In the wake of last month’s historic protest at the port of Oakland, CA – a community picket line that was honored by longshore workers, resulting in a 24-hour delay in the unloading of an Israeli ship – Israel and its allies have been putting the screws to the workers’ union, Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. They succeeded in getting some time on the agenda of the local’s meeting this week, and a delegation that included the Deputy Israeli Consul for the Pacifica Northwest and an official of a militant Zionist organization showed up in hopes of getting the union to drop its condemnation of Israel’s attack on the Freedom Flotilla, its blockade of Gaza, and its apartheid wall in the West Bank.
Happily, according to a report by the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee, the upshot was "a rejection of the Zionists’ appeal and reaffirmation of the Local’s opposition to the Israeli actions." Roberta Seid, a lecturer at the University of California at Irvine and Education/Research Director of Stand With Us – a group best known for hounding critics of Israel on university campuses – had flown up from Los Angeles to try to "educate" the union’s officials and rank and file, but according to the report "she was strongly challenged and sent packing to join the dispirited and shocked Israeli delegation who were completely stunned by the union’s rejection of them."
