"Upholding our Reputation for Integrity"
Caterpillar and Israeli War Crimes
by
Neve Gordon
Dissident Voice
June 15, 2002
As a
reprisal for last week's Islamic Jihad fatal suicide attack that left 17
Israelis dead and many more wounded, Israeli troops charged Yasser Arafat's
headquarters. Armored bulldozers stormed into the compound, flattening whole
buildings, including several intelligence and military barracks, a jail, and
the offices of the local governor.
In the
past months, the employment of Caterpillar D9 bulldozers as a military weapon
has become widespread. In the Jenin refugee camp, at least 140 of the camp's
buildings were completely leveled, while over 200 others were severely damaged,
leaving an estimated 4,000 people, more than a quarter of the refugee
population, homeless.
Thirty-seven-year-old
Jamal Fayid, paralyzed from his waist down, was one of the D9 casualties.
According to Human Rights Watch, he was crushed in his home because Israeli
soldiers did not allow family members to take him out. The Caterpillar killed him.
D9s were
put to use in other places as well. In a report published by the Israeli rights
group, B'tselem, one reads how Caterpillars were employed to destroy houses in
Nablus's old city in order to make way for Israeli tanks. When the military
left the neighborhood six days later, Palestinians discovered that ten
residents had been inside one of the houses when the demolition took place.
65-year-old Abdallah a-Sha'abi was rescued together with his 53-year-old wife;
the rest were not so lucky.
Israel's demolition
policy was not, however, invented in the operation dubbed "Defensive
Shield." Less than four months before the Jenin attack, some 58 houses
were destroyed in Rafah, rendering at least 500 people homeless in the midst of
a cold winter -- 300 of whom are children.
The razing
of houses in the past months, while unusual in its scale, is part of a
long-term low-intensity warfare tactic that often escapes public attention.
According to Jeff Halper, from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions,
"more than 7,000 houses have been demolished by Israel since 1967, leaving
tens of thousands of Palestinians traumatized and homeless."
The
Israeli government and military is, to be sure, responsible for the
demolitions, which are -- according to today's international legal framework --
in many cases considered war crimes. However, without the big D9 bulldozers
supplied by Caterpillar, it would have been very difficult to destroy the
houses.
When Caterpillar
began doing business with Israel, it could not have known that its products --
which are manufactured for civilian use -- would be employed to commit war
crimes. Now, however, the corporation does know and insofar as it maintains a
business as usual stance, it too is implicated in the violations.
It is
interesting to note that the Israeli Supreme Court might very well agree with
this assessment. In their sentencing of the Nazi-criminal, Adolf Eichmann, the
Supreme Court Judges stated that "the extent to which any one of the many
criminals was close to or remote from the actual killer of the victim means
nothing, as far as the measure of responsibility is concerned. On the contrary,
in general the degree of responsibility increases as we draw further away from
the man who uses the fatal instrument with his own hands."
This
truism gains new meaning in the age of globalization. Decisions made in one
part of the world frequently affect another, and the process of identifying
those responsible has become more complicated. The identity of violators does
not only include state actors, like Eichmann, but also corporations,
international financial institutions, and individuals. Finally, responsibility
is not limited to those determining the policy, giving the orders, or carrying
out the act, but extends to those who supply the perpetrators with the
instruments of destruction.
Caterpillar should not necessarily stop all transactions with Israel, but it must introduce a new clause in its contracts to ensure that products are not employed to perpetrate human rights violations. Globalization offers new opportunities for corporations like Caterpillar, but these opportunities must have a price as well -- the expansion of responsibility. A legal framework that calls attention to this type of responsibility is currently being developed, and while it remains difficult to enforce, the day will come when CEOs will stand trial for their support of and collaboration in war crimes.
Neve
Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University. Email: ngordon@bgumail.bgu.ac.il