FIRST it was Outspan oranges, then Nestlé chocolate and Coca-Cola. Now Caterpillar bulldozers and work boots are the latest products to fall foul of left-wing campaign groups.

Councillors from Labour, Sinn Fein and the Green party are leading an offensive against the American multinational, which they accuse of being complicit in the destruction of Palestinian houses on the West Bank and Gaza by Israeli defence forces.

The campaign is supported by the parents of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American peace activist who was crushed on the Gaza Strip in 2002 by a 60-ton armour-plated D9 Caterpillar, which has blades up to 11ft tall. Corrie’s family has filed a federal lawsuit against the company for illegal killing.

Irish campaigners are demanding that councils in Ireland stop using Caterpillar vehicles on road projects. Motions have been tabled before Galway and Limerick councils for the establishment of “Caterpillar-free zones”. This would mean a ban on use of the American bulldozers in council construction projects, and a request that businesses observe a voluntary ban. The motions are likely to fall foul of EU competition regulations, which state that moral issues should not impinge on governmental tendering processes.

Billy Cameron, a Galway city councillor behind the campaign, said: “Council management have ruled that the motion as it currently stands cannot go before it, as brands are protected under EU and national legislation. However, I will be resubmitting it once we have had legal advice.

“We have had the support of four Labour councillors and one Green, and I assume Sinn Fein, and I would hope to persuade more. I feel it is a moral obligation for us to tackle the apartheid system which is developing in Palestine. We should be drawing attention to the flagrant abuse of human rights.”

The campaign was started in America by the Stop Caterpillar Coalition, which held a series of protests outside the company’s annual general meeting in Chicago in April.

They accuse the company of being complicit in the deaths of dozens of Palestinians killed during the demolition of their homes. Israel has halted the policy of the retaliatory destruction of the homes of suicide bombers, but has continued to use bulldozers to demolish houses they deem illegal.

In one incident, a pregnant mother and her three young children, and four additional members of her family, died under the rubble of their Nablus home when it was bulldozed in 2002.

According to campaigners, such demolitions are illegal under international law, violating the Hague Regulation of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention, John Gormley, the Green party spokesman who returned from a visit to Palestine last week, said: “We saw at first hand the building of the wall, in which our own country’s CRH company is involved, and the demolitions are continuing. If a company is involved in these activities, then of course they should be the subject of protest.

“I think these protests can be enormously successful because you can be damn sure when the company gets wind of it, they take notice.

“I think Ireland’s role in these campaigns is due to our social conscience and a particular identification that we have with the suffering of the Palestinian people.”

Caterpillar joins a growing list of products that have fallen foul of left-wing campaigners. A boycott of Coca-Cola products is being observed in a number of Irish university campuses because the drinks company is accused of aiding the persecution of Colombian trade unionists. At this year’s Coca-Cola AGM in America, it was noted that the boycott, which is now gaining international support, began in Ireland.

The latest campaign is meeting local opposition, however. Brendan Halligan, the editor of the Limerick Leader, which has attacked the motion before the city’s council, said: “I think this is propaganda and distorting the true picture in the Middle East. It is nonsensical. There is no reference made to Israeli children incinerated in night-clubs and there is no public support for it.

“I think the people involved are well intentioned, but they are dupes, and in this country, where we have ambivalence towards terrorism, I think it ill-becomes us to be dupes of Palestinian terrorists. This is token politics and political correctness.”

The anti-Caterpillar campaign has already had some success internationally, with the Presbyterian Church in America starting a process of disinvestment in Caterpillar shares because of the use of the bulldozers by the Israeli military. The Church of England’s ethical investment advisory group is also reported to be considering a similar process.

An American spokesman for the company said: “Caterpillar shares the world’s concern over unrest in the Middle East, and we certainly have compassion for all those affected by the political strife. However, more than 2m Caterpillar machines are at work in virtually every country and region of the world each day. We have neither the legal right nor the means to police individual use of that equipment.”

Times Recommends

• UN may halt 400-year-old 'freedom of the seas'
• Where the Rosetta belongs can’t be set in stone
• Gas deal on hold, but Ukraine may pay in the end