Opinion: State Pension Fund is Financing Genocide in Gaza

I am deeply troubled that our federal tax dollars as well as our Mass State Retirement funds are funding a genocide in Gaza, and an apartheid state in the West Bank that eerily resembles the Jim Crow South and the former apartheid South Africa. I am grateful that Representative Erika Uyterhoeven (27th  Middlesex) presented a bill ( H.2984) on Jan 17, 2025, supported by Reps Samantha Montano, (15th Suffolk)  Natalie Higgins (4th Worcester) and Mike Connolly (26th Middlesex),  to divest the state pension fund from “any company selling weapons to the State of Israel,” unless the company does not renew or enter into new weapons contracts with Israel.

The entire Massachusetts federal congressional delegation recently voted in favor of Rep. Thomas Massie’s amendment to eliminate $3.3 billion in military aid to Israel. Now is the time to push H.2984 to success.

The Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board (PRIM) has direct investments in Israeli equities of $80,163,229, according to a report John Fitzpatrick, Legal and Governance Analyst with Mass Pension, sent me. Although this figure does not map directly to the weapons companies subject to H.2984, it suggests that PRIM holds significant investments in Israel. It is unconscionable that our state holds these investments. And H.2984 is a good start towards ethical divestment.

We must act against the atrocities occurring on a daily basis in Gaza and the West Bank – and we should do so by using the tool of divestment, as Massachusetts did during apartheid in South Africa. The legislature required similar divestment from companies engaged in “manufacture, sale, or distribution” of weapons to apartheid South Africa and Northern Ireland in the 1980s. See G.L. c. 32, § 23 (g)(ii) and (iii). It can be done again. Now is the time to divest from Israel.

There is significant support for such a move in the Northampton/Amherst area. Representatives Sabadosa and Domb need to be encouraged to support this legislation. 

Here are just of a few of the findings from the United Nations recently released report from the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory:

• More than 50,000 children have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since Israel began its war on Gaza, according to the UN children’s agency (UNICEF). Since the so-called ceasefire took effect last October, the Israeli military has killed one Palestinian child in Gaza every day on average.
  
• The chair of the commission stated: “The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces.” He also said: “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future.”
  
• The UN also reported that Palestinian children have been arrested and subjected to torture in Israeli prisons and other severe forms of mistreatment, including sexual abuse.
  
• More than half of the Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons at the end of last year were being held without charge or trial, a Palestinian rights group, Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP), said in March.
  
• The United Nations has recognized Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.

Paul Shannon, for  Massachusetts Peace Action, states the truth explicitly: “…Genocide is a state issue when our state is complicit in that genocide; whether by State investments supporting the genocide; when Massachusetts state legislators make propaganda trips to Israel paid for by Israeli lobbyists (to be thanked personally by Netanyahu for their support);  when the Mass. State legislators create a commission that conflates strong criticism of Israel with anti-semitism and promotes this preposterous perspective on anti-semitism in our elementary schools.” 

Palestine is a moral litmus test for the entire world.

Gerry Weiss, a psychotherapist, is a resident of Amherst and served on the Amherst Select Board from 2004 to 2010 and on the Town Meeting for 19 years.