THETFORD — Town officials are drafting policy that would require a consideration of “human rights impacts” in town purchasing decisions after pro-Palestinian activists asked the town to boycott companies supplying Israel with military equipment.
The Thetford Pledge Group aims to put financial pressure on Israel and move public opinion against the “the worst genocide the world has seen in decades,” Henry Nichols, a member of the group, said in a phone interview on Wednesday.
The group of about 40 residents began two years ago during the escalation of the Israel-Hamas war, Nichols said. Last year, Thetford Town Meeting voters approved a pledge — originally written by the Quaker organization American Friends Service Committee — that works “to end support to Israel’s Apartheid system,” the pledge states.
Now, the group is focused on limiting financial support for Israel, including by limiting purchases from the Texas-based heavy machinery company Caterpillar, a common supplier for municipal equipment such as graders, wheel loaders and bulldozers.
The company also produces the D9 armored bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes, according to the American Friend Service Committee’s human rights standards list, which Nichols referred to in his proposal to the Thetford Selectboard on Dec. 1.
The town currently owns no Caterpillar products, nor does it intend to. Instead, it uses John Deere and Western Star vehicles, which are often manufactured with Caterpillar parts, Town Manager Brian Story said in a Wednesday phone interview.
Still, Nichols said that a boycott against Caterpillar would let the town publicly adhere to its Town Meeting pledge in as many ways that it can, and possibly have a ripple effect elsewhere.
“If the town can find a way to stop buying products from companies like Caterpillar, that would have a real impact, especially if it serves as an example to other towns,” Nichols said.
Other Vermont towns have approved a pledge similar to the one Thetford approved last March, including Plainfield, Brattleboro, Winooski and Newfane.
Organizers in 20 other Vermont towns — including Woodstock, Hartland, Hartford, Strafford and Pomfret — are looking to pass it this upcoming year, said Nichols, who is in a statewide organizing group chat.
“We hope to be an inspiration — and we’ve been inspired by — counties and towns all over the country and the world,” Nichols said.
Story said he plans to present the policy, which does not require voter approval, to the Selectboard in February or March.
While the Thetford Selectboard generally supported the proposal to limit spending on Israel, town officials raised two practical difficulties in the implementation of such a policy.
First, certain companies supplying Israel are unavoidable — such as Microsoft, which the town uses for all of its computer systems, Selectboard member Li Shen said in a Wednesday phone interview. “You cannot get away from it,” she added.
Second, as Caterpillar sprawls with hundreds of subsidiaries that sell products to other manufacturers, the distinction between a company that supports Israel and one that does not is unclear.
In response to these challenges, the town plans not to impose a uniform restriction on companies that sell equipment to Israel, but to include a “human rights” consideration in its procurement policy, Story said.
It will be “required that we consider and address” the human rights impact during purchasing discussions, in addition to other considerations such as price and environmental concerns, Story said.
The town currently has a “Green Procurement Policy,” in which the Energy Committee considers the environmental impact of new purchases, contributing to the town’s final decision.
In the same way, the new policy “will consider the human rights impact,” Story said, by researching “the company’s history and what it’s tied to, not just in Israel, but overall human rights impact.”
There is also a proposed threshold, of about $100,000 or $200,000, below which the town won’t delve into human rights research on vendors to avoid straining its resources, Story said.
“The goal isn’t to be perfect,” Story said. “The goal is to give us the tools to consider our impact.”
Nichols agreed to these guidelines.
“We feel confident that all of us in the town can pass a policy that does as much to put financial pressure on the Israeli government as possible, without straining the ability of the town to function,” he said.
The new policy has at least one opponent, who voiced her concerns at the Dec. 1 meeting.
Melissa Krzal, a Thetford resident of 37 years, said that the group was trying to make a change in “good-faith,” but she doubts not only the effect that a small town can make, but even that of larger cities.
“I don’t think it’ll affect Israel at all. They don’t care,” Krzal said during a phone interview on Wednesday. Israel and Hamas “are both terrorist-led organizations. And the more they keep fighting, the more they keep killing each other, the more terrorists they make.”
In response to this view, Nichols compared the boycott to those against South Africa in the ’80s, which also “started out small and sparse, but they built over time to be a worldwide movement.”