Four Youth Demand supporters have blocked Cisco’s float at London Pride to expose the US based company’s involvement in the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. They are demanding that the UK government impose a total trade embargo on Israel and prosecute the corporate enablers of the genocide like Cisco for violations of international law.

Four Youth Demand supporters threw red paint over the Cisco float as it passed along Piccadilly, before sitting down in the road and gluing themselves to it, chanting “we charge you with genocide”. The Parade was delayed for about an hour while the group were removed. There were five arrests.

Today’s actions come against a backdrop of ongoing atrocities in Gaza. Since dawn today, Israel has killed another 42 Palestinians as they directed shells at schools and displaced people in tents, aimed airstrikes at private houses and shot people waiting for food.

As one of the main providers of networking hardware for the Israeli military, Cisco is potentially implicated in the mass killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them unarmed civilians. Cisco, a US-based digital communications company also provides technologies to the Israeli police and prisons, and to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory. Cisco’s networking, hardware, and servers form the backbone of the Israeli military’s surveillance and communications infrastructure which is used to track movements, map family connections, and facilitate mass surveillance and targeting of Palestinians for assasination. 

This week the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese presented her latest report From economy of occupation to economy of genocide which presents detailed research revealing the complicity of private entities in international crimes connected to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the unlawful occupation across the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In particular it names tech companies including Microsoft, Alphabet and Palatir. The report states ” While political leaders and governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide. The complicity exposed by this report is just the tip of the iceberg; ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives”.