Tampa activists protest ZIM cargo lines to showcase Israeli civil rights violations
By Dezerey Lyn
(Guest contributor)
The following is a write up of the blockade action carried out by members of Block the Boat Tampa, Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine USF, Students for a Democratic Society, Tampa Food not Bombs, Tampa Light Brigade, International Women’s Peace Service in Palestine and many others- included are photos taken by John Thomas of Occupy Tampa who also live streamed the event in its entirety:
In the early hours of Saturday morning, September 20th, activists from nearly a dozen organizations converged at the entrance way to the Port of Tampa to protest the incoming ZIM Alabama as Israel’s largest cargo shipping company. Our message to ZIM and to Israel is that we do not accept Israeli apartheid on our shores- Seeing that Operation Protective Edge, carried out by Israeli forces, just violently extinguished the lives of over 2,100 Palestinians- over 500 of them children, most of them completely innocent civilians who posed no threat whatsoever, the free, unabated transfer of goods and commerce from their shores to ours should not happen.
With flags, banners, signs, Tampa Light Brigade messaging and placards, we dozens on the ground immediately began a moving picket through every intersection, held ground at the mouth of the port and then united for a march inside the port where we were instantly flanked by police who worked quickly to surround chanting, singing blockaders with cones which were then pushed back twice. Protesters returned the push and many cones ended up on in piles laying on their sides by noon time.
Police immediately surrounded a Palestinian American woman and threatened to arrest her as she held her sign high. She refused to move, refused to allow the police to continue to work the cones back to keep protesters out of sight of eventually entrancing rank and file ILA Tampa local 1402 members. Two organizers of Block the Boat stood by her sides letting police know that if they were to arrest her, they would have multiple arrests to execute, this as a livestream tech recorded the confrontation. Police backed off and protesters continued to scream our resistance into the rainy early morning sky.
We received word that ILA members would not enter port until roughly 1pm as there was an unspecified 12 hour docking delay and 7-8 hour cargo unloading delay that was taking place. The convergence was broken as word spread like fire through social media for support on the ground when we converged again at noon.
At noon, many new faces had arrived and we prepared to enter the port once again. A second moving picket was established which ended in a soft block, slowing down massive trucks entering to move the incoming cargo to local receivers. A dozen blockaders marched backwards through the long entrance drive to the port holding massive banners addressing our resistance and personal messages to Longshoremen local.
As police stood by helplessly mocking the crowd, our day of solidarity with Palestine, from Gaza to the West Bank, and our furious resistance to Israeli apartheid and to US complicity in incremental genocide ended in a singing, drumming, chanting, moving picket line through toppled cones and our sights already set on the next blockade.
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Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
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Apparently there were around 50 people at the port of Tampa early Monday morning. These groups are free to demonstrate, but it would seem apparent that a vast majority disagree with their point of view.
Every action raises conscience.
Any one with a functioning conscience will be moved to act if they have the TRUE facts which include that we the people of the USA who pay taxes are most complicit in Israel’s apartheid policies and human rights violations against the indigenous Palestinians.
Perhaps WHY most Americans do not have eyes to see that reality is they are blind to USA history via-a-vis ethnic cleansing of another indigenous population nor do they comprehend how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hits them in the wallet!
The common figure given for U.S. aid to Israel is $3 billion per year—$1.2 billion in economic aid and $1.8 billion in military aid.
However that only represents about one-sixth of total U.S. foreign aid to Israel which sustains the illegal, immoral and untenable Occupation of Palestine.
Much of the money the U.S. gives Israel is buried in the budgets of other government agencies, primarily the Defense Department and other subsidies come such as the early disbursement of aid, which allows Israel to gain – and the U.S. taxpayer to lose – the interest on the unspent money!
You give me the impression that by “functioning conscience” you mean to think as you do. If so, then the majority simply don’t have one. What either of us believes to be the truth is, unfortunately, irrelevant in the case of the clash between Palestine and Israel.
Personally I don’t believe the leaders on either side will be content until the other is eliminated. I also don’t see either as coming to the table with clean hands. That being said, it’s simply a fact that for the foreseeable future the majority have sympathy for Israel and none for the people of Palestine. For that reason aid to Israel is unlikely to end.
I won’t quibble what will be or not be- and the issue remains:
Silence in the face of injustice is unconscionable as well as complicit.
All a truth teller can do is tell it irregardless of outcome because conscience calls to do something!
True, but in the case of the conflict here, I’m not sure what the real truth is. In addition it seems unjust to try to punish the owners of a shipping company for the sins of others.