Italian Port Workers Stop Arms Shipment to Israel

Italian port workers in Livorno, Tuscany refused to load a shipment of weapons and explosives supposed to be sent to Israel from the Italian city in response to the aggression against Palestinians currently taking place.

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The Italian trade union of port workers, L’Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) stated that the Livorno port can’t participate in the “massacre of the Palestinian people.”

The port workers have refused to fulfil the shipment after knowing the content and the destination, which are basically a load of “weapons and explosives” heading to Israel’s Ashdod port.

The USB was informed about the shipment and its destination through a report by The Weapon Watch, an NGO Research Centre, based in Genoa,  for arms movement and shipments between both European and Mediterranean ports.

Moreover, the NGO has urged the Italian government to semi or fully ban military exports to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict areas.

Pro-Palestinian rallies have hit sevral cities in Italy in support of people in Sheikh Jarrah and to condemn the latest attacks by the Israeli forces on Gaza Strip which killed 197 people including 58 children and 34 women according the ministry of health. 

Arab and foreign countries have organized mass pro-Palestinian demonstrations in order to support Palestinians suffering aggressive attacks by Israeli forces. Many celebrities have also taken the Palestinian cause into their social media accounts while others hit the streets and joined the rallies, such as the American-Palestinian model Bella Hadid.

On the other hand, social media platforms have been accused of selectively interrupting freedom of speech by deleting and banning content supporting Palestine and showing the massacre that is going on in Gaza.

In addition to social media platforms’ crackdown on pro-Palestinian posts and contents, Google Maps is accused of blurring Gaza area or according to Samir , an open-source investigator, who said to BBC: “we don't get high-resolution satellite images from Israel and Palestinian territories,” adding that low resolution images set their work back.

After several days of high tension between Israel and Palestine as well as the aggressive airstrikes by Israeli forces on Gaza Strip, officials in Gaza reported that Sunday was  the deadliest day in the current conflict so far.