PALESTINIAN rights activists bombarded HSBC with tweets today demanding that the bank divest from companies complicit in Israeli war crimes. 

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) organised a “Twitter storm” to digitally disrupt the HSBC annual general meeting with a barrage of calls for the bank to ditch its investment in bulldozer firm Caterpillar. 

The firm, in which HSBC holds a stake worth nearly £100 million, provides militarised bulldozers used by the Israeli army to destroy Palestinian homes.

Israel’s house-demolition policy contravenes international law and constitutes war crimes.

The bank also invests in arms company Raytheon, which sold “bunker bombs” used by the Israeli army in its murderous onslaught on Gaza in 2014. 

PSC said it was targeting HSBC because the military repression of the Palestinians can only be maintained “through weapons and equipment it receives from a range of companies.”

Campaigners’ tweets reached more than 100,000 people, drawing attention to HSBC’s role in Israeli apartheid and questioning its claim to be an ethical bank. 

PSC director Ben Jamal told the Morning Star: “If HSBC truly cared about human rights, as it claims, it would cut all financial ties with these companies.” 

Today’s Twitter storm follows a successful campaign to press HSBC into divesting from Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company, in 2018.

Last year, more than a 100 protesters disrupted the bank’s annual general meeting in Birmingham. Due to the coronavirus lockdown, this year’s the protest took place online.

“Although we can’t campaign physically right now, thousands of Palestine Solidarity Campaign members across the country are continuing to take digital action to keep up the pressure on HSBC until they end their complicity,” Mr Jamal said. 

“We’ve won before and we can and will win again.”