[Peace-discuss] Caterpillar's war crimes

[C. G. Estabrook]

[This is from Israel's leading liberal newspaper. Caterpillar is of course a 
major war-profiteer: their overseas profits have been massive while, e.g., Ford 
and GM are going broke.  Their HQ are in Peoria. Maybe Illinois anti-war groups 
can put together a sustained campaign against them.  --CGE]

	Published on Thursday, July 24, 2008 by Haaretz
	Caterpillar Fashion
	by Gideon Levy

Israel might be able to go on claiming that it will not be the first to 
introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East, but it cannot do the same 
regarding another weapon of mass destruction: the bulldozer. The claim that 
terror has adopted an original new weapon, a “new fashion” as the public 
security minister put it, once again shows how convenient it is for us to 
present a one-sided and distorted picture.

The bulldozer as a destructive and even lethal weapon was not invented by the 
Palestinians. They are merely imitating an Israeli “fashion” that is as old as 
the state, or at least as old as the occupation. Let us forget for a moment the 
416 villages Israel wiped off the face of the earth in 1948 - that was before 
there were D9 bulldozers - and focus on a more modern fashion. In Israel’s hands 
the bulldozer has become one of the most terrifying weapons in the territories. 
The only difference between the Palestinians’ murderous bulldozer and the 
Israeli bulldozer is in color and size. As usual, ours is bigger, much bigger. 
There is no similarity between the small backhoe the Palestinian terrorist was 
driving and the fearsome D9 driven by Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

 From the dawn of the occupation, Caterpillar has been a major arms supplier to 
Israel, no less than those who provide planes, cannons and tanks. Not for 
nothing are peace activists trying to call for a boycott of the manufacturer. 
Israel has sown almost unimaginable destruction using heavy equipment. Go to 
Rafah, stopping in Khan Yunis on the way, and see the results of the destruction 
scattered there to this day. Whole neighborhoods razed, the contents of houses - 
possessions and memories - crushed under the treads. Have you ever seen a street 
after being “stripped” by a bulldozer? Cars are crushed like tin cans and homes 
become piles of rubble, along with their contents. Any street in Rafah looks 
much worse than King David Street in Jerusalem this week.

In 2004, for example, 10,704 Palestinians were made homeless after the IDF 
destroyed 1,404 homes, mostly in Gaza, due to “operational needs.” In the Jenin 
refugee camp, Israel destroyed 560 homes; the legendary bulldozer driver “Kurdi” 
told how he would swig whiskey as he “turned Jenin into a soccer field.” In 
Operation Rainbow, another bulldozer operation, Israel destroyed 120 homes in 
one day in the Brazil camp in Rafah. Only someone who was in Rafah and Khan 
Yunis at the time can understand what our excellent bulldozers did.

Do not say that our bulldozers only destroy but do not kill. Who killed peace 
activist Rachel Corrie if not a bulldozer whose driver, according to witnesses, 
saw her before he crushed her to death? And what about the Shubi family in the 
Nablus casbah - a grandfather, two aunts, a mother and two children - crushed 
under bulldozers? And who killed Jamal Faid, a handicapped man from the Jenin 
camp, whose wheelchair only was found under the ruins of his house, with his 
body never recovered? Was that not bulldozer terror?

The Palestinians discovered the bulldozer quite late. What is good for us is 
good for them. And how do our security experts propose to fight the new fashion? 
By demolishing the houses of the terrorists. With bulldozers, of course.

–Gideon Levy

© Copyright 2008 Haaretz