Despite Palestinians’ calls, councillors’ vote, and genocide, Dublin City Council continues to buy HP computers

Dublin city councillors voted in 2018 to back a motion that the council should discontinue all contracts with HP Inc and Hewlett Packard Enterprise because of their work with the Israeli government.

At the time, the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) put out a statement lauding the elected members’ decision.

“Dublin Becomes First European Capital to Endorse BDS for Palestinian Rights & Drops Hewlett Packard for Its Complicity in Israeli Apartheid”, the statement’s headline read.

“Dublin has offered the strongest response to date to Israel’s latest massacre against unarmed Palestinian protesters in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip,” it quoted Abdulrahman Abunahel, Gaza coordinator for the BNC, as saying.

Except Owen Keegan, who was then the chief executive of Dublin City Council, said at the time that procurement was his job, not councillors’, according to minutes from the meeting.

He said “he would not be implementing a procurement boycott of any entity, based on the content of this motion, as to do so would be in breach of both national and EU procurement frameworks”, according to the minutes.

In October 2023, Hamas attacked Israel, and Israel responded by invading Gaza. Israel’s killing of Palestinians prompting South Africa to make an emergency appeal in January to the UN’s International Court of Justice saying Israel “is committing genocide”.

“No armed attack on a State’s territory no matter how serious – even an attack involving atrocity crimes – can … provide any possible justification for, or defence to, breaches of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”, South Africa’s application to the court says.

Meanwhile, Dublin City Council’s executive arm continues to say it will not boycott HP-branded companies, despite councillors’ 2018 vote.

“Dublin City Council is obliged to comply with statutory national and EU procurement frameworks,” a council spokesperson said by email on Wednesday 10 January.

Independent Councillor John Lyons, who brought the 2018 motion, said last week that the council should go beyond this kind of technocratic response and boycott HP, even if it means facing consequences for breaking procurement law.

“We should be taking these positions particularly when you have in real time and on our screens, a genocide being carried out,” he said.

HP Inc and HPE in Israel

Since 2005, the BNC has been calling for boycotts, divestment and sanctions to pressure the Israeli government.

Among the companies it has targeted are “HP-branded corporations”. There are several of them.

The Hewlett Packard Company, or HP, no longer exists as such. In 2015, it split into HP Inc, and Hewlett Packard Enterprises. Both of those then have subsidiaries.

The BNC has urged boycotts of these companies because of their work over the years with the Israeli government.

HPE, for example, was “contracted by Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority to provide and maintain the Itanium servers that house Israel’s population registry through 2020”, it says.

“Known as the Aviv System, this population registry is the basis of Israel’s ID card system. This ID system forms a core part of the Israeli apartheid regime,” it says.

In a February 2023 article in the New Yorker, journalist Ruth Margalit wrote of a visit to Kiryat Arbat, the West Bank settlement where Israel’s national-security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was living.

“In Ben-Gvir’s part of town Palestinians are forbidden to drive on many of the roads, and are barred from even walking on streets that are designated ‘sterile’,” Margalit wrote.

“I was walking with a Palestinian activist named Issa Amro when an Israeli soldier warned him not to tread on the path reserved for Jews,” she wrote.

As of October 2023, HPE had two subsidiaries in Israel, according to documents the company filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Asked about the accuracy of the information from the BNC about the company’s involvement with the Israeli government, a spokesperson for HPE did not respond directly.

He said the company “is strongly committed to socially responsible business practices and has been throughout its history”.

“Our work in all markets in which we do business is consistent with our values, standards, and global human rights policy,” he said in an 8 January email.

HP Inc, meanwhile, supplied computers to the Israeli military for years, according to the BNC and the Quaker-founded American Friends Service Committee’s Who Profits website.

As of October 2023, HP Inc had manufacturing operations in Kiryat-Gat, Rehovot and Natanya, according to the company’s 2023 annual report to the SEC. It also had at least six subsidiaries in Israel, documents filed with the SEC show.

A spokesperson for HP Inc on Tuesday declined to respond to the BNC’s calls to boycott the company.

However, in 2021, the company put out a statement on the boycott. “As a matter of policy, we do not take sides in political disputes between countries or regions,” it says.

“The company operates in strict accordance with all applicable laws and regulations, implements rigorous policies to respect human rights in every market where we operate,” it says.

Both HP Inc and HPE continue to work with the Israeli government, according to a December 2023 update on the BNC’s campaign to boycott them.

And, furthermore, “Today, HP Inc and HPE both profit from the brand name HP”, said Apoorva Gautam, BNC’s coordinator for the campaign to boycott HP. Which is built in part on its previous work and contracts.

A spokesperson for HP Inc on Tuesday declined to comment when asked whether they currently do business with the Israeli government or military.

The spokesperson for HPE did not give a direct response to queries about current company contracts with the Israeli government.

Dublin City Council and HP

After getting support in 2018 from his fellow councillors for his motion calling on the council to end contracts with HP Inc and HPE, Lyons followed up in 2019.

He asked council managers in 2019 “to confirm what business contracts Dublin City Council currently has with Hewlett Packard, and any of its subsidiaries”.

Kathy Quinn, the council’s head of finance, responded that the council had bought HP-branded computers via “framework” contracts managed by the Office of Government Procurement.

When Lyons asked again last year, the response in December was that the council has a contract “with a supplier who supplies monitors under a whole of government framework managed by the Office of Government Procurement that currently supplies HP monitors”.

Green Party Councillor Janet Horner asked “what progress was made to stop procurement of HP goods in response to Council vote in previous term”. In December the council replied that it was constrained by EU procurement law.

“The Directive contains strict rules around the principles of treating all economic operators equally, without discrimination,” the response says. “Failure to conduct Public Procurement in keeping with these principles or the Directive could result in penalties … including financial penalties.”

It’s possible to exclude contractors from procurement processes if the “economic operator has been the subject of a conviction by final judgment for one of the following reasons”, the EU procurement law says.

The reasons include involvement in a criminal organisation, corruption, fraud, terrorist offences – including aiding and abetting terrorism – and child labour or human trafficking.

Public bodies can also choose to exclude companies based on other criteria, including violations of environmental, social and labour law, grave professional misconduct, poor past performance, and conflict of interest, said a spokesperson for the Department of Public Expenditure, which includes the Office of Government Procurement (OGP).

Gautam, the BNC coordinator for the HP boycott, said that any company that enables Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinian human rights should be considered to be committing ‘grave professional misconduct’.”

The OGP spokesperson did not respond to queries as to whether it could legally exclude HP Inc or HPE from tenders. Or whether it had a moral obligation to do so, regardless of the procurement law, given Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Next steps

Lyons, the independent councillor, says he’s now put in a new motion, which he hopes his fellow councillors will support.

“Dublin City Councillors call on the executive to sever the last remaining link it has with HP via a supplier who provides Dublin City Council with monitors made by HP,” it says.

“I’m not expecting much, to be honest,” Lyons said by phone on 5 January. “We will push it again. I’ll push it again and see what kind of response to get.”

Asked the name of the company supplying HP monitors to Dublin City Council, neither the council spokesperson nor the Department of Public Expenditure spokesperson responded.

They also did not respond to queries on how they would respond to a call to ask the company supplying the HP monitors to instead provide monitors from a different supplier.