Hewlett Packard To Lose Millions as India's Student Federation Endorses Pro-Palestinian BDS

The Student Federation of India (SFI), a four-million-strong national organization, joined the global campaign to boycott Hewlett Packard over its record of complicity in Israel's violation of human rights against Palestinians. 

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Apoorva Gautam, coordinator for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee for South Asia, announced the SFI joined the campaign on June 9, and explained "this means that Hewlett Packard companies now risk losing over 4 million potential clients in India because of their complicity in Israel’s gross violations of Palestinian human rights." 

HP has provided technology to support Israel's military occupation and racial profiling by providing the Israeli government with the servers for the country's population registry used in military checkpoints and for the ID card system that underpins movement restrictions for Palestinians.

According to the BDS movement, HP also provides the Israeli navy with the necessary technology to impose the over-a-decade-long blockade of Gaza. 

United States-based churches have previously divested from HP. In 2012 the Friends Fiduciary Corporation, the investment firm serving over 300 Quaker institutions divested. In 2014 the U.S. Presbyterian Church voted to divest from HP, and a year later the United Church of Christ did the same.

The SFI resolution condemned Israel’s use of lethal force against Palestinians participating in the Great March of Return in Gaza, which resulted in over 120 deaths and 13,000 injuries. It also criticized the Indian government for its “close security and military ties with Israel [becoming] the largest arms buyer from Israel.”

Gautam celebrated the decision by the SFI, saying "what Palestinians and Indian students are showing is that companies seeking to profit from Israel’s military occupation and discriminatory regime face growing popular opposition and risk a serious hit to both their reputations and pocket-books."

The Israeli occupation has faced increasing international pressure due to the BDS movement. In a span of less than a month Shakira canceled her concert in Tel Aviv, Argentina canceled the friendly soccer match with Israel, and many well-known and international artists and filmmakers pulled out of Tel Aviv’s LGBT film festival and Paris’ France-Israel Season.