Date/Time
Date(s) - 1 Jul 2017 until 7 Jul 2017
12:00 AM - 11:59 PM
The STOP ARMING ISRAEL campaign is one of the most important BDS campaigns worldwide, and BHPSC is fully committed to supporting it.
The Stop Arming Israel Coalition has called for a Week of Action in early July. For us, this will involve:
- A picket of the main HSBC Bank branch in North Street on Saturday July 1st, starting at 12.00 mid-day, and
- Joining the national demonstration on Thursday 6 July at the Elbit Systems factory in Shenstone in the West Midlands.
Details of HSBC and Elbit complicity in the Israeli arms industry appear below.
Join us for both these actions! To register your interest in taking part in the Elbit demonstration on July 6th, email us using the ‘Contact Us’ link at the foot of this page. And for the HSBC picket, join us outside the branch in North Street, Brighton at 12.00 mid-day on Saturday 1st July. And please sign our STOP ARMING ISRAEL petition elsewhere on this website.
Elbit Systems, one of Israel’s largest military companies, markets its weapons as ‘field-tested’ on Palestinian bodies and land.
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 the Israeli 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!
For further information about the Week of Action, see the Stop Arming Israel Call-Out.