Cisco, the flagship brand of Cisco Systems, markets its networking hardware, servers, routers, and collaboration tools as essential to modern communications. Yet these same products sustain Israel’s apartheid system: powering militarized checkpoints, secure settlement networks, and surveillance platforms across occupied Palestinian territories.
For consumers and institutions, purchasing Cisco equipment is directly reinforcing the digital infrastructure of occupation. This, combined with the company’s suppression of internal activism, makes Cisco a named priority boycott target by BDS advocates and international human rights organizations.
Cisco is rated High Impact due to its central role in maintaining technological infrastructure for Israel’s military and settler-colonial system. Its equipment powers surveillance, militarized checkpoints, and secure networks across illegal settlements, directly enabling apartheid and forced displacement.
Internally, Cisco has actively suppressed pro-Palestinian staff campaigns, limiting free speech and ethical dissent. Its public support for reservist employees and refusal to divest from occupation-related contracts positions it as a strategic target in both tech justice and anti-apartheid movements. Compared to tech firms with indirect ties, Cisco’s hardware and services are foundational to oppressive state infrastructure, ensuring its ranking as a boycott priority.