This is important and I've been sitting on it, sorry. Four points:
--Caterpillar has temporarily stopped delivering bulldozers to Israel. JPost:
Caterpillar, the company which supplies the IDF with bulldozers, has announced that it is delaying the supply of D9 bulldozers during the time that the trial of Rachel Corrie proceeds, Channel 2 reported on Monday.
--Sydney Levy of Jewish Voice for Peace interprets the news in this manner:
These are weaponized bulldozers that are used to illegally destroy homes and orchards of Palestinian families. And they are the very same bulldozers as the one that killed a 23-year-old American peace activist named Rachel Corrie seven years ago when she tried to protect the home of the Nasrallah family in Gaza.
...The news reports say that the deliveries have been suspended now because Rachel's parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, are bringing a civil suit against the government of Israel ... We take this as an indirect admission by the company that these bulldozers are being used to violate human rights and to violate the law. The Corrie story is sadly just one of thousands of stories of loss and pain.
A suspension of the sale of bulldozers is what we have been asking Caterpillar for over seven years now. This is a great win, but this is no time to let off the pressure.
--Speaking of JVP, the group has the honor of being on the Forward's list of the 50 leaders in the Jewish community in the last year, right there with Abe (No Soup For You) Foxman. The Forward states, neutrally:
This post (already done under the earlier article today about Gaza tunnels) is more directly appropriate here:
To urge divestment of a major financial investor in Caterpillar:
link to salsa.democracyinaction.org
To urge Obama to support a Caterpillar extension of its temporary stop to sending bulldozers to the IDF during the Rachel Corrie trial:
link to salsa.democracyinaction.org
To stay updated on the Rachel Corrie trial (next trial dates Nov 4, 15):
link to rachelcorriefoundation.org
Excellent links. Thanks for providing them.
It’s good to see companies realizing the need for projecting an image of good corporate citizens (even when dragged kicking & screaming to get there).
Caterpillar is doing this in spite of, not because of Obama. Wonderful news! Thank you Jewish Voices for Peace for keeping the world informed.
Maybe one day the discussion can move out of the church basement.
potsherd: ‘Maybe one day the discussion can move out of the church basement’ — to Capitol Hill? That’ll be the day!
Why merely suspend or freeze? Why not abide by a code of ethics, one that is unequivocal, clear and concise, wherein the company — Caterpillar — refuses to be associated with the machinery of death and destruction, war crimes and human rights violations?
Has Caterpillar no moral values?
No Avi, Caterpillar has no morals – corporations for the most part are collective sociopaths -
“In a shocking account published in the May 31, 2001 edition of Yediot Aharonot, Moshe Nissim, who had been suspended from his job as a senior inspector in the Jerusalem municipality on suspicion of having accepted bribes from contractors and other business owners, recounted his role in the attack on the Jenin refugee camp. Drunk and shirtless, he drove a massive D-9 army bulldozer on an officially sanctioned rampage.
“I didn’t even know how to operate the D-9,” Nissim recalled. “Within two hours, they [Israeli soldiers] taught me to drive forward, and clear a flat surface. I tied the ‘Beitar’ football team flag to the back of the bulldozer and told them: ‘Move away, let me work.’ They knew I had no fear, that I don’t give a damn…
“For 75 hours, with no break, I just erased and erased, I kept drinking whisky to fight off fatigue. Over the loudspeaker, they were told to leave their houses before I destroyed them. But I did not give a chance to anyone. I did not wait. I did not touch the house and wait for them to come out. I would simply give the house a massive blow so that it would collapse as quickly as possible in order to get to other houses. To do a lot.
“I found joy with every house that came down, because I knew they didn’t mind dying, but they cared for their homes. If you knocked down a house, you buried 40 or 50 people for generations. If I am sorry for anything, it is for not tearing the whole camp down.” ”
BULLDOZER TERRORISM
Caterpillar shareholders are unlikely to be interested. Ethics might take 30% off the top line. There’s a lot of money to be made propping up Yesha. Which is why nothing will change until the whole Zionist project collapses.
It’s doubtful that stopping deliveries of D9 bulldozers would change anything in Israel’s mentality; it was the viciousness of Moshe Nissim on a destruction rampage that tore through Jenin. What killed Rachel Corrie was the asshole driving the D9 and he would have have killed her just as mercilessly had she stepped in front of his Honda SUV. F16s and Apache helicopters used by Israelis have caused much more death and destruction and no one is talking about the companies that are producing them. Going after Caterpillar is taking the heat off Israel that could buy any other make of giant earth-moving bulldozer and install the 10 tonnes of armor on it. The armor on the D9 is made and installed by the IDF that also supplies it for the American military D9s.
Walid,
While it’s true that both airplane and bulldozer can wreak havoc, (1) It’s far cheaper to operate a bulldozer that consumes diesel fuel, than to operate an airplane that consumes jet fuel and requires frequent maintenance. (2) It’s far easier for Israel to hide behind the veneer of the building-permit legality than to drop bombs from the air on a regular basis. (3) Due to the myriad of international laws governing the use of munitions, Israel faces less criticism when it does not use such munitions. Instead, it’s far more sustainable, diplomatically, to limit aerial bombing to few weeks every several years. (4) It’s far less conspicuous to use a bulldozer on the ground than to fly sorties over the occupied territories dropping bombs.
Together, these factors enable Israel to use the Caterpillar D9 at such high frequency, a matter that makes the machine more destructive and lethal than an F16.
As an aside, I suppose the argument can be made that home demolitions do not kill Palestinians as frequently as one aerial bombing does. But, bear in mind that life expectancy can be greatly influenced by living conditions, among other factors, including psychological stresses and trauma, illnesses such as tuberculosis and immune deficiency can have destructive effects. Human beings cannot survive without proper shelter, even animals can’t; that’s why many burrow underground. So the long term effects are quite destructive to both property and human alike.
Avi, cost is not a deterrent since as you know, Israel gets all its fuel for its planes, tanks, Humvees , military bulldozers and so on from the US free of charge. We saw those D9s in action destroying the crops in Gaza and ripping out water piping out of the ground as the IDF was about to pull out in January 2009.
While it may be free, it’s certainly not supplied in an unlimited capacity, nor is it supplied equally across the board.
That validates the argument I was making in the post above.
Avi, yesterday on Cspan, the anchor was interviewing the opponent candidates for the Illinois senate. Amazingly, he started off his interview by asking Alexi Giannoulias his view on the Israeli settlements. Alexi responded that the USA should not be a zoning enforcer. The next question was how was it that one can eat a pizza yet claim to want to distribute it simultaneously? Alexi responded by saying “all options are on the table, beginning with crippling sanctions on Iran.” Mark Kirk’s response was that all options are in the table regarding Iran and the best immediate option was to cut of foreign gas supply to Iran, and we need to concern ourselves with Iranian mullahs,
not Israel’s zoning; the Palestinian factions hate each other so there’s nothing for us to do there except empower diplomacy as Madelein Albright recommended. The Cspan interviewer did not follow up on these responses. That’s what passes for objectivity and analysis on the freest of our TV stations (you know, the one who somehow cannot move its cameras around the Senate or House during sessions).
Citizen,
I’m finding it more and more difficult to differentiate between politicians who are truly clueless and those who are professional liars and propagandists. In the end, both are dangerous, I suppose.
This is why I’m voting for the Green candidate.
True to an extent except for the bad PR that it potentially generates, particularly considering there’s virtually no MSM coverage of the Rachel Corrie trial as far as I can tell.
I have no problem setting sights on other corporations profiting off the blood of victims of the Israelis. Next in the figurative crosshairs should be the politicians who gain in numerous (and most often unacknowledged) ways from supporting this long-running & ongoing bloodbath.
Phil Munger’s article from Alaska on his blog about news coverage of the Rachel Corrie trial. Note the venom in some of the comments.link to progressivealaska.blogspot.com
Rachel Corrie really gets the bile flowing.
A young WOMAN with the unwavering determination.
The driver of Chinese tank in Tiananmen Square had more humanity in his little finger than the schmuck who killed Rachel Corrie.
She under estimated the brutality of those seeking a Greater Israel.
We should all urge TIAA-CREF and CALPERS and all (ethical) mutual funds, etc., etc., to [a] while they own shares in companies that support the occupation, to VOTE THOSE SHARES AGAINST THE OCCUPATION and [b] to divest themselves of those shares.
This is paradoxical: the owners (share-holders) of any corporation can direct its business strategy for ANY REASON (or for NO REASON AT ALL), including for environmental reasons, legal reasons, ethical reasons, or (usually) to MAKE MONEY. We are asking corporations to LOSE MONEY and we should make this request via OWNERS (major share-holders, such as mutual funds and pension plans). So when we ask them to DIVEST, we ask them to LOSE CLOUT.
However, we also want to make noise, to make waves! Make a fuss!
Even if we stopped Caterpillar from doing business in Israel generally (a maximal goal), we would not stop the occupation (for there are other suppliers); and we cannot stop the weapons-makers from selling to Israel, though we could try!
But these are good ways to make waves. Let’s do it!
What most suggests the advance of the BDS movement is the fear and desperation that it elicits from Zionists.
Phil: Thanks for that compliment. We should get you on the Nobel nominating committee (no chance getting you on the Forward 50 nominating committee I’m afraid).
I’m also afraid I’ll never be nominated or elevated to the Forward 50 as long as Jane Eisner remains managing editor. I criticized the Forward during the last presidential campaign for taking lying RJC ads which claimed Obama was anti Israel. I know for a fact I’m blackballed.
Which is funny when you think about it because Alana Newhouse, now the editor of the neocon funded Tablet, even published a piece by me when she was at The Forward. But the supposedly more liberal Eisner is threatened by any criticism & treats it as unpardonable, forgetting that this is precisely what good (Jewish) journalism is supposed to do.