Finning International
Finning International, a Canadian company headquartered in Vancouver, is the world's largest distributor of Caterpillar products. In Israel, Caterpillar bulldozers are used to destroy Palestinian homes and civilian infrastructure, build Israel's security wall which confiscates Palestinian land, and injure and kill civilians.
Caterpillar's D9 bulldozers are equipped by Israeli military corporations with machine gun mounts, smoke projectors, grenade launchers, and bullet proof windows. These bulldozers can plow six feet into a concrete structure in a single blow, and can penetrate five feet and five inches into the ground. In Jones Defence Weekly, an Israeli military commander referred to Caterpillar bulldozers as “the key weapon” in its military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Caterpillar bulldozers are the main weapon used by the Israeli Army to demolish Palestinian homes. According to the United Nations, between September 2000 and December 2004, the Israeli Army destroyed a total of 4,170 Palestinian homes. A recent report cited by the United Nations shows that 47% of the homes demolished by the Israeli military were never home to anyone suspected of military activity against Israel. Caterpillar bulldozers also destroy olive orchards. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food says that Caterpillar bulldozers violate Palestinian people's right to food.
On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, a 23 year old American peace activist, was killed by a DP Cat bulldozer as she attempted to protect a Palestinian home from demolition. On April 9, 2002, an Israeli soldier used a Caterpiller bulldozer to demolish the home of Fathiya Muhammad Sulayman Fayed, killing her paralyzed and disabled son who was still inside at the time of the demolition.
Israel's Security Wall, also referred to as an “Apartheid Wall”, was condemned by the International Court of Justice. The International Court of Justice is of the opinion that the Security Wall is illegal and has called for its destruction. Groups and individuals including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UN Special Rapporteur on Food Rights and the American Presbyterian Church have called on Caterpillar to change its policy on selling their bulldozers for use by the Israeli military. Caterpillar Inc. has thus far refused to change its policies and practices.
The Seattle Law School Human Rights Clinic in collaboration with the Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a lawsuit against Caterpillar on behalf of seven Palestinian families and the parents of Rachel Corrie. Caterpillar is being charged with wrongful death, negligence, extra-judicial killing, and war crimes.
Finning International sells Caterpillar bulldozers to the Israeli military knowing they will be used for serious human rights violations, including taking the homes, property, and lives of Palestinian civilians. There have been several instances in which corporations have been held criminally responsible for engaging in similar behaviour. For example, in 2005 a Dutch businessman was sentenced to 15 years in prison for providing Saddam Hussein's regime with the poison gas that was then used to kill thousands of Kurdish people in Halabja in the late 1980s. During the Nuremburg trials, corporate executives who sold an ordinary pesticide to the Nazis were jailed for war crimes because those pesticides were used to kill human beings in gas chambers. This was despite the fact that the executives claimed that they could not have known how the pesticide would be used when they sold it.
Sources: US Campaign to End the Occupation <www.endtheoccupation.org>
