This Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, the Palestinian-led BDS movement calls for BDS pressure on HP, Microsoft and Cisco to hold companies accountable for helping Israel’s carceral system, which turn prisons into sites of mass torture and systematic abuse.
On April 17th, #PalestinianPrisonersDay, the BDS movement, calls for holding Microsoft, HP and Cisco accountable for their roles in maintaining Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and for their particular role in Israel’s prison system which is well known for its egregious human rights violations.
Today, according to Addameer, the Palestinian Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) is holding 9,900 Palestinians in detention or in prison– at least 400 of whom are children. The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian society, condemns the complicity of silence surrounding Israel's relentless policy of mass arrests and the systematic and horrific infringement of the most basic rights of Palestinian political prisoners in its prisons and detention centers, as an integral component of its genocidal apartheid regime. We commit to intensifying our campaigns with our partners globally to #FreeThemAll.
Microsoft, HP and Cisco have long been implicated in and profiting from Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and mass incarceration of Indigenous Palestinians.
“Digital transformation makes it possible to consider prison as a business,” says Microsoft.
HP, Cisco and Microsoft are not hiding their complicity in Israel’s grave human rights abuses through their partnerships with the Israeli Prison Service:
- HP equipment is installed in the Israeli Prison Service’s central server farm, and they provided the Israeli police with equipment and technological support used to enforce repressive measures in occupied East Jerusalem and within present-day Israel. HP sold invasive surveillance tools to Israeli prisons despite IPS’s history of torture and unlawful detentions.
- Cisco provides phone tapping service using voice biometric data of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are held hostage without charge or trial in inhumane conditions described as “human chicken coops” by the leading Israeli human rights organization.
- Microsoft has provided Microsoft Cloud Services (MCS) to the Israeli Prison Service to streamline Israel’s regime of wrongful detentions without due process and inhuman prison conditions that in many cases amount to torture.
The United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel earlier this month published a report about Israel's systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinian detainees, mainly abducted in Gaza, since 7 October 2023. It said:
“Sexual violence was used as a means of punishment and intimidation from the moment of arrest and throughout the detention, including during interrogations and searches. Acts of sexual violence documented by the Commission appear to have been motivated by extreme hatred towards the Palestinian people and a desire to dehumanize and punish them. Sexual and reproductive violence in detention has also been reported by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, B’Tselem, Addameer, Amnesty and Healthcare Workers Watch.”
Leading Palestinian prisoner and human rights association Addameer reports since the beginning of Israel’s Gaza genocide in October 2023 that Israeli occupation forces have arrested more than 16,400 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem — including 520 women and 1,300 children. At least 3,500 Palestinians are held under administrative detention, without charges or trial.
From the very first day of Israel’s ongoing genocide, armed, funded and shielded from accountability by the US and other Western powers, Palestinian prisoners have been brutally targeted inside prisons through:
- Raids and violent attacks by special units
- Torture, beatings, and ill-treatment
- Rape and sexual assaults
- Confiscation of all belongings
- Starvation policies and complete isolation
- Bans on family visits and ICRC access
- Systematic medical neglect
At least 63 prisoners have been killed in Israeli custody—among them a 17-year-old child. Dozens more remain unaccounted for.
Addameer reports that Palestinian child prisoners have been enduring an unprecedented level and scale of abuse behind bars. The majority of the children arrested are subject to one or more forms of physical and psychological torture, through a range of systematic methods that violate enshrined protection laws, international standards and child rights agreements.
The Israeli occupation has turned its prisons into sites of mass torture and systematic abuse and Israel’s use of administrative detention violates international law and has become a tool of mass incarceration. The international community’s silence has emboldened the Israeli occupation’s crimes. The companies that enable Israel’s prisons must be held accountable.
TAKE ACTION– Channel your moral outrage strategically and mobilize to #FreeThemAll, end the #GazaGenocide and #DismantleApartheid!
EXPOSE the complicity of each of Microsoft, HP and Cisco in the crimes committed by the Israeli Prison Service against Palestinians. Read and share the attached fact sheet detailing these companies’ partnerships with IPS.
DIVEST from Microsoft, HP and Cisco and exclude them from contracts - urge your state, city, school, company, hospital, trade union, social and/or religious community to end current contracts and commit not to renew any contracts.
BOYCOTT Microsoft and HP consumer products including HP printers, laptops and other hardware. Boycott Microsoft products and software whenever possible and boycott Microsoft’s Xbox and gaming products, with the following options as tiers of engagement:
1. Cancel your Xbox Game Pass subscription
2. Boycott Candy Crush, Minecraft and Call of Duty – flagship videogame franchises owned by Microsoft
3. Boycott all Microsoft Gaming products, including Xbox-branded consoles, headsets, accessories and all games published by Microsoft-owned publishing labels (such as Xbox Game Studios, Activision, Bethesda and Blizzard)
If your organization or Palestine solidarity group wants to lead a local or regional campaign against Microsoft, HP or Cisco please reach out to [email protected].