In a special meeting of Cambridge City Council on Wednesday afternoon, councillors voted 5-4 in favor of calling on the city’s pension fund and other post-retirement benefits fund to divest from “companies with severe and consistent involvement directly contributing to genocide, apartheid, and occupation of Palestinians.” The policy order also requested that the city develop its own divestment list, starting with companies that contract with the Israeli military like Palantir, Lockheed Martin and GE Aerospace.
The council also considered a policy order to draft language requiring the city to boycott companies that do business with the Israeli military in its own procurement process. This failed to reach a majority.
The special meeting was scheduled after it and the original version of the divestment order, submitted by Councillor Ayah Al-Zubi and co-sponsored by Councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, were delayed via charter right by Azeem and Councillor Patty Nolan. Both policy orders recommended boycotting and divesting from a list of 100 companies that was developed by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and endorsed by the leaders of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. BDS has received criticism from some local Jewish leaders, accusing the group of questioning Israel’s right to exist.
The orders were the subject of six hours of public comment during the council’s meeting on Monday, Oct. 19. Cantabrigians for and against the idea came out in large numbers. Those who supported the orders called it a moral imperative to cut financial ties to a country that the UN says is illegally occupying the West Bank and Gaza and that has been accused of genocide. Those against worried that calling out Israel specifically would spur antisemitism, now the most common type of hate crime in Massachusetts.
New options emerge
Sullivan Chamber was again packed, though no public comment was permitted. Councillors debated two alternate policy orders that were submitted as amendments in the form of substitution. An order by Councillor Burhan Azeem was similar to Al-Zubi’s in its goals, but explicitly did not endorse the BDS platform or the AFSC list. It also included an amendment from Councillor Marc McGovern adding a clause noting that some of the companies that comprise the initial divestment list also have been involved in conflicts in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
An alternative amendment was introduced by Councillor E. Denise Simmons. It called for the pension funds to divest from any companies “regardless of the country or government involved” that cause or contribute to “crimes against humanity, war crimes, support of terrorism, human trafficking, or unlawful forcible displacement.”
Both noted the merit of cutting financial ties from companies that profited off the ending of human lives. But some councillors were adamant that Israel not be singled out. Simmons said it risked “fanning the flames” of antisemitism.
“The council has an obligation to look past intentions,” Simmons said.
“Our policy order should help peace, not demonize the country and its people, give license for antisemitism, and harm our residents directly,” Nolan said. She also expressed concerns that it would feed into far-right thinking over the issue and make the city a target for the Trump administration.
But other councillors said that they shouldn’t make an exception for Israel in holding the country accountable for its actions. Azeem noted that the council historically has disavowed conflicts and rights abuses, listing more than a dozen countries the council has named in policy orders, among them Argentina, Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Djibouti.
Azeem said constituents had expressed fear “that you could not give the other side a win, that somehow it was not about the paper that was in front of us, but it was about legitimizing the other side.” He said, “that is not a way I can … govern.”
“This is about corporate responsibility and how the city of Cambridge invests public money,” Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui added. “It’s not about anyone’s religion, ethnicity, or identity, and no one’s place in this city should be in question because of where they stand on it.”
She also said the alternative proposed by Simmons lacked specifics, and that the process it laid out would “lead us right back to many of the same companies we’re discussing tonight.”
Al-Zubi, Azeem, McGovern, Sobrinho-Wheeler and Siddiqui all voted in favor of Azeem’s version of the order, which also included a last-minute amendment from Nolan noting the city’s ties with Israeli institutions. Voting against it were Nolan, Simmons, and Councillors Tim Flaherty and Cathie Zusy. Their version of the order failed along the same lines.
On the pension divestment order, which would have cut ties with contractors that also did business with the Israeli military, Azeem broke ranks. He said that issue was more complicated and risked “fundamentally changing how we could procure things.”
McGovern noted that this could cause difficulties in procuring things like bodycams for police officers because only a few companies make one that can record from a distance — an issue highlighted in a statement from the Cambridge Police Department’s patrol and superior officer’s associations opposing the policy orders. McGovern proposed an amendment asking for a legal opinion on the proposed language from the city solicitor ahead of any Ordinance Committee meeting, but that was voted down, followed by the order itself, with Azeem, Nolan, Simmons, Flaherty and Zusy in the majority.
When the second order failed, multiple advocates for Palestine shouted “shame” at councillors and then walked out.
Mixed feelings on both sides
Afterward, the pension divestment policy order drew praise from Malick Abban, a member of Cambridge for Palestine. “We could not be more proud of our councillors who passed this,” he said. But, he was frustrated that Azeem voted against the procurement order, saying the group had expected him to support it.
Jeremy Burton, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, was also disappointed. He disagreed with the inclusion of language that referenced genocide. “And at the same time, it’s a mixed bag because they made it very clear that they were rejecting the larger boycott movement,” he said.
Wednesday’s meeting coincided with news that neither Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition nor its rivals gained a majority of parliament seats during Israel’s election on Monday.
A stronger
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