Richmond adopts Israel divestment policy

RICHMOND — After being the first city in the nation to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, Richmond has now adopted a policy to divest from companies that support Israel’s military operations.

The Richmond City Council voted 6-0 on April 30 to add new restrictions to the city’s investment policy that call for divesting from a list of companies and their subsidiaries due to their support of Israel’s military. Ten companies are on the list: Airbnb, Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Dell, Cisco, Motorola Solutions, First Solar Inc., Wix.com and Caterpillar Inc.

The October resolution by the city council came shortly after Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and took another 250 as hostages in a surprise attack on Oct. 7. Israel soon after began its counter-attack, which has since killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

“More than anything, fundamentally, it’s about us and our humanity. This is to affirm we do not want to be accomplices to these crimes,” said Councilmember Soheila Bana, who sponsored the resolution with Mayor Eduardo Martinez and Councilmember Gayle McLaughlin. “We stand in solidarity with those whose human rights have been violated, whose sanctity of life has been disregarded and whose pursuit of freedom has been denied.”

The policy recommendation, prepared by Shiva Mishek, chief of staff for Mayor Martinez, also calls for divesting from companies involved with developing and manufacturing weapons, border and mass surveillance industries, mass incarceration and detention industries, or those that benefit from prison labor.

Councilmember Cesar Zepeda abstained from the vote after raising questions about why the policy speaks only to military decisions by Israel, and not other countries like China or Russia.

Mishek said staff would be open to expanding the policy but she also cautioned against adding more language to the policy without further research.

The city appeared to try to get ahead of a legal wrench when seeking to answer calls to divest from Israel — Assembly Bill 2844, known as the Anti-Boycott, Divest, Sanction bill. Passed in 2016, the law prohibits public agencies that receive $100,000 or more in state funding from divesting from foreign nations, specifically calling out Israel in the legal text, because doing so would be discrimination. Entities that do divest risk losing state dollars.

Before the council vote, Mishek acknowledged the term BDS — a call for public and private entities to boycott goods either made or connected to Israel in some way, divest financial holdings from the nation and for governments to use sanctions — is a “sensitive” one, but argued the proposed policy is a specific investment and divestment item.

Deputy City Attorney Shannon Moore also recommended the council include language specifying the policy would be a “constitutionally protected protest of the policies of the current government of the state of Israel regarding the people of Palestine and the war in Gaza.”

“It shall not allow, and this is key, any discriminatory actions against any persons on the basis of religion, creed, ethnicity, national origin or any unlawful basis,” Moore added.

How the policy is implemented will also depend on cooperation from the state. The city is one of more than 2,300 local governments and special districts investing through the state’s Local Agency Investment Fund, one of three arms of the Pooled Money Investment Account which oversees the investments of billions of taxpayer dollars.

The city can inform LAIF of it’s investment restrictions, but cannot mandate that those restrictions be met, Mishek said. Annual reports from LAIF have indicated other investment limitations have been met but if the state is unwilling or unable to adhere to the new policy, the city may have to decide to find a new investment manager, Mishek added.

“There will have to be some changes made, for sure,” Mishek said in an interview after the meeting, sharing optimism about city staff’s ability to “work this out” with LAIF.

The council’s affirmative vote was met with rowdy applause by those who attended the meeting. Dozens of people used their two minutes of public comment to call for the council to approve the measure and to thank the body for being the first to advocate for Palestinian people in October.

“I think most realize at this point that a ceasefire is no longer sufficient. Even a permanent ceasefire would not properly ensure the safety of Palestinians from the rabidly fascist regime in Israel,” said speaker Vincent Yannello. “Divestment was the death knell of the apartheid state of South Africa. The strategy is crucially important in the fight against Apartheid South Africa’s successor, Israel.”

While an overwhelming number of speakers were in favor of the measure, not all public comments were supportive of divestment. A few public commentors implored the council not to adopt the policy, asserting it was hurtful and harmful to Jewish residents, unfairly targeted the world’s only Jewish state, further divided the community and was based on inaccurate assertions about the current conflict.

“This has been a display of intolerance, bias, misinformation and naive oversimplification,” said speaker Miriam Fusi over teleconference. “Over half of the population of Israel is comprised of Jews indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa. Most of them were forced out by the only country they knew … and the only country to take them was Israel.”

Vice Mayor Claudia Jimenez, in an interview after the meeting, acknowledged the concerns raised and called Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7 “horrible”. But Jimenez also pushed back on those who say the issue is outside of city business. She argued the city has a responsibly to acknowledge the suffering of Palestinians locally and abroad, and to not benefit from Israel’s military action.

“We recognize your pain and suffering, and that doesn’t mean we can’t be explicit,” Jimenez said. “Hamas’ attack was horrible, but the collective punishment has to stop.”