Due to Caterpillar’s bulldozers being used in the Palestinian genocide, the Iowa City City Council voted 6-0 not to purchase a new Caterpillar trash compactor to replace the aging one and to look for an alternative from another company. 

The Israel-Hamas war, determined to be a genocide by a United Nations commission of inquiry, has lasted over two years. 

It appears the council rushed into the decision not to buy a new trash compactor without the information they needed to make an informed decision on how this could impact the city and the people who work at the landfill. 

The hundred-thousand-pound Caterpillar D9 Bulldozer has long been used as the sledgehammer of the Israeli army. Even out of the box, their destructive capabilities are staggering, but Israel takes it a step further. 

Nicknamed the “Teddy Bear,” according to The Independent, Israel’s modified D9 bulldozers clear the way for Israeli soldiers. They clear everything, and depending on the driver of the vehicle, may even clear people, such as American activist Rachel Corrie, who was brutally crushed to death in 2003 while trying to protect a Palestinian home.

Zoko Enterprises serves as one of the main referenced companies regarding who actually modifies the Bulldozers for warfare, and maintains them throughout, according to an analysis from Who Profits Research Center. The company’s fully owned subsidiary Tractors and Equipment (I.T.E) is the exclusive supplier of Caterpillar equipment to the Israeli army. 

The “Teddy Bear” isn’t just a bulldozer; it’s an armored tank blanketed in a thick layer of slat armor with a cabin equipped with bulletproof glass. Not stopping there, many of the bulldozers have been fitted with operated machine guns and grenade launchers, according to The Independent.

According to the BBC, a leading UN official, Jean Ziegler, expressed concern in a 2004 letter to Caterpillar that its equipment was being used to starve and displace Palestinians. Caterpillar responded, with a statement in 2012, “although it shared the world’s compassion for the Middle East,” it had “neither the legal right nor the means to police individual use of its equipment.”

There was a good amount of discussion in October about delaying the city council vote until staff could get more information on how much abstaining from upgrading the Caterpillar equipment would slow down operations at the landfill. 

But ultimately, council members voted unanimously to deny the purchase outright. Instead, they instructed city staff to begin looking at alternative companies, including international companies Volvo, which is Swedish, and BOMAG, which is German. But while not on the Iowa City divestment list, both companies’ equipment has been used by the Israeli army, according to Who Profits.

The decision was rushed, considering the council could have deferred the vote until they got more information on how much using these other options, Volvo or BOMAG, could cost the city. 

“The City is still evaluating alternative options. We do not expect the initial purchase price to vary significantly between manufacturers, but we must fully evaluate specifications to answer that question definitively,” City Manager Geoff Fruin said in an email to The Daily Iowan. “As we research other options, we will also look at the annual cost of operations and expected service costs. Fully evaluating these variables will likely take several months”.

But if evaluating these concerns will take months, why was the decision by council members made so soon?

In his statement to the city council, Fruin also raised concerns about possible downtime that could result from alternatives to a Caterpillar bulldozer. The landfill currently uses exclusively Caterpillar equipment, he said, as do a majority of landfills in the state of Iowa. 

One of the critical reasons Caterpillar is selected is the weekly service provided by representatives in the area to ensure the machines are correctly functioning. This means choosing an alternative company could result in significant downtime if issues arise. With the nearest maintenance being in Des Moines.

“I want you to be fully aware and transparent to the public that the alternative that we buy could also be questioned as well in terms of its complicity in the Palestinian matter,” Fruin said at the Oct. 7 city council meeting.

BOMAG equipment has been used to pave the roads leading to settlements in the West Bank, and their rollers were used in the construction of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem fast train line, which illegally crosses into Palestinian territory in two areas, according to the European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine and the  Who Profits Research Center. 

According to the same sources, the Volvo Buses group holds 27 percent of the shares of the Israeli company Merkavim, which manufactures armored buses used for transportation to West Bank settlements and outposts. Volvo machinery has been used for extensive demolitions carried out by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip and Rafah, used not only to knock down Palestinian homes, but also to cut off water, electricity, and agricultural infrastructure, dehousing and starving out the population. 

This means the city council is deciding to invest in companies that are also involved in the genocide, while being blissfully inconsiderate about what consequences the city could suffer as a result. 

For example, the last cell — cells being trenches or holes where garbage is dumped and packed down — that Iowa City opened in 2023, replaced a 2018 cell; this new cell cost $3.2 million. With a less effective or possibly slower trash compactor, the cell fills up faster, meaning we need to build a new one sooner, which costs all of us money.

Although the decision was morally sound, we need to slow down and get data on how much these things could cost us now and in the future, the culpability of Caterpillar, and the alternatives, before we decide where we’re going to put our money.