Tell Caterpillar Dealers Stop Sales To Israel
Jewish Voice For Peace is offering a service allowing visitors to send bulk faxes and e-mails to over 50 Caterpillar dealers around the world.
The state of Israel uses Caterpillar equipment to destroy Palestinian homes and uproot trees and orchards, making tens of thousands of Palestinians homeless and destroying the foundation of their agricultural economy. On March 16, 2003, a Caterpillar bulldozer crushed non-violent American peace activist Rachel Corrie to death when she stood between it and a Palestinian home in Gaza.
Tell Caterpillar dealers to stop selling to Israel and to support an investigation into Israel’s use of Caterpillar’s equipment.
Oh come on, mo, you buying into this mishigas? A girl can’t get out of the way of a bulldozer that goes all of about a kilometer per hour, where a driver doesn’t exactly have the same visibility you’d have in a Ford Taurus, well, she had it coming.
By the way, not like you need to be unbiased or anything, it’s your blog, but why not dig up how many tunnels for weapons smuggling Israel found under those homes it bulldozed. Then maybe try to calculate how many lives on both sides it saved by closing those passages and confiscating weapons.
Your peacenik stuff’s alright, usually coming from a pretty level-headed place, but enough of this leaning on “I lived in Jerusalem so I know what it’s like” crap.
Instead of just blogging, go all the way and lie down in front of a bulldozer. You’d make for a great martyr.
i’m gonna reiterate yet again that the vast majority of bulldozing has very little to do with weapons tunnels. that’s just a convenient excuse. by far, more houses are bulldozed than weapons tunnels exist. if israel can pinpoint a weapons tunnel with aerial sonar, they don’t need to bulldoze the 30 houses surrounding the one with the entrance unless they’re trying to collectively punish people.
further, the idf never once made the claim that there was a weapons tunnel under the house corrie was defending. rather, they said it needed to be cleared to create a buffer zone on the egyptian/gaza border.
You’ve gone off the deep end, Mo.
Great post mo!
Oh and by the way, the statement that says that “she had it coming” in Johnny Rocket’s post is wholly disgusting! You should be ashamed.
you know what velvl–human rights and justice for all people is more important than israel to me. i refuse to put that idol before that which god demands of me.
Okay, listen, human rights is great and all, but Rachel was on a thinly veiled suicide mission. If she jumped on a train track or chained a bowling ball to her ankle and plunged into the Kinneret, it would have had the same effect. Heck, she could have just stood up, and none of this would have happened. Protest all you want. I have no problem with that, and I’m against any unnecessary bloodshed. I am against really poor judgment on the protester’s part, and I’m really against people on either side turning her into a Christ figure.
And if you’re really into making a stand about all this, I don’t entirely get the point of this Caterpillar petition, which doesn’t hurt Israel, as there are other places to buy machinery, and it will hurt Caterpillar, which had no role whatsoever in all of this. Urge Caterpillar to instead donate a percent of its proceeds from sales to Israel to whatever human rights fund comes to mind, and then maybe you’ll be doing some good and get into that more focused tikkun olam spirit.
Can we also get some action regarding companies that do business with Arab-Muslim establishment regimes who continue to reject recognition of Israel, their fellow-UN member nation? If the Israeli electorate felt more confidence in their security, perhaps they would elect a leadership less prone to bulldozer diplomacy.
yes, i see…give money earned from the blood of palestinians to human rights causes.
if you are a military contractor you should be held accountable for the horrors wreaked with your equipment. you profited from it. helping others kill is your business.
To me, there is an obvious parallel between Rachel Corrie and the Chinese guy who stood in front of the tanks in Tiananmen square
I agree.
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
The sales are through a middle man. This same middle man distributes the caterpillar bulldozers to not only israel, but saudi arabia, jordan, and many other arab states. if it makes you any happier mo, the bulldozers are used on jewish settlements too.
Hi, Lou. I hope nobody finds joy in the thought of anyone’s home being destroyed.
Maybe some relationships in the world are mediated through “middle men” who remove us from culpability and moral accountability…or maybe not.
It’s disgusting to see anyone who claims to be Jewish or have any interest in Judaism say something like “Rachel Corrie had it coming.”
“You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”
— Exodus 22:21
“When you see the ass of your enemy lying under its burden, and would refrain from raising it, you must nevertheless raise it with him.”
— Exodus 23:5
“If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; for you will heap coals of fire on his head, and the LORD will reward you.”
— Proverbs 25:21-22
she had it coming. she killed her self! oh now she’s a martyr. just another “being” with the death cult.
Saying she had it coming or she deserved this is, in my opinion, wrong. That being said, this is not a simple case, and Rachel Corrie is categorically not the Chinese guy in Tiananmen Square. This image deeply offends me, almost as much as the one that compares the kid in the West Bank with the kid in the Holocaust. Here are some basic differences:
1)The man in Tiananmen square wanted freedom for his own country. Rachel Corrie flew in from half way around the globe.
2)The freedom movement was almost entirely peaceful. And while most of the people behind Rachel Corrie were Palestinian civilians who want to live their lives, there are also terrorists among them.
3)In Tiananmen, there were multiple tanks being sent against a small group of peaceful student protesters. In Gaza, there was a single bulldozer sent into a village where there were known terrorists.
This isn’t even looking at the actual sequence of events, which tell a somewhat different story then the one picture you showed. Rachel Corrie’s death was an unfortunate accident. The accident would not have happened if it weren’t for a questionable policy on behalf of the Israeli government. Lives are being lost on both sides, but Rachel Corrie is no different than someone driving to Hebron or throwing rocks at an Israeli soldier. All three know the risks and are pouring fuel on a fire that’s already killed too many people.
You want Caterpillar to stop selling bulldozers to the Israelis? Fine, tell them so. But you’re just taking the whole thing up one more notch. And it can only go so high before…
May God have mercy on us all.
there’s another difference too alex–the chinese soldier stopped the tank.
So did the Israelis, time and time again, until once when she was seated, the bulldozer had a smaller window (the bulldozer in this picture is not the one that ran her down) and someone else was holding the megaphone. She was probably not visible to the driver. How many Americans and Europeans have gone to stand in front of bulldozers?
dude, i don’t buy the visibility factor shit. if you’re in one of those bulldozers you’re high up enough to have a clear view of where the blade touches the ground. it’s precision demolition equipment for a reason.
Who cares, if he saw her or not, she shouldn’t have been there to begin with… You don’t see any of those myopic losers standing in front of any bulldozers now, do you???
all of you should read this article from yehidot aranot, an interview with a soldier responsible for dozens of demolitions at jenin.
I am going to boycott purchasing Caterpillar bulldozers.