Shareholders of the company Caterpillar have rejected an effort by human rights activists to stop the firm from selling bulldozers to Israel to be used to demolish homes in Gaza and the West Bank. At the company”s annual meeting last week, dissident shareholders submitted a resolution calling for a review of Caterpillar sales to militaries with poor human rights records, including Israel. The Israeli activist Matan Cohen of the group Anarchists Against the Wall attended the shareholders” meeting.

Matan Cohen: “Caterpillar has been arguing for years that they”re not responsible for what their clients are doing with their products. And we made a very simple case. As a recent ruling in the United States court in the state of New York said, if you are willfully blind to what your clients are doing with your products, you are as legally culpable as they are. Hence, we demanded Caterpillar stop providing Israel its services and stop giving them D-9 bulldozers with which Israel has been demolishing homes, constructing the separation wall, and uprooting olive groves on a day-to-day basis.”