Caterpillar Kills Palestinians
Stop Cat and catdestroyshomes.org is a movement to highlight the use of Caterpillar D-9 and D-10 armoured bulldozers by the Israeli occupation forces to destroy the homes of Palestinians. This has resulted in over 1000 homes being destroyed and several deaths, including that of a U.S.
Stop Cat and catdestroyshomes.org is a movement to highlight the use of Caterpillar D-9 and D-10 armoured bulldozers by the Israeli occupation forces to destroy the homes of Palestinians. This has resulted in over 1000 homes being destroyed and several deaths, including that of a U.S. citizen, Rachel Corrie who was crushed to death by a Caterpillar bulldozer after the soldier driving refused to stop at her protest.
On April 14th, 2004, the Interpress News Agency reported that Caterpillar shareholder activists had the issue of supply to the Israeli government placed on the shareholder meeting ballot. While this motion was defeated, fully 4% voted for the resolution, resulting in it to reappear on the ballot at next years AGM.
Now is the time to start spreading the word and recruiting small shareholders (typically to hold the minimum number of shares to vote) for further actions against Caterpillar.
The business press is reporting that Jean Ziegler of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote to Caterpillar that Israel used the bulldozers to raze homes and destroy crops. This is clearly an issue industry is watching very closely. Having been involved in successful shareholder activism, forcing Wesfarmers to stop old growth logging in Australia, I can attest that shareholder activism is one of the most effective ways of combating the collusion between corporations and their lapdog politicians.
As an opening salvo, I wrote the following letter to Caterpillar via their web form:
I read today that the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote to Caterpillar that Israel used the bulldozers to raze homes and destroy crops of Palestinians.
I am outraged that Caterpillar and it’s executive officers should so inhumanely ignore the intended use of their products sold to the Israeli government with full knowledge of their past use. I am also outraged that the Caterpillar executive officers place short term profit ahead of long term prosperity from ethical corporate citizenship. I would remind Caterpillar of examples such as Chiquita Bananas and Wesfarmers Pty Ltd (Australia, WES.AX) as examples of companies which have revised their business practices in light of unethical behavior to improve their business performance.
I call on Caterpillar to avoid continuing public relations risks to investors by halting sales to Israeli defence forces unless it can receive public statements from Israel that Caterpillar bulldozers will not be used for activities against the Palestinian people.
The reference to Chiquita bananas refers to that company’s reform given it’s unethical behaviour.