Twenty-three years after Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by a Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza, two divestment successes in her home state of Washington have brought her some measure of justice.
Last month, the Office of the Washington State Treasurer divested its $62 million in Caterpillar bonds, and on March 24, the Olympia, Washington City Council voted unanimously to include a strongly worded statement in its ethical investment policy, which includes no investment in entities that engage in apartheid or illegal occupation.
Rachel was defending the home of the Nasrallah family in Rafah, Gaza, where she spent her nights as an International Solidarity Movement volunteer. Olympia is where Corrie grew up, and her family still resides.
With the state treasurer, Mike Pellicciotti, selling off the Caterpillar bonds, it makes Washington the first U.S. state to divest from all companies on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions short list, according to Noam Perry, Research Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee’s Action Center for Corporate Responsibility.
The list focuses on publicly traded companies that are deeply involved in Israeli apartheid. According to human rights organizations, Israel has been using Caterpillar bulldozers to demolish Palestinian homes for decades.
The statement from the Treasurer’s Office says about the Caterpillar divestment, “These actions were taken to generate appropriate liquidity and to reallocate investments in accordance with the treasury investment team’s approved 2026 bond portfolio, which includes newly added corporations for investment.”
In other words, his investment team deemed Caterpillar bonds a risky investment, since other entities are divesting from the company, such as Norway, the Netherlands, and Alameda County in California.
But Perry indicated that wasn’t the entire story.
“We know for a fact that it was because of activist pressure,” he tells Mondoweiss.
Rae Levine of Seattle Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) said that is true. Along with Washington for Peace and Justice, a Palestinian-led organization, the organizations had spent over a year pressuring the Washington State Investment Board to divest from Israeli apartheid.
Levine explained that the state has two funding pots — the Washington State Investment Board, which manages pension funds, and the Office of the Treasurer, which manages the state’s operating funds. According to Diana Fakhoury of Washington for Peace and Justice, the Washington State Investment Board still holds investments in 53 companies on the BDS short list in its portfolio — about $1 million.
According to AFSC Action Center for Corporate Responsibility Director Dov Baum, when activists seek divestment, they target an entity’s operating funds, because “it can be done easily since these funds are usually managed by a treasurer.”
“We usually look at operating funds, not retirement funds,” Baum explained. “There are very few pension funds that look at ethical concerns, because these funds need to be stable and long-term. And this is very difficult (to affect).”
“And we consider this complete divestment.”
As state treasurer, Pellicciotti had already instituted an environmental and socially responsible investment policy for his department, and activists just had to point out to him that Caterpillar did not meet the standards. His office reviewed the Caterpillar investment and discovered that other entities had divested from the company, which made it risky and controversial.
“It’s very significant for a treasurer to say that an investment is risky,” said Levine.
The coalition’s next step is to convince the state investment board to adopt a responsible investment policy. They will support a piece of legislation called the Responsible Investment Act, which failed to pass the state legislature this session but will likely be reintroduced when the legislature meets again in January 2027.
In a statement posted by the Illinois-based heavy equipment company, Caterpillar continued to deny responsibility for how Israel uses the bulldozers it purchases from them. After saying “We do not condone the illegal or immoral use of any Caterpillar equipment,” Caterpillar further stated that it is “subject to strict anti-boycott requirements under two U. S. laws.”
The divestment effort in Olympia, Washington, is a different story because the newly amended investment policy was approved unanimously by the city council.
The updated language reads in part, “The city will refrain from investment in companies with primary business functions in harmful industries, such as tobacco, fossil fuels, mass incarceration or immigrant detention, and weaponry of any kind, or in companies with a consistent record of direct involvement in severe human rights violations such as slavery and prison labor, war crimes, illegal military occupation, racial segregation or apartheid.”
City Councilmember Clark Gilman, an early supporter of the inclusion effort, said, “I hope this inspires other local governments to join us in saying our investment dollars should not support human rights violators, fossil fuels, or weapons of war.”
For Cindy and Craig Corrie, Rachel Corrie’s parents, these two divestment actions are the culmination of a long journey that included lawsuits against both Israel and Caterpillar, seeking help from U.S. government officials, and founding the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice in the difficult months after Rachel’s death.
Although several U.S. officials, including former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, agreed that Israel’s investigation of Rachel’s death was inconclusive, the U.S. never pressured Israel to conduct a more complete investigation. And Israeli courts, deciding on the Corrie’s lawsuits against Israel, ruled that Rachel’s death was an accident.
When the Corrie family filed a lawsuit against Caterpillar, on behalf of Rachel and four Palestinian families who were victims of Israeli demolitions using Caterpillar bulldozers, U.S. federal district courts dismissed the case. The court held that, since the U.S. paid for the Caterpillar bulldozers, it would be inadmissible for the court to intrude on the executive branch’s foreign policy decisions.
Former U.S. Representative from Washington, Brian Baird, even introduced a bill in 2003 calling for a thorough investigation. Although 78 House members co-sponsored the measure, it never reached a vote.
But the Corrie family, which includes Rachel’s sister Sarah, has never given up, continuing to work for justice in Palestine at the grassroots level, through the Rachel Corrie Foundation and with other organizations.
“We never felt the things we pursued were a waste of time,” said Cindy Corrie, during a telephone interview. “They were all steps in the process.”
Following the beginning of Israel’s assault on Gaza in October 2023, this process led them to form an alliance with other Olympia activists, called the Palestine Action of the South Sound (PASS), which spearheaded the ethical investment policy campaign. Olympia borders the southern part of Puget Sound.
Divestment based on responsible investment policies is the wave of the future, according to Perry. The American Friends Service Committee’s Divesting for Palestinian rights website lists dozens of cities, counties, states, universities, and organizations that have divested from Israel bonds or companies that support Israeli apartheid.
The organization’s Action Center for Corporate Accountability offers guidance and support for groups working on divestment. Cindy Corrie said Perry and Baum, helped navigate both the Washington state and Olympia efforts, even coming to Seattle to work with them in person.
“This is a great example of what can happen, and is happening,” she said.
