The Cambridge City Council in Massachusetts, home to Harvard University, voted 5-4 on Wednesday to ask the city to divest from Israel Bonds and five defense and technology companies while disavowing the movement to boycott Israel.
That attempt to thread the anti-Israel needle drew criticism from Joe Sabag, executive director of the Florida Israel Institute at Florida Atlantic University, whose work helped the state formulate its anti-boycott, divestment and sanctions laws.
“What I think we’re looking at here is BDS in function but not form,” he told JNS. “They wanted the BDS without the ‘B,’” Sabag said. “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, that’s what it is.”
The order, sponsored by two City Council members who are members of the Boston chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America—Ayah Al-Zubi, a Harvard graduate, and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler—calls for the city manager to make a divestment list that includes Palantir, Elbit Systems, Lockheed Martin, GE Aerospace and Boeing.
It asks that the Cambridge Retirement Board and the Other Post-Employment Benefits Fund trustee divest from the listed companies and Israel Bonds and refrain from future investments in them.
The measure cites estimates based on mid-2025 holdings of approximately $2.6 million in pension investments in Palantir and $18.2 million in weapons manufacturers, military contractors and other companies. The order also cites about $3 million in GE Aerospace holdings in the retiree-benefits trust.
The order targets companies it accuses of “genocide, apartheid and occupation of Palestinians.” It cites United Nations allegations against Israel.
The order also states that its adoption “does not constitute endorsement by the City Council of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement or adoption of its platform,” and that it affirms ties with Israeli institutions.
“The city stands unequivocally against antisemitism and with our Israeli and Jewish community members,” the order states.
In 53 pages of public testimony submitted to the council, one person stated that “everybody knows that anti-Israel is antisemitic.” Another called the anti-Israel boycott movement “a racist hate movement that would hurt our economy and community.”
Sabag told JNS that the council wants “plausible deniability to say that in form, this is not BDS.”
Massachusetts is one of 11 states that do not have anti-BDS statutes, but the council still wanted to “hedge,” he said.
Under Cambridge’s charter, the city manager is responsible for implementing council policy, but state law assigns pension investment decisions to the Retirement Board.
Jeremy Warnick, the city’s communications officer, told JNS that “over the coming months, the city will be exploring the ways to support the adopted substitute policy order as amended and will outline those specifics in a formal response to the council as outlined in the order.”
The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston expressed “deep disappointment in the decision to divest.” Jews in Cambridge worked to defeat the boycott aspect of the order, it said.
“Because of these local efforts, the final version of the divestment order includes specific language affirming that the Cambridge City Council does not endorse the broader boycott, divestment, sanctions movement and its platform,” the JCRC stated.
“While amending the order to state that the council ostensibly does not endorse the BDS movement is a welcome change,” it said, “this does not mitigate the harm in that the council did, in effect, embrace elements of this dangerous movement.”
There are more than 66,000 Jews living in the broader Cambridge area.
“The council’s decision also has troubling consequences for Jewish residents of Cambridge,” the JCRC stated. “Jews in Massachusetts have faced exclusion, harassment and even physical attacks because of their actual or perceived support for Jewish self-determination in Israel.”
“We appreciate the council’s stated opposition to antisemitism,” it said. “But the Jewish community’s concerns cannot be resolved simply by adding language condemning discrimination while adopting an order that creates further harm.”
