Cindy and Craig Corrie, parents of the late Rachel Corrie, attended the meeting as proxy voters on behalf of Jewish and Christian institutional investors who have filed a resolution asking for greater corporate accountability from Caterpillar.

"Why would we pay for our own homes with the destruction of other people's homes? Why would we fund our retirements with the destruction of other people's olive groves?" the Corries asked of shareholders. " [Caterpillar shareholders] should know there are good and decent people in Israel, in Palestine ... and [shareholders] should support them and not support violence," they said in a statement.

Activists supporting the parents who lost their daughter in 2003 say that the company sells machinery to the Israeli army in violation of its corporate accountability pledge, knowing full well that the equipment will be used for the destruction of Palestinian homes and farms.

"We are part of a growing movement for corporate responsibility in the United States," said Matt Gaines of the STOP CAT campaign in a telephone interview from outside the shareholders' meeting in Chicago. "Getting the US government to take action on this issue has been very, very difficult, even though we are still working on it. But we are taking it directly to the corporations involved that are sponsoring, aiding or abetting war crimes," he said.

Caterpillar has become the poster child for US companies that are being targeted in divestment drives for their role in human rights abuses by the Israeli army in occupied Palestinian lands. It is also facing charges of war crimes in a lawsuit -- Corrie v Caterpillar Inc -- filed by the parents of Rachel Corrie.

The company has said in the past that it bears no responsibility for how its products are used by clients. Spokespersons from the company were not immediately available for comment but the company has recently responded to accusations of its complicity and cooperation in Israel's razing of civilian homes by launching a multi-million dollar public relations campaign to minimise brand risk.

Rachel Corrie was killed in the Gazan town of Rafah while she and other members of the International Solidarity Movement were trying to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home on 16 March 2003.

Caterpillar built the nine-tonne bulldozer that ran over Corrie, a 23-year-old college student from Olympia in Washington State. Her death made international headlines and triggered widespread condemnation. Israeli courts have yet to prosecute anyone for the incident.

The Illinois-based Caterpillar Inc, which had annual sales and revenues -- more than half of which from overseas -- of $36.3 billion last year, has been reluctant to disclose how much money it makes from its dealings with Israel.

"Caterpillar profits from each home its bulldozers help Israel to demolish, each centimetre of the annexation wall its bulldozers help Israel to build, each olive tree its bulldozers help Israel to uproot," said Noura Erekat of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation outside the shareholders' meeting.

Peace activists estimate that since Israel occupied Arab land in the 1967 War, Caterpillar bulldozers have illegally razed the homes of more than 50,000 Palestinians. They say that in the past five years alone, Caterpillar equipment was used to uproot over one million olive trees owned by Palestinians. International human rights organisations and bodies, such as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have repeatedly singled out Caterpillar for its complicity in rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories.

But it is the divestment campaign -- mostly led by Christian institutional investors, including the Presbyterian Church USA, the World Council of Churches, the Church of England and the Church of Scotland -- that has most alarmed right-wing pro- Israel groups in the US and the company. Jewish investors are taking part, including Jewish Voice for Peace. Together, these groups represent some 500 million people.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, a right-wing Zionist organisation that says it monitors the US media for biased reporting against Israel, has defended the Israeli army and said that Corrie and other peace activists were hindering the army's work to track down suspected terrorists and weapons smugglers. Peace activists counter that as well as homes and roads, the Israeli army destroys olive trees, farmland and even water wells -- hardly hideouts for terrorist suspects.

They also point to a number of attempts to muzzle information and awareness about Corrie's death. Recently, a play about Rachel Corrie's life that had two successful runs in London was banned from the New York Theatre Workshop after protests from some Jewish groups. Copies of the play, composed of letters and journal entries, entitled "My Name is Rachel Corrie", were taken off bookshelves and only a few are now available in the United States, campaigners say.

Further, when Corrie's parents called on the State Department to investigate the killing, their plea was rebuffed.

Writing in the conservative Jerusalem Post, Elwood McQuaid, a self-styled "Christian Zionist" who served as the executive director of The Friends of Israel Ministry in the US, characterised the corporate responsibility campaign against Caterpillar and the Israeli army as part of a conspiracy. "What is at issue here has little to do with moral justice; but it has much to do with radical, liberal, leftist obsession," the pastor wrote.

Zionists groups have sprung to support Caterpillar. At the meetings, Allyson Rowen Taylor, associate director of the American Jewish Congress, said those worried about human rights abuses against Palestinians should also call for an end to sales of company products to countries like China and Egypt, where human rights abuses are rampant.

Taylor's words have not dissuaded Christian groups from discussing the issue further on Christian and moral grounds. An intense debate was raging last week in Birmingham, Alabama, where thousands of delegates to the Presbyterian General Assembly were taking decisions on future steps in their divestment drive.

Christian Zionist groups have pressured the church by saying that divestment was the wrong approach and called for more investments instead to build neighbourly relations between Palestinians and the Israelis.

But last week, the National Middle Eastern Presbyterian Caucus of the Presbyterian Church said in a statement that while a positive investment strategy can be constructive, it fails "to stop the Israeli government from confiscating Palestinian property and expropriating Palestinian land".

Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/801/re52.htm