Heavy Machinery and Patriotic Demolition in the Service of Genocide

Bulldozer Heroes

by Anthony Fulton | Aug 8, 2025

https://original.antiwar.com/Anthony_Fulton/2025/08/07/heavy-machinery-and-patriotic-demolition-in-the-service-of-genocide/

Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv is a well-respected holy man in Israel with some devoted followers. He is a dayan, a judge in the rabbinical courts of Tel Aviv, dispensing wisdom in matters of religion and Jewish law. He’s also a reservist in the Seyeret Givati brigade of the IDF and is currently serving in Gaza. There, he has earned a degree of fame for his skills as an operator of the Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozer, the IDF’s tool of choice for the erasure of Palestinian homes. He claims to average more than 50 demolitions a week. According to Zarbiv, his unit has learned to ‘play the D9’ like a musical instrument. 

Rabbi Zarbiv is part of the wider effort to lay waste to Gaza and render it uninhabitable for Palestinians. His stated motives are religious; war, for him, is a harbinger of the coming of the messiah. But he is one of many directly or indirectly employed to demolish buildings in Gaza. The motivation for others is more straightforward: money, revenge or, in a context where the demolition of Palestinians’ homes is seen as a service to one’s country, patriotic duty.

Domicide is a key aspect of the genocide in Gaza. According to recent reports, around 92% of homes and 70% of all buildings in the Gaza Strip have been severely damaged or destroyed. Gaza has a population of over 2 million and from the scale of the destruction, it appears that all houses are considered bases of resistance. If we put morality aside, as the IDF seems to have done, the scale of the flattening of Gaza is an impressive achievement, considered as an initial stage of population transfer. There is no access given to foreign journalists for a reason – Gaza is unrecognizable, the destruction wholesale. So, how do you transform such a vast area into a moonscape of concrete and ashes in under two years? Overwhelming air power certainly helps, but on the ground, two things have been particularly important: willing personnel, such as the good rabbi, and the right equipment.

It takes certain modifications for a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer manufactured in the US to become an armored D9. Israel Aerospace Industries [IAI], which offers an ‘extensive range of innovative solutions’ in ground combat situations, is responsible for these. The Israeli armored version of the Cat D9 has a mounted machine gun, grenade launcher and smoke projector. It is armoured to protect the operator and has, of course, been battle-tested over years of occupation. So familiar an asset is it, that the D9 has its own affectionate nickname in IDF slang: the ‘Doobie’, or Teddy Bear in English. Rachel Corrie died underneath one. Together with excavators, wheel loaders and other heavy machinery, it has been used for years in West Bank house demolitions. The D9 can not only demolish buildings but create the new ‘corridors’ of Gaza and clear border security zones. It has hardly been reported in the West but, with the aid of such equipment, whole villages in southern Lebanon along the international border have recently been erased, Gaza style.  

In wartime, the Israeli economy has been strikingly robust. The assault on Gaza has been a boost to certain sectors, and it has been especially profitable for those with initiative who can hire or invest in large machinery. As well as utilizing its own personnel for demolitions, the IDF has been shown to be outsourcing the destruction in Gaza. Lucrative work has been available for equipment operators. Owners of excavators can earn 5,000 shekels a day. Those who work as contractors with the Ministry of Defence are paid per number of houses demolished. This is war as a continuation of business by other means, as Brecht might have observed. Rabbi Zarbiv is merely the celebrity face of patriotic demolition. So many are working on the razing of Gaza that infrastructure projects in Israel are facing significant delays due to shortages of operators and equipment.

But Zarbiv’s days could be numbered as a D9 specialist. Quite apart from the complaint lodged against him with the ICC for alleged war crimes, he could soon be redundant as a result of the recent introduction of the ‘Robdozer’, developed by IAI. This is a destroyer of homes that is unmanned and can be remotely operated, like a drone, from the air-conditioned comfort of an office. Future versions are envisioned to be fully autonomous. Genocide and destruction will be even easier than they are now. If pilots who drop bombs indiscriminately can be considered heroes in Israel’s militarized culture, so too can those who operate drones or bulldozers remotely, or those who program an autonomous D9 – no doubt according to the values of the ‘most moral army in the world.’ These advancements in remote-controlled technology represent another contribution to the ongoing disconnection of Israelis from the consequences of their wartime actions. 

The IDF has recently received another shipment of D9s after delivery was held up by the Biden administration. Israelis take pride in their myth of the start-up nation. But besides having a thriving software and high-tech sector, Israel has invested significantly in heavy machinery, appropriately enough for an apartheid state which wants to control and shape the land it occupies. But it needs external help. In UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s recent report on Israel’s ‘economy of genocide’, Caterpillar Inc is allocated its own paragraph. This year, the company signed a further multi-million dollar contract with Israel. 

Punitive demolition has long been a part of the history of this conflict. As the Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd put it, bulldozers have been ‘undoing God’ for some time. What is new is the prominence of their role in this unprecedented destruction. New too, is the amount of money being made in the process, not just by Israelis, but by international firms producing heavy machinery like Caterpillar and JCB. We are witnesses to the razing of entire cities, towns and villages, to lives being shovelled aside like rubble, all to clear the way for the next phase of Zionism. Western companies and governments are providing the wherewithal.