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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Caterpillar's D9 bulldozer, which weighs about 60 tons and stands about 13 feet tall, is engineered, Caterpillar's Web site says, "for demanding work." The bulldozer is equipped, like a tank, with a pair of all-terrain rubber tracks in place of wheels, and the models used in Israel are often retrofitted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with armor plating and other accoutrements of a modern military, including machine guns and even grenade launchers.
The D9 and its larger cousin, the D10, are the Israeli military's construction weapon of choice in the country's conflict with the Palestinians, often accompanying other, more traditional, military equipment on raids into Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel routinely uses Caterpillar equipment to demolish the homes of suicide bombers and wanted suspects in terrorist attacks. According to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, the IDF has demolished more than 550 Palestinian homes since October of 2001 as part of this campaign. Daniel McQueen, a research analyst at the Investor Responsibility Research Center, an independent firm that offers guidance on shareholder resolutions put forward at corporations, says the Cat D9 is so central to the military's work in the Palestinian territories that Israeli troops even have an affectionate nickname for the machine -- "Duby," the Hebrew word for bear.
Because it uses Caterpillar bulldozers against the homes of suicide bombers, Israel maintains that Caterpillar equipment is crucial to its fight against terrorism. But the groups that call for Caterpillar to curb its sales of bulldozers to the IDF complain that Israel does not always use great care in targeting Palestinian homes for destruction. For instance, they point to the raid of the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002, which Israel carried out in response to a Palestinian suicide bombing in the city of Netanya that killed 29 Israelis. In that incursion, the IDF used Caterpillar equipment to completely or partially destroy more than 300 Palestinian homes. In its report on the Jenin raid, which killed 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers, Human Rights Watch criticized the IDF's use of bulldozers that were "sent in to clear paths through Jenin camp's narrow, winding alleys." This tactic, Human Rights Watch said, left civilians little time to flee.
"In some cases civilians were not adequately warned of the impending destruction, and in one case a handicapped person died as his house was bulldozed above him and as relatives pleaded with the soldiers to stop," the organization reported. "The damage caused by the bulldozers caused permanent damage to many buildings and rendered others uninhabitable or unsafe. Water and sewage mains were disrupted, as well as much of the other infrastructure." Groups calling for Caterpillar's withdrawal from Israel also point out that Israel does not only destroy homes as a response to terrorism; it has, in fact, demolished many more Palestinian homes as part of its settlement-building policy in the West Bank, B'Tselem notes. The Israeli government is also using Caterpillar bulldozers in the construction of the barrier Israel is building along its border with the West Bank; although the Israeli public is widely supportive of the barrier as a necessary measure to prevent terrorist attacks, Palestinians have bitterly criticized the structure for cutting into their territory.
Proponents of the Caterpillar resolution draw a direct parallel between their action and the effort, during the 1970s and '80s, to call on American corporations, banks and universities to stop doing business with the apartheid government of South Africa. In that campaign, countless protests by college students, religious leaders, and ordinary customers persuaded many American firms to cut or loosen ties with South Africa. The consequent economic hardship this caused to the South African regime has been credited with leading, eventually, to apartheid's end.
For advocates of what's called socially responsible investing, the campaign to divest from South Africa stands as the primary example of how ethically based financial decisions can bring about positive changes in politics. The conflict in the Middle East, though, is immeasurably more complex than the one in South Africa, because, at least in the United States, there's no clear consensus over which side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a legitimate claim to the moral high ground. Israel regards any comparison between its actions and those of the apartheid South African government as odious.
"It is yet another example of trying to equate what goes on with our area with what clearly was an evil system and an evil regime," says David Roet, the deputy consul general of Israel to the Midwest, where Caterpillar is based. The main difference between what goes on in the Middle East and what went on in South Africa is obvious, Roet says -- terrorism. "It is not the Israelis that need to be pushed for change. All that needs to be done is to stop terrorism -- there will be no need for a boycott if terrorism is stopped. We don't need any encouragement to realize that in order to settle this we must make necessary concessions." But Israel must act against terrorism, Roet says, and for that it needs Caterpillar bulldozers.
