On Friday, June 4, 2021, the Volans, a ship operated by ZIM, an Israeli shipping company, did not unload its cargo as planned at the Oakland, California port. Responding to a Palestinian call to action, hundreds of community members, organizations, and International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 members picketed the dock’s gates, and the Volans left with its cargo still on board.

“Our monumental victory against Israel’s largest cargo shipping company demonstrates that gone are the days that the apartheid state of Israel can expect to do business as usual,” said Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), the group leading the #BlockTheBoat protests. “Just as successful boycotts against the South African government, businesses, and institutions helped mark the end of the apartheid regime, we are seeing communities turn the tide against Israel’s ongoing occupation, apartheid, racism, and violence against the Palestinian people who are fighting for their liberation.”

Boycotts played a key role in turning the tide on apartheid-era South Africa, and AROC’s campaign — an effort that has more than one hundred endorsing organizations — draws on that tradition. The ILWU, whose members unload cargo from ships such as the Volans, took similar action against apartheid South Africa, and the independent union has a consistent pattern of taking militant political action on issues before other unions are willing to publicly take a side. In fact, Friday was the first time ZIM has tried to unload in Oakland since dockworkers refused to handle the ship’s cargo in 2014. (While many US unions are unwilling to side with Palestinians during this latest wave of Israeli aggression, there are exceptions, and United Educators of San Francisco last month became the first educators’ union to endorse the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions [BDS] movement.)