RIOT police deployed today to block off part of the port of Piraeus to stop Palestine solidarity protesters from reaching an Israeli cruise ship.

Protests have been held at islands and mainland ports along the route of the Crown Iris, whose passengers include off-duty Israeli soldiers. Last month, the ship was blocked from docking in Skyros and forced to divert because the protests were so huge.

At Piraeus today demonstrators held up flares and waved Palestinian flags around the police cordon. The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) welcomed “a resounding message from the people of Athens and Piraeus to the murderous state of Israel, that its soldiers who murder the Palestinian people, children and civilians are unwanted in our country.”

Police shut off roads before dawn, but protesters marched on the port behind the banner of the Labour Centre of Piraeus, the port’s trades council. A delegation of trade unions then arrived and handed fire extinguishers to police — a pointed rebuke to the Greek state’s mobilisation of resources to suppress Palestine solidarity when it cannot deploy enough firefighters to battle raging wildfires in the country. KKE MP Thanasis Pafilis raised a complaint over these wrong priorities with Citizen Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis.

Targeting Israeli tourism has caught attention, with Israeli television running interviews with people who had planned to holiday in Greece. Initially sceptical on the grounds it affected ordinary Israeli citizens, the KKE has since become a major organiser of protests on the grounds the Israel Defence Forces are involved in booking soldiers onto cruises.