Caterpillar has come under increasing criticism from human rights organizations in recent years for continuing to supply bulldozers to Israel, which uses them to demolish Palestinian civilian homes and destroy crops and agricultural land in the occupied territories, and to build illegal, Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land.
After unsuccessful negotiations with Caterpillar, several organisations and churches called for selective divestment from the USA company.
Since 2010, We Divest has been urging TIAA-CREF to drop Caterpillar and other companies profiting from and facilitating Israel’s 45-year-old military occupation and colonization of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.
Today, we can celebrate a big step forward:
Pension fund giant TIAA-CREF has removed Caterpillar, Inc. from its Social Choice Funds portfolio. As of May 1, 2012, financial data posted on TIAA-CREF’s website valued Social Choice Funds shares in Caterpillar at $72,943,861. Today it is zero.
The members of We Divest Campaign will continue pressuring TIAA-CREF until there is full divestment from all companies in TIAA-CREF’s portfolio that profit from violations of Palestinian human rights. Some of them are CAT, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett-Packard, all of which still remain in TIAA-CREF’s Social Choice Funds. All of them are complicit in Israel’s occupation and violation of human rights and international law.
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[من فلسطين] 