A round-up of the #BoycottHP Global Week of Action, July 10-15

From July 10-15, groups all over the world - in Australia, the Arab world, India, Ireland, Malaysia, the US and the UK - participated in the #BoycottHP Global Week of Action. The beginning of the week, July 9th, marked 15 years since the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on Israel’s apartheid wall, which the Court found to be illegal.

The end of the week marked a year since the passing of Israel’s “Jewish-Nation-State law,” which effectively legalizes Israel’s decades-old apartheid system.

Hewlett Packard companies directly aid and assist Israel’s apartheid, military occupation and settler-colonialism against the Palestinian people. HPE, a subsidiary of HP, provides the exclusive Itanium servers used to operate the Aviv System in Israel’s Population registry. This includes the ‘Yesha’ database containing information on Israeli citizens in the illegal settlements in occupied West Bank. HP Inc is the exclusive provider of computers to the Israeli army which enforces the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

During the week of action, groups creatively asserted the campaign’s demands:

Unite the Union, the UK's second largest trade union, became the latest to endorse the HP campaign. With 1.2 million members, Unite passed a resolution to no longer purchase HP products and to replace existing HP machines with another brand.

BDS Australia invited people to sign their pledge, while the Palestine Israel Ecumenical Network of Australia popularized the campaign through social media messaging.

Led by BDS Malaysia, over 70 organizations in Malaysia have declared their spaces ‘HP-Free Zones’. They also organized a direct action at a local shopping mall, raising awareness about HP’s ties with Israel's violations of Palestinians rights.

In India, the Students’ Federation of India, the largest student organization in India with over four million members, joined the week of action. After joining the campaign last year, they shared a statement of solidarity and have been continuing their work of taking the campaign to college and university campuses through discussions, film screenings and other activities throughout the year. The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist Liberation), extended their support for the campaign. The party has elected representatives in state assemblies and is active in workers’ and farmers’ struggles. Also marking the week of action, Indian organizations launched the HP-Free Zones initiative.

Actions were also organized in Sacramento, California and are ongoing in Ireland. UNISON Northern Ireland launched their initiative to ‘dump’ HP products. The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights released the Boycott HP toolkit, and  in the Arab world, groups organized a twitter storm demanding that HP companies end their complicity in Israel’s apartheid regime.

Closing out the week of action, on the 15th, groups and individuals wrote letters to the CEOs of HP Inc and HPE, demanding that the companies end their complicity in Israel’s military occupation and provide unequivocal evidence of this.