A marathon City Council meeting ended after more than six hours of public comment, almost all of it directed to a pair of policy orders advocating for Cambridge to divest its two pension funds from and cancel contracts with companies that have contracts with the Israeli military. The council did not vote on the orders before the meeting was suspended at 11:45 p.m. It will resume Tuesday at 9 a.m.
What the policy orders say
Both orders were sponsored by Councillor Ayah Al-Zubi and co-sponsored by Councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler. The first requests the Cambridge Retirement Board and the trustee that runs Other Post Employment Benefits fund to divest accounts that hold the pensions and benefits of city employees from a list of companies identified by Palestinian rights advocates as providing assistance to the Israeli government’s oppression of Palestinians. These include weapons manufacturers, companies that make technology or AI used to calibrate weapons systems, and oil and gas companies. The second recommends ordinance language that would bar the city from entereing contracts with companies on the list, which if passed would be sent to the ordinance committee.
The orders were advocated for by local group Cambridge for Palestine. According to the group’s investigation into the city’s finances, in FY 2025 the city’s retirement benefits funds had a combined $24 million stake in companies on the list, as well as another $4 million in contracts with companies whose technology is used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli police. Overall, the city’s investment portfolio exceeds a billion dollars.
The orders also refer to Israel as committing the crimes of apartheid and genocide. Israel has received international criticism for its continued bombing of the Gaza strip and attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank. While the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion in 2024 that Israel’s occupation the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem as in violation of UN law that prohibits racial segregation and apartheid, the court has yet to issue a separate ruling on whether Israel has committed genocide, although the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory issued a report saying Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip met four of the five criteria for genocide. Separately, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest order for Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of war crimes for his government’s actions following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks. Massive bombing and a full-scale invasion of the Gaza strip ended in a ceasefire in October of last year, although airstrikes have continued.
Spirited but mostly respectful comments
Despite the large number of people and some heated comments, the atmosphere was mostly civil. Councillor Marc McGovern did reprimand some speakers for making thumbs-down gestures toward others.
A majority of the speakers were in favor of the measures. Many of them called divestment a moral imperative against what they viewed as Israeli aggression. Opponents thought it was unfair for the policy order to specifically call out Israel or worried that the policy order would encourage antisemitism.
“We want Cambridge to take responsibility for where its money goes? Awesome. Then write a rule that reaches China, too, and Egypt, and Sudan and Russia,” said Cambridge resident Yuval Speigler. “Because if you don’t, please spare me the speeches about universal justice. You’ve singled out the one and only Jewish state in the world as a special standard, and you owe the city an explanation.”
Many said that antisemitism has gotten worse since October 7th, 2023 – some sharing stories of being harassed for wearing kippahs and of anti-semitic bullying their children have experienced in Cambridge schools. Some were also skeptical of the motivations of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and said Israel was not committing genocide.
But others – including many Jewish people who spoke during the comment period, disagreed. They said that it was wrong to conflate anti-Semitism with efforts to hold Israel accountable for its actions.
“Many tonight have said this policy order is motivated by hatred, but I want to consider the ways this might be motivated by love,” said Asher Leba, who identified himself as a member of Cambridge’s Jewish community and the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. “We Jews are a family, and like a family member in the throes of addiction, the state that acts in our name is in dire need of its intervention. The Israeli government has become addicted to violence … we need friends like the city of Cambridge to say ‘no more, we’re cutting you off.’”
Others defended efforts to divest from companies involved in Israeli wars, calling them legitimate forms of nonviolent resistance against what they consider to be an oppressive regime, and said that killing of tens of thousands of people in Gaza during the war and continuing deaths from air strikes and settler encroachment in the West Bank did amount to genocide. Multiple city employees said they were in favor of the measure, which affects their pensions.
“It’s our tax dollars, our money here in America, that allows the atrocities in Palestine to continue,” said Sophia Merriweather, a Cambridge resident who works at the Cambridge Public Library. She, like many others, compared the orders to divest to action taken by the city in regards to South African apartheid. (Cambridge residents voted two to one in a public referendum in 1979 in favor of divesting the city’s pension from South African companies, although the city had no investments linked to South Africa at the time.)
The debate also drew commenters from outside the city, including callers from Somerville and Boston. One person called in from Akron, Ohio.
Rhetoric escalated as night went on, with some speakers calling their opposition “fools” “morons” and “liars.” Speakers occasionally broke council rules by calling certain councillors out by name, which appeared to frustrate Councillor E. Denise Simmons, who voted against a successful motion to extend the meeting past its normal cessation at 10 p.m..
The final commenter was Marty Levin, an 81-year old Cambridge resident who stayed in city hall for over six hours to speak in favor of divestment. He said he repeated a Buddhist mantra to himself to stay alert.
He old Cambridge Day he was moved to speak because he had been devastated by reports from doctors working in Gaza during the peak of the recent war, who said they encountered young Palestinian children who had been shot through the head.
“When I read that, I cried bitter, bitter tears,” he said. “It’s unconscionable.”
To be continued
Councillors will consider the policy orders, along with the rest of its agenda, when they reconvene at 9 a.m. on Tuesday. It is unclear how they might vote on the policy orders. Mixed viewpoints were expressed by several councillors who responded to Cambridge Day’s request for comment.
“I don’t think City Council should deal in foreign affairs, which I’ve said for years,” Vice Mayor Burhan Azeem texted. “I also don’t think we should have an exemption just for Israel/Palestine.”
Councillor Tim Flaherty, meanwhile, said via email that supports substitute PO language that has been floated “that is written broadly and applies to human rights violations committed anywhere by any country. If people are insisting on singling out Israel, they should consider whether that is in effect singling out the Jewish people,” Flaherty said. It is unclear who will be introducing the proposed substitute. He noted, though, that he “condemn(s) Benjamin Netanyahu. He is a war criminal.”
McGovern said “I don’t think that mentioning the actions of the government of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic,” but he understands why people might want to mention other countries that have been responsible for human rights abuses as well. He said he heard “very powerful testimony, whatever side of the coin people were on.”
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