We have had regular pickets at HSBC Bank alongside students, concerned individuals and the Palestinian community in Manchester. We demonstrated and will continue to protest the US facilitating Israel’s ethnically cleansing of Palestinians and against bank profiteers from the Israeli Arms Trade on our high streets. We won’t stop until all UK connections with Israel’s criminal and brutal take over of Palestine comes to an end. Right now Gaza is still under siege, Palestine is still occupied and Palestinians are being killed by Israeli soldiers every day.

Israel uses military force to maintain its oppression of Palestinians. It targets people with tear gas grenades, rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition, and carries out mass arrests, house demolitions and extrajudicial executions.

This brutality lies at the heart of Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian rights, amounting to serious breaches of international law, and even war crimes.

HSBC is a major shareholder in companies selling weapons and military technology to Israel and also provides those companies with the loans they need to operate.

We can’t allow banks on our high streets to continue lending support to Israel’s militarised repression of Palestinians. Together, we can break the chain of complicity.

 

Tell HSBC to stop investing in and lending to companies arming Israel’s brutal oppression of Palestinians! 

HSBC owns shares worth £831 million in companies selling weapons and military technology to Israel, including:

  • £180 million of shares in BAE Systems, involved in manufacturing the F16 fighter jets used by Israel to attack Palestinians in Gaza
  • £69million of shares in Raytheon, whose ‘bunker buster’ bombs were used to target Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

HSBC arranged loans worth at least £19.3 billion to companies selling weapons and military technology to Israel, including:

  • Caterpillar, whose specially modified bulldozers are used to demolish Palestinian homes in the oPt and Israel.
  • United Technologies, who produce UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters used by the Israeli military in assaults on Palestinian civilians.

HSBC must divest from and stop lending funds to companies involved in the arms trade with Israel.