Today, April 11th, 2022, Princeton University, commenced the voting on the referendum launched by Committee on Palestine (PCP) to boycott the American company Caterpillar for suppling Israel with machinery and equipment used to commit crimes against the Palestinian people
The university’s student council proposed the referendum on March 27th. The referendum calls on the University to “Immediately halt usage of all Caterpillar construction machinery in ongoing and future campus construction projects.”
Students will vote starting from Monday (today) until next Wednesday, on whether their university should halt using Caterpillars machinery on campus because of its role in the “demolition of Palestinian homes, the murder of Palestinians and other innocent people, and the promotion of the prison-industrial complex.”
Caterpillar Inc. is an American company whose headquarters are located in the state of Illinois. it is famous for being the largest construction-equipment manufacturing company in the world, according to a ranking by a British construction magazine with annual sales of nearly $25 billion (yellow table 2021) last year with machinery sold worldwide
The referendum to halt the American company’s caterpillar machinery that has been used frequently in Historic Palestine and Israel. In fact, Caterpillar has made a large profit from their sales of D9 bulldozers to the Israeli government.
As recently as 2001, court documents revealed that Caterpillar sold 50 of its D9 bulldozers to the state of Israel for the sum of $32.7million.
Making the company complicit in the regional politics and the humanitarian crimes the Israeli forces performed against Palestinian civilians and their territories areas namely in the west bank and east Jerusalem.
Caterpillar bulldozers function as tools of mass destruction to Palestinian homes and wipe out complete neighborhoods at once, under false pretenses of lack of permits for houses that are older than their so-called Israeli state
On April 5th Eric Periman is a junior in the School of Public and International Affairs and the president of Princeton Committee on Palestine (PCP) said in an article published by The Daily Princetonian, the daily independent student newspaper, “Caterpillar has shown time and time again that they are perfectly comfortable remaining complicit in heinous and violent acts committed with their machinery.”
“Princeton must send a message that companies like these have no place in our campus community. And never will,” he added.
The university’s independent newspaper used the murder of American activist Rachel Corrie, who died while she was peacefully protesting the demolishing of Nasrallah’s family house in Rafah refugee camp, while the family was still inside the residence. Rachel stumbled over and killed, with a caterpillar bulldozer as the murder weapon. even as she tried to escape, she wasn’t spared.
Her family sued the company but wasn’t even extended an apology over the heinous and brutal murder of their 23-year-old daughter
And while the referendum was faced with claims of anti-Semitism and groups such as Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF) who went far and beyond as to fund a Facebook campaign encouraging Facebook users to sign a petition on their website that calls the referendum a “nefarious resolution that would foment antisemitism and threaten Jewish students.” And spent over 1000 USD on these ads.
The company tried to absolve itself of any guilt by saying that its products were “sold as part of a U.S.-Government sponsored program”
And that “It is best for governments to work to resolve issues such as the long-standing dispute in the Middle East, rather than having companies like Caterpillar become involved in trying to resolve such matters.”
Peter Rosenblum, a professor of human rights law at Columbia University Law School, responded to the company’s claims and cleared why companies like caterpillar should be held accountable for being used as tools of mass destruction
He said, “As long as [a product] is not inherently dangerous the issue would typically end there,” he said, but added: “At the point, you become the sole supplier, the known supplier, the company counted on for that purpose … in what is one of the ugliest stories in occupation — legal arguments aren’t going to get them out of the problem.”
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