Date/Time
Date(s) - 2 Sep 2017
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
HSBC Bank
North Street, Brighton
(corner with Bond Street)
12-2pm
A few weeks ago, dozens of local people protested at the main Brighton branch of HSBC Bank, angry over the bank’s complicity in the deadly two-way arms trade between the UK and Israel.
Our next protest at the Brighton branch will be on Saturday Sept 2nd from 12-2pm – unless of course the bank ends its complicity with Israel’s war crimes between now and then! Join us!
HSBC Bank holds shares in, and provides loans to, military and technology companies that sell weapons and equipment to Israel. HSBC’s complicity in Israel’s militarised oppression includes Elbit shares worth £3.64m.
If you hold an account at HSBC, we are asking you NOT to close your account at this stage, but instead to write to your branch objecting to the bank’s complicity in Israel’s arms industry, and demanding that they divest immediately. You could of course state that you will consider closing your account if the bank does not meet our demands, which are that HSBC divests from and stops lending funds to companies involved in arms trade with Israel. To this end, we call on HSBC to immediately end all forms of support for arms companies that help Israel to oppress Palestinians and violate international law.
Research recently conducted by War on Want found that HSBC owns shares in and provide loans to arms companies that are complicit with Israeli apartheid. Moreover, HSBC has an official policy of not providing financial support to arms companies. HSBC therefore appears to be violating the spirit of its own policy commitments!
An important development in the campaign is the publication of the War on Want report “Deadly Investments”. This report explains the importance of the STOP ARMING ISRAEL campaign in general, and sets out the case against HSBC Bank in particular. You can read or download the report here. You can add your name to War on Want’s e-letter to HSBC by clicking here. And if you are a customer of HSBC we urge you to write to your branch manager, protesting the bank’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes.