Block the Boat Fail: Unleashing the scourge of red lentils upon the world

Its all about the "occupation", they’ll tell you. 

And that’s why dock workers and longshoremen at the Port of Oakland were harassed for four days.

All to prevent crates of sparkling wine, olives and ceramic tiles from Spain, cheese and rice from Italy and organic red lentils from Turkey from being unloaded from the Zim Piraeus. Or perhaps the fanatics were targeting the irrigation equipment and solar heaters that happened to be manufactured in Israel.

More likely the protesters simply didn’t care. 

They didn't care that the Piraeus ZIM Piraeus wasn’t Israeli-owned or flagged. They didn’t care that ZIM America contracts with a Greek company Costamare to manage and operate ZIM Piraeus. Slightly more than 30% of Zim is owned by Israeli interests and that was good enough for them

For years, anti-Israel activists have been struggling to grow their movement, to find linkages with progressive causes. Unions were a natural target, and the International Longshore Workers Union Local 10 has been courted by the haters for years. What role the union and the local in particular played in this fiasco are yet to be determined.