This summer, the world was horrified by the slaughter in Gaza as Israel bombarded the besieged Palestinians from land, sea and air.

What most people watching the shocking scenes on their TV and computer screens would have been unaware of is the scale of US multinational Hewlett Packard’s involvement in the carnage.

Hewlett Packard, branded as HP on its products, is best known for its printer cartridges, laptops and photocopiers, but there is a sinister side to the corporation which is now being exposed thanks to a major new Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

The corporation is heavily involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and this has brought it into the sights of Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s (PSC) BDS work.

Last week, PSC launched its Boycott HP campaign releasing images via social media of life under Israeli occupation accompanied by slogans including: “HP: the technology behind Israel’s war machine.”

A pledge — which individuals can sign — promising to boycott all HP products until the corporation ends its complicity with the Israeli occupation has also gone onto PSC’s website.

So what is HP’s involvement in the occupation, and why is the company being targeted by pro-Palestinian activists in Britain, Europe and the US?

HP is contracted by the Israeli government to provide the IT infrastructure to the Israeli navy, whose gunboats pounded the Gaza coast during the summer’s massacre.

Those same gunboats, together with Israeli warships, are also vital in enforcing Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza, which has brought poverty and misery to its Palestinian population of 1.8 million.

They also fire constantly at Palestinian fishermen who try to scratch a meagre living from the shallow waters they are limited to by the siege.

During October the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported 19 attacks by Israel on Palestinian fishermen, of which 18 were firing incidents and one was a shelling. One Palestinian was injured, seven were abducted by the Israeli navy, two fishing boats were confiscated and two destroyed.

Every single one of those attacks — unreported by the mainstream media in Britain — represents an Israeli violation of the ceasefire agreement signed between Hamas and the Israeli government in August and each one is aided by HP.

The Israeli army, which so brutally and lethally suppresses the Palestinian people, also benefits from HP technology, having been supplied with HP computers.

And HP’s complicity with Israel’s brutalisation of Palestinians doesn’t end there. The company’s technology is instrumental in controlling and restricting the free movement of Palestinians living in the West Bank.

The West Bank’s major checkpoints use what is known as the Basel system to scan those who pass through. This system has been developed, integrated and is maintained by HP Enterprise Services, a division of HP.

The Basel system uses scanners with hand and facial recognition technology to collect biometric data about every Palestinian who is forced to use those checkpoints.

As a result, the biometric data of nearly every Palestinian over the age of 16 is held by the Israeli authorities, feeding into Israel’s system of control and repression.

Not only does HP profit from developing systems to profile Palestinians and track and control their movements, it is also complicit in Israel’s system of apartheid which limits the parts of the West Bank which Palestinians can access.

The company’s involvement with the Israeli occupation conflicts with international law and human rights agreements.

For example, Israel’s siege of Gaza constitutes the collective punishment of an entire population. Article 33 of the 4th Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment and designates it a war crime.

By contracting with the Israeli navy, HP is complicit in the Israeli state’s war crimes against Gaza.

And its development and maintenance of the Basel system makes it complicit in the breach of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that: “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement…within the borders of each state.”

Ironically, for a corporation which is so fundamentally involved in Israel’s surpresion of Palestinian human rights, HP boasts a “global human rights policy,” which can be viewed online.

It states, seemingly without any hint of self-awareness: “Respecting human rights is a core value at HP and is embedded in the way we do business.”

It goes on to claim that it “upholds and respects human rights as reflected in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

HP’s profiteering work with the Israeli occupation and the siege on Gaza make a mockery of those claims, and render it a key target for the BDS movement.

PSC’s branches around the country have already begun their campaigning work around the Boycott HP campaign, including Kingston and Richmond PSC which has promoted the boycott from a stall in its town centre and garnered publicity in the local press.

PSC will be launching more initiatives in the coming weeks and in 2015, including template letters to send to HP’s chief executive and local actions around the country.

The campaign’s momentum is growing rapidly and HP risks becoming a toxic brand if it continues to do business with Israel’s apartheid regime.

Hugh Lanning is chair of Palestine Solidarity Campaign.