From The Grapes of Wrath:
The tractors came over the roads and into the fields, great crawlers moving
like insects, having the incredible strength of insects….The man sitting in
the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask
over the nose and mouth, he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat…
A twitch of the controls could swerve the cat’, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent the tractor out, had somehow gotten into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him—goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception…He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as it smelled; his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. …
The iron gate [of the cat’] bit into the house corner, crumbled the wall, and wrenched the little house from its foundation so that it fell sideways, crushed like a bug. And the driver was goggled and a rubber mask covered his nose and mouth. The tractor cut a straight line on, and the air and the ground vibrated with its thunder. The tenant man stared after it, his rifle in his hand. His wife was beside him, and the quiet children behind. And all of them stared after the tractor. Chapter 5
When the Caterpillar tractors
tore into the homes of the tenant farmers of the Depression-era Midwest and
made them homeless, refugees in a land they had cared for and cultivated for
years, it was for the greed of the few, and the new world order that
could think only of profit. Human lives, the health of the earth, were not
to be considered.
Today in Palestine Caterpillar bulldozers are again at work; destroying homes, crops, and working to crush the hope of the people. Here it is the machinery of colonialism, of taking the land of the native inhabitants and getting rid of its people.
An Israeli bulldozer operator explains:
"For three days, I just demolished non-stop. The whole area. Any house they fired from came down. And to knock it down, I tore down some other houses. [The Palestinians] were warned by loudspeakers to get out of the house before I come, but I gave no one a chance. I didn't wait. I didn't give just one [warning] push, and wait for them to come out. I would just ram the house with full power, to bring it down as fast as possible. I wanted to get to the other houses. To get as many as possible. ...I didn't give a damn about the Palestinians, but I didn't just ruin with no reason. It was all under orders.”
From an interview with a Cat' driver, who under orders of his Israeli military superiors, operated a giant Caterpillar D-9L bulldozer and helped make 4,000 camp residents homeless in Jenin refugee camp, April 2000.
According the United Nations, as of May 2003, a total of 12,000 Palestinians have been had their homes demolished since the beginning of the intifada in September 2000. This number has no doubt risen drastically since then, as one military incursion in Rafah, Gaza alone left over 1,000 without their homes, and this was accomplished in just 3 days, in October 2003.
Amnesty International has stated "the repeated practice by the Israeli army of deliberate and wanton destruction of homes and civilian property is a grave violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, notably of Articles 33 and 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and constitutes a war crime".
The machine is quick and efficient. The machine is heartless. And it must be stopped.
There is a
time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick
at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and
you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the
levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've
got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that
unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
Mario Savio, UC Berkeley, December 3, 1964
Information about one person who attempted to stop this machinery of destruction, go to:
How to stop the sale of Caterpillar bulldozers to Israel being used in the commission of war crimes go to:
More background information about Home Demolitions visit:
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
Palestine photos of Rafah, Gaza on this page courtesy of Mohammed, visit his website --Rafah Today