Cisco Needs Holy Land Principles

WASHINGTON, July 28, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Cisco, the giant high tech company, headquartered in California, with a huge presence in Israel-Palestine, continues to be pressed to sign the Holy Land Principles— an 8-point corporate code of conduct for American companies doing business in the Holy Land.

The Principles are pro-Jewish, pro-Palestinian and pro-company. They do not call for quotas, reverse discrimination, divestment/disinvestment or boycott— only for fair employment by American companies.

The Holy Land Principles, Inc. has a shareholder Resolution filed with Cisco, whose Annual Meeting is later in the Fall. The Resolution calls on Cisco to sign the Holy Land Principles.

Fr. Sean Mc Manus— President of the Capitol Hill-based Holy Land Principles, Inc. and Irish National Caucus— said: "Who could possibly be opposed to the Holy Land Principles? And who can possibly  deny the centrality of fair employment? Our only claim is that we are filling a vacuum that was crying out to be filled.

"For all these years, the many American companies doing business in the Holy Land (now 545 companies) were never challenged on their fair employment record until the Holy Land Principles were launched. This can be a game-changer. This change in the behavior of American companies offers a path to what Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. would call a positive-peace, through the presence of respect for individual dignity via equal employment, rather than a negative-peace through a mere absence of Israel's Occupation (although that freedom is also, of course, an important and fundamental human right). The Holy Land Principles can do for Palestinians and others what our Mac Bride Principles did for Catholics in Northern Ireland."

Fr. Mc Manus explained: "Here, the issue is not the differences, or, indeed, similarities between Northern Ireland and Palestine-Israel. Rather, the issue is the power and leverage of American companies— not to mention their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) responsibility/ advantage.

Fr. Mc Manus concluded: "We have the precedence — indeed, the empirical evidence— of the Mac Bride Principles, which demonstrated that it was only when the American companies in Northern Ireland signed the Mac Bride Principles that real fair-employment change took place (even though those companies previously had, of course, their own sets of principles in place). That is why we are so convinced the same can happen when Cisco and all the other American companies sign the Holy Land Principles… And, again, the issue here is NOT the differences between Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine: The issue is what happens when American companies do the right thing—when American investors, consumers, stakeholders and the entire SRI community demand that American principles follow American investment. That is why we claim that Cisco needs the Holy Land Principles (which are also a practical way for Cisco and all the 545 companies to implement the Ruggie Principles."

CONTACT: Sean Mc Manus, 202-488-0107, [email protected]

SOURCE Holy Land Principles