Wow, another sign that Israel/Palestine is coming home, and that the American left has taken on the issue: a half-dozen Macalester College students, in St. Paul, Minnesota, participated in a lockdown of a Caterpillar distribution plant yesterday, and managed to block a driveway at the plant for some hours. The students know the issue.
Specially armored Caterpillar bulldozers are Israel's tools for the relentless, slow-motion destruction of Palestinian lives, homes, and livelihoods. Israel uses Caterpillar to demolish Palestinian homes, rip up Palestinian olive groves, and to build new settler homes with manicured lawns and central air. Since 1967, Israel has demolished 24,145 Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories; in the same time period, Israel has built 214 settlements and erected a separation wall which cuts deep into the West Bank. Time after time, settlements 'spring up' right where they are most disruptive to local economies, while Israel further shatters trade routes and freedom of movement with Apartheid walls, Israeli-only roads, and pervasive checkpoints. The goal is to push Palestinian's off the land, leaving it open for Israeli settlement. This is not a complicated issue--Israel is enacting a policy of ethnic cleansing and Apartheid onto the Palestinian peoples.
We've put our bodies here today to oppose Caterpillar's participation in occupation and injustice.
h/t Alex Kane.
LOL!!!
I can tell you from personal experience that no one gave a shit in St. Paul. It’s kinda like the old adage, “So if a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there to see, did it really fall?”
It’s sad that you had to link to a no name lefty website because absolutely nobody in the TC covered the story. Even the well respected democratic and progressive blogs and publications didn’t see the need to write about this after school project.
Those kids are really making strides!! LOL….
You say no one gives a shit what these kids do in St. Paul. I think you have it backwards. If even kids in a backwater college like Macalester know what’s going on in Gaza and the Occupied Territories, think what the kids know at Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Stanford. The fact that Macalester students oppose the occupation basically means that students everywhere do.
I would hardly say Macalester is a “backwater college”. Its median ACT is 31 and its SAT median pushes 1400 total. I would characterize it as elite.
it is one of the highest ranking liberal arts schools in the country.
First you say “no one gives a shit” what these kids at Macalester do. Now you say it’s one of the best liberal arts schools in the country. So which is it? A school no one has ever heard of or a school so well regarded that students elsewhere will take a cue from Macalester’s stand on Israel?
Because if there’s anything Zionists hate more than American colleges, it’s that they hate American college youth.
In this case, motivated by sour grapes, I’d wager.
Does this sound like “I wanna only read what everybody else is reading” or what?.. What of a nice little uncharted territory, yonira? Unpaved road every now and then?
And guess what yonira? It’s going to be a tiny little bit less than a totally obscure event now since I’m going to post it on two blogs where I operate. :)
Posted here:
link to angryarabscommentsection.blogspot.com
And here:
link to palestinianpundit.blogspot.com
I’m proud of what those kids are doing!
you are kinda proving my point with links like those. i should have been more specific, no one cares out side the hate-israel circles.
The only thing I’ve ever seen you link to, yonira, is MEMRI and the Jewish Virtual Library.
I suppose you could link to the conservative Islamophobia blogs from which you lift the talking points you parrot, but that would be tipping your hand and exposing you for what you’re doing, huh?
if that weren’t a total lie, maybe you’d be correct. I haven’t figured you out yet Chaos, are you a pathological liar, do you lie to try to better your position, or are you so derainged that you don’t know you are lying, you actually believe the stuff that you say?
They blocked a driveway fior a couple of hours. Now their parents have to pay their fines. Big victory.
It’s how the cookie crumbles…
but it may affect the workers perception of their own company,
which in turn, they may want to help change the policy.
Good job guys. keep up the good work. Brick by brick, the Israeli apartheid regime will fall.
In Houston, several years ago, in front of the Caterpillar building, which is across from a major road, protesters would get boos from passing motorists and angry fists for critical signs against caterpillar and Israel.
These protests are held on a regular basis. Now, the motorists MOSTLY roll down their windows and shout support, honk for support, give thumbs-up and give the peace sign.
Aside from the local independent media, no major network covers the protests. So even without the major news media in Houston, these protesters have seen results, it took hard work and consistency, and of course the continued delegitimization of Israel’s apartheid system and the massacre of Gaza.
Yonira,
Phil’s whole raison d’etre is to troll the internet to find signs of a massive sea change in Americans attitude towards Israel. The most obscure event is elevated to a major revolution waiting to happen. He is projecting way too much. The Intifada is coming! The Intifada is coming! I don’t know about you but this caterpillar nonsense has been going on for years. It is like locking down a knife factory because knives kill people. Thank god for stupid students.
See? They hate American college students.
If you think the anti-apartheid / BDS movement is so ineffective why are you here?
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Macalester is a great college. (Kofi Annan received his BA from there in ’61.) I just sent in a donation to honor these students.
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Let the Zionists continue believing the empire narrative, I’ll stick to the people’s history, thank you very much. Whatever the size of the college and its credentials, whatever the number of the students, these protests just weren’t happening a year ago. There’s significant change in discourse and significant rise in action- if there wasn’t, then why is the state of Israel so worried about its image.