HP POLITICAL

Corporate Communications & Public Stance

HP Inc.’s only substantive official statement addressing the BDS campaign, issued May 25, 2021, states: “The misinformation about HP Inc. being circulated by some on social media is unfortunate and untrue. As a matter of policy, we do not take sides in political disputes between countries or regions,” and asserts that “HP Inc. adheres to the highest standards of ethical business conduct” ¹. This statement continues to be cited as HP’s standing position in BDS campaign materials through 2024 ². CEO Enrique Lores posted on X on October 15, 2023 regarding the “horrific attacks on Israel,” stating “My heart breaks for all who are facing unimaginable loss and uncertainty right now,” and noted that “the HP Foundation is working with humanitarian partners throughout the region to understand how we can best support relief efforts” ³. Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri issued a parallel statement over the weekend of 7–8 October 2023, describing the attacks on Israeli civilians as “unjustified and inexcusable” and confirming that HPE team members and their families were safe; the statement was reported as one of a group of major-company CEO responses issued in the same days alongside those of the chief executives of Amazon, Delta Air Lines, Google, JPMorgan Chase, SoulCycle, and Tesla ⁴. HPE had earlier responded to allegations linking its products to violations in the occupied territory with a statement dated 24 September 2018 that “[o]ur work in Israel is consistent with our values and standards,” emphasising socially responsible business practices and stating that it does not take sides in political disputes ⁵. No public evidence identified of a distinct HP statement specifically addressing Palestinian or Gazan civilian harm. By contrast, Lores issued a substantially more detailed public account of HP’s 2022 Ukraine war response, describing HP as “acting with urgency to support HP employees, their families and our partners in Ukraine, Russia, and neighboring countries,” naming specific HP Foundation grants to UNICEF, UNHCR, and the Polish Red Cross, and business actions including suspending shipments to Russia and pausing Russian marketing ⁶. Those business actions went beyond statement: HP suspended all shipments to Russia in late February 2022 and began winding down its Russian operations in May 2022, completing a full exit from the Russian and Belarusian markets that it disclosed as forgoing roughly $1 billion in annual revenue booked in fiscal 2021, affecting approximately 200 Russia-based employees ⁷. HP Inc also made a publicly staged in-kind donation, announcing on 20 July 2022 that Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska had accepted a donation of computers under a $30 million HP partnership with the Global Business Coalition for Education, distributed roughly half to internally displaced Ukrainians and half to refugees outside the country ⁸. This disparity in specificity between the Ukraine and Israel/Gaza responses is itself a documented finding. HP’s 2014 public defense of the Basel checkpoint system to the Presbyterian Church characterized the system as reducing “friction between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers at barrier checkpoints while expediting the passage process,” a euphemistic operational framing rather than an acknowledgment of the system’s political and human-rights context ⁹.

Operations in Occupied or Contested Territories

HP, via its acquisition of EDS Israel, developed, installed, and maintained the Basel System, a biometric access-control system using fingerprint, hand, retinal, and facial data, first installed in 2004 at the Erez checkpoint and later expanded to more than 20 West Bank and Gaza-perimeter checkpoints including Jericho, Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem, Hebron, and Abu Dis ^{10, 11, 12, 9}. The contract was originally financed by the U.S. government under the 1998 Wye River Memorandum ¹⁰. The system was retired by the Israeli military by the end of 2016 per AFSC, while Who Profits states the Basel contract ran through December 31, 2017 ^{10, 11}; this operation is discontinued. Since 2003, following the Compaq acquisition, HP operated systems modernizing Israel’s population registry, including data on ethnic identity and religion, and from 2008 the Arbel Project added biometric data to produce ID cards for Israeli residents and settlers in the West Bank, with HP staff stationed inside Israeli government buildings by 2013 ¹⁰. These contracts transferred to Hewlett Packard Enterprise in 2015, then DXC Technology in 2017, then IBM in 2019 ¹⁰. Separately, HPE has been reported as the sole Itanium-server supplier for the Aviv population/immigration system since 2017, with a May 2023 contract worth NIS 3,829,410 (approximately USD 818,250) for servers and maintenance running through June 2026 - an ongoing engagement ¹³. HP operated an R&D center in the Beitar Illit West Bank settlement from 2008 to 2015 (established by EDS in 2006), later run by HPE and then transferred to DXC Technology in 2017 ^{10, 14}. A 2005 contract provided disaster-resistant storage and wireless municipal internet infrastructure for the Ariel settlement “Smart City” project; current status is unknown, with no update identified since ¹⁰. Matrix IT and its subsidiary Tact Testware, located in the Modi’in Illit settlement, distributed HP computers and provided testing services, with status unknown ¹⁰. HP/predecessor entities served as exclusive PC supplier to the Israeli military and security forces from 2009 to 2017–2019 (renewed 2014 for three years with a 2019 extension option), financed largely through the U.S. foreign military sales program, and separately held a multi-year exclusive server contract from 2011 to 2016–2017, transferred to HPE after the 2015 corporate split and later replaced by Cisco Systems in 2017 - both discontinued ^{10, 11}. HPE maintains an active contract as maintenance provider for Israel Police servers and software: a 2021 contract worth NIS 4 million ran through 2024, with a January 2024 extension announced for an additional NIS 4 million through December 2026 ¹³. HPE holds ongoing equipment-maintenance contracts with the Israel Prison Service, including a March 2025 contract worth NIS 445,000, with cumulative 2015–2020 contracts totaling NIS 2,695,268 ¹³. HPE has been the sole infrastructure supplier for Israel’s National Digital Agency biometric ID system since 2011, with a May 2025 contract extension worth NIS 3,129,750 running through May 2028 ¹³. HP’s Indigo digital-press division, acquired 2001–2002, is headquartered in Ness Ziona with a manufacturing and training campus in Kiryat Gat, Israel ¹⁵. No public evidence identified directly linking Indigo’s Kiryat Gat manufacturing operations to occupied territory, as Kiryat Gat lies within Israel’s internationally recognized 1967 borders; a BDS Movement campaign publication alleges HP Indigo provides products and services to the offices of Netanyahu and Smotrich, but this claim originates solely from campaign material and was not independently corroborated by a primary procurement source ¹⁶. Neither HP Inc. nor HPE currently appears in the UN OHCHR database of business enterprises involved in Israeli settlement activity pursuant to Human Rights Council Resolutions 31/36 and 53/25, as of the most recent September 2025 update listing 158 enterprises from 11 countries ^{17, 18, 19}; the Israeli IT firm Matrix IT, which AFSC records as a distributor of HP computers via its Modi’in Illit settlement operations, is itself listed, having been included in the 2020 UN database ²⁰. HP has nonetheless been named repeatedly within the UN Special Procedures framework itself. In October 2012 the then Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory, Richard Falk, called for a boycott of businesses profiting from Israeli settlements and named “Hewlett Packard of the USA” alongside Caterpillar, Veolia Environnement, G4S, the Dexia Group, Ahava, the Volvo Group, Riwal Holding Group, Elbit Systems, Mehadrin, Motorola, Assa Abloy, and Cemex ²¹. In the 2025 report of Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” (A/HRC/59/23), the section addressing surveillance and the Population and Immigration Authority database states that “[b]efore IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE) maintained the database and its Israeli subsidiary is still providing servers,” that “Hewlett Packard (HP) has long enabled the apartheid systems of Israel, supplying technology to the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the prison service and police,” and that “[s]ince the 2015 split of the company into Hewlett Packard Enterprises and HP Inc., opaque business structures have obscured the roles of their seven remaining Israeli subsidiaries” ²². No public evidence identified of formal litigation, government sanctions, or regulatory enforcement action against HP or HPE specifically tied to Israel/Palestine operations; the primary external scrutiny documented consists of civil-society investigation and shareholder/church divestment activity rather than state regulatory action ^{10, 11}. One private civil action is on record: in Al-Tamimi v. Adelson, filed in 2016 in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Palestinian plaintiffs sued a group of US individuals and companies - including Hewlett-Packard among the “construction and support firm” defendants, alongside Motorola Solutions, Veolia Environmental Services, Volvo, G4S, RE/MAX, Africa Israel Investments, and Orbital ATK - alleging a conspiracy to expel non-Jews from the West Bank through financial and construction support for settlements; the district court dismissed the case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction on non-justiciable political-question grounds, and on 19 February 2019 the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit reversed that dismissal and remanded for further proceedings ²³. This is a civil suit brought by private plaintiffs rather than a government enforcement action.

Internal Governance, Content & Retail Policies

No public evidence identified of HR enforcement actions, terminations, or legal disputes involving HP employees over pro-Palestinian speech or symbols; a broad November 2024 review of workplace retaliation over pro-Palestinian speech across industries contained no reference to HP. No public evidence identified of algorithmic moderation, platform-editorial, or content-policy controversies tied to HP, consistent with HP’s status as a hardware, print, and IT company rather than a media or social platform. No public evidence identified of specific labeling, sourcing, or categorization disputes for HP products originating from Israeli settlements, distinct from the government and military contracting documented above.

Brand Heritage & State Partnerships

No public evidence identified of HP marketing military heritage, defense-sector origins, or state-security ties in its commercial branding; HP’s public brand narrative centers on its Silicon Valley garage-founding history (Hewlett and Packard, 1939) rather than state-security origins. HP’s Indigo division represents an embedded Israeli commercial and industrial presence, with sourced material framing this as standard commercial operations rather than a state-partnership or “Brand Israel”-style PR campaign ¹⁵. No public evidence identified of HP formally participating in Israeli government-branded promotional campaigns, hosting Israeli government officials at HP events, or accepting Israeli state honors. The Beitar Illit R&D center received a separate three-year grant from the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Employment, per Who Profits, but No public evidence identified of a specific, named HP grant from the Israel Innovation Authority ¹⁴.

Lobbying, Advocacy, Financing & Logistics

HP Inc. reported $3,090,000 in lobbying expenditures in 2024 and $448,973 in political contributions in the 2024 election cycle, per OpenSecrets ²⁴. HP Inc.’s PAC raised $322,785 in the 2019–2020 cycle ²⁵. Hewlett Packard Enterprise maintains a separate OpenSecrets lobbying and PAC profile ²⁶. No public evidence identified of lobbying disclosures specifically tied to Israel/Palestine policy, BDS-related legislation, or anti-boycott trade bills, and No public evidence identified of HP or HPE PAC contributions earmarked for Israel-related causes, AIPAC, or anti-BDS legislative advocacy ^{24, 25, 26}. No public evidence identified of donations by HP, HPE, or the HP Foundation to the Friends of the IDF, JNF/KKL, Lev Echad, Israeli reservist funds, settlement organizations, Regavim, or Im Tirtzu. Following the October 7, 2023 escalation, the HP Foundation stated it was “working with humanitarian partners throughout the region to understand how we can best support relief efforts” ³, but No public evidence identified specifying which organizations received funds, the dollar amounts involved, or in-kind logistics provided - a contrast to the named-partner specificity of HP’s 2022 Ukraine response (UNICEF, UNHCR, Polish Red Cross) ⁶. On the shareholder-governance side, a Presbyterian Church (USA)-associated shareholder resolution proposing that HP establish a board-level committee on human rights was brought to HP’s 2014 annual meeting, its proponents arguing that “HP’s products and services are being used to foster the violation of the human rights in Syria, China, and Israel/Palestine”; the proposal was not adopted ²⁷. A documented negative check bears on institutional divestment: when Norway’s largest pension fund KLP announced in July 2021 that it was excluding 16 companies over links to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, the published exclusion list comprised Alstom, Shtrom Group, Electra, Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank, Mizrahi Tefahot Bank, Altice Europe, Bezeq, Cellcom Israel, Partner Communications, Delek Group, Energix, Paz Oil, and Motorola Solutions - neither HP Inc nor Hewlett Packard Enterprise appears on it ²⁸. No public evidence identified of HP providing free cloud, compute, flight, or infrastructure resources to Israeli state, military, or state-aligned NGO efforts during the current conflict, as distinct from the paid commercial IT contracts documented above.

Corporate Structure & Primary Mission

HP Inc. is a publicly traded, shareholder-owned U.S. corporation formed from the 2015 split of the former Hewlett-Packard Company, with no identified state-held golden shares or charter provisions tying its mission to advancing any state’s geopolitical goals; this finding applies equally to Hewlett Packard Enterprise. No public evidence identified of a foundational mandate beyond standard commercial technology enterprise activity in PCs, printers, and 3D printing.

Executive & Leadership Footprint

CEO Enrique Lores’ public statement on Israel (October 2023, via X) was framed generically around employee safety and humanitarian relief, without reference to Palestinian civilian harm, ceasefire, or occupation ³. No public evidence identified of personal donations, foundation grants, board seats, or advisory roles connecting Lores to pro-Israel advocacy organizations such as FIDF or JNF. A single unverified aggregator reference identifies a “Board Chair” for HP, but this could not be independently corroborated against HP’s official board disclosures in this research and is flagged as a material evidence gap given the audit’s emphasis on controlling principals; board-level, name-by-name research into current HP Inc. and HPE directors’ defense-industry ties, settlement-NGO affiliations, or personal donation history was not completed. No public evidence identified of HP’s founders (both deceased, with the company no longer founder-controlled) or current named executives holding board seats in CFI, AIPAC, FIDF, USISTF, or similar organizations.