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“As current city workers, we believe that all citywide candidates, especially those that have representation on the New York City Employees’ Retirement System’s Board of Trustees, should commit to divesting from Israeli securities.”
It’s election season again in New York City, and candidates are making bold promises to win your vote. Last month, Councilmember and Comptroller candidate Justin Brannan wrote an op-ed committing to divest the City’s $274 billion pension funds from fossil fuel holdings and into sustainable investments, if elected. This is a welcome commitment and builds off of current efforts to decarbonize our pension funds. Fighting climate change is an existential imperative as every dollar invested in the fossil fuel industry brings us closer to an uninhabitable planet.
But our fight for justice cannot be selective. Even if we completely divest from the fossil fuel industry, our pension funds will still be morally compromised. The New York City Employees’ Retirement System (NYCERS), the city’s largest pension system, boasts about $88 billion in benefit-restricted assets and currently invests over $115 million in Israeli stocks and bonds. These investments directly and indirectly fund Israel’s war in Gaza, the ongoing illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, and the destruction of its land and people.
By investing in these securities, New York City provides moral and legal cover for Israel despite operating with impunity for decades. Just as we shouldn’t invest in fossil fuel companies profiting off of climate change, New York City should not financially support a country described as an apartheid state and whose leaders have active International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants out for war crimes. As current city workers, we believe that all citywide candidates, especially those that have representation on NYCERS Board of Trustees, including the mayor, comptroller, and public advocate, should commit to divesting from Israeli securities.
These issues may seem far away or abstract, but they have very real human consequences. NYCERS invests approximately $2 million in Israel Chemicals Limited (ICL), a multinational chemicals manufacturer and the sole supplier of white phosphorus to the United States Armed Forces. The U.S. sells white phosphorus—an incendiary weapon whose use is heavily regulated by the international community—to Israel, which illegally used it against Lebanese civilians, destroying crops, livestock, and farmland in the process.
To underscore Councilmember Brannan’s previous op-ed on divesting from fossil fuel companies: whether the perpetrators are companies or states, we cannot pick and choose which environmental crisis to care about.
NYCERS invests another $3 million in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms producer, whose revenues have soared due to weapons demand from the war on Gaza and the Palestinian people. These and more securities—on top of the $8 million or so in Israeli bonds held by NYCERS—are a glaring violation of our values and undermine our city’s commitment to human rights and environmental justice.
City workers’ pension funds are implicated in all of this. It is our money that is helping make bombs and chemical agents that are used against civilians. It is our money that is fueling ethnic cleansing in Gaza, terrorizing the West Bank, and legitimizing an increasingly rogue state widely condemned by the international community.
These investments make up a small percentage of our total holdings, and NYCERS has divested from various causes, and quickly at that. We are not alone in demanding divestment, and New York City should neither feed into nor help lay the groundwork for Trump and his cronies’ ludicrous dream of turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Our financial returns must not come at the expense of Palestinian lives or their sovereignty, and that is why we must divest our pension funds from Israel.
Reyna Wang, Ryan Hickey, Jack Lundquist, Meghan Peterson, and Isaac Kirk-Davidoff are affiliated with the group City Workers for Palestine.
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