clear that the Flotilla martyrs did not die in vain.

And just as labor solidarity played a critical role in toppling South African apartheid, it now has the potential to cripple Israeli apartheid. We urge the entire ILWU and all trade unionists to stand behind and expand on this critical issue of conscience and solidarity, and invite supporters to endorse “Labor for Palestine Condemns Gaza Freedom Flotilla Massacre, Supports Worker Action to Boycott Israel”: http://www.laborforpalestine.net/wp/2010/06/07/gaza-flotilla-massacre/.

On behalf of Labor for Palestine,

Monadel Herzallah, President, Arab American Union Members Council, California
Michael Letwin, Former President, ALAA/UAW L. 2325; NYC Labor Against the War; Al-Awda NY; International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network/Labor
Brenda Stokely, Former President, AFSCME DC 1707; NYC Labor Against the War; Co-Chair, Million Worker March Movement

[1] http://www.histadrut.org.il/index.php?page_id=1801; http://www.jewishlaborcommittee.org/2010/06/jlc_on_the_gaza_flotilla_israe_1.html.

cc:

ILWU Secretary-Treasurer William Adams <William.adams@ilwu.org>
ILWU Local 10 President Richard Mead
ILWU Local 10 Secretary-Treasurer Farless Dailey

ILWU Local 10 Executive Board member Jack Heyman

Reports on the June 20 Blockade of an Israeli Apartheid Ship in Oakland