Greek dock workers will refuse to unload Israel's 'murderous cargo'
'We will not unload a single inch of this murderous cargo,' Enedep, the union of dock workers at Athens's port city, said on Tuesday.
'The dock workers of Piraeus will not be complicit. We will not unload military steel from the Ever Golden - no to Greece's involvement - freedom for Palestine,' the workers said.
According to the ship and container tracking site Vessel Finder, the Ever Golden, which is Japanese-owned and sails under the flag of Panama, was sailing off the coast of West Africa on Tuesday morning.
It is expected to reach Piraeus on 14 July. Once it arrives there, its cargo is intended to be moved to another container ship, the Folk Dammam, and taken on to Israel.
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The Ever Golden, which was built in 2018 and is carrying 75 bundles of military-grade steel originating in India, stopped into a port in Singapore for six hours between 12 and 13 June.
Last week, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) anti-Israeli occupation movement posted on social media that the vessel, 'carrying steel to Israel in the middle of its ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians', was on its way to Greece.
'The port of Piraeus is not an advanced outpost of the US, Nato, the EU or the war profiteers'
- Dock workers at the port of Piraeus
'There, the cargo is set to be transferred to the Folk Dammam, which flies the flag of Saudi Arabia.'
The Folk Dammam is then scheduled to take the steel to the port of Haifa in Israel.
A container ship, the Folk Dammam, was bought by Saudi Arabian operator Folk Maritime, which is owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), on 14 May.
According to BDS, the transshipment of military-grade steel was arranged when the vessel was called Vega Coligny and was sailing under the flag of the Marshall Islands. On Tuesday, shipping tracker Marine Traffic placed the Folk Dammam at the port of Mundra on the west coast of India.
'We call on activists and people in Greece and Saudi Arabia - as well as Japan, Panama, Taiwan and all coastal states - to pressure their authorities not to aid this (or any) illegal military transfers to genocidal Israel - and, instead, to stop it,' the BDS movement said.
The Ever Golden's manager, Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd, which is part of Imabari Shipbuilding, is based in Japan. It flies under the Panamanian flag and its operator, Evergreen Marine Corporation, is based in Taiwan.
Middle East Eye has asked Evergreen Marine Corporation and Folk Maritime for comment.
'United against imperialist involvement'
Piraeus dock workers said the Ever Golden was expected to arrive at docks two and three on 12 July carrying military-grade steel.
'This is a war cargo that, if unloaded and transferred, will end up being used to strike children, civilians, hospitals, and schools in the massacre carried out by the murderous state of Israel against the Palestinian people,' the Enedep union said.
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'The port of Piraeus is not an advanced outpost of the US, Nato, the EU or the war profiteers. It is not a transshipment station for deadly cargo. It is a place of work and struggle for the working class. As we have done in the past, we will not unload a single inch of this murderous cargo.'
Enedep called on all dock workers to 'refuse any assignment related to this vessel. Let us stand united against imperialist involvement'.
'We refuse to be tools of the US, Nato, the EU, Israel, or China, who use our country's infrastructure to reshape the world redrawing borders with the blood of nations of the Palestinian people,' the union said.
'We stand on the right side of history and refuse to become targets of retaliation ourselves.'
Dock workers against Israel
The declared action at Piraeus follows in the wake of a series of similar acts of organised resistance at European ports.
On 4 June, French dockers in the CGT union discovered that 19 pallets of submachine gun spare parts were to be loaded at the port of Marseille-Fos onto a Liberian-flagged container ship bound for Haifa.
The dockers located the container, set it aside and refused to load it onto the ship, saying they would "not participate in the ongoing genocide orchestrated by the Israeli government".
Following their lead, the port workers of Genoa, through their union USB, coordinated a garrison at the Port of Genoa, with the aim of preventing the docking of the same ship, the CONTSHIP ERA.
The Italian dock workers said that they, too, did not want to "be complicit in the genocide that continues in Gaza".
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