Massachusetts City To Divest From Israel, Rejecting Trump's Threat Of Retaliation

Lawmakers in a Massachusetts city have voted to pass a historic ordinance divesting from companies that contribute to human rights violations, including Israel’s ongoing destruction of Gaza.

The Medford City Council passed the Values-Aligned Local Investments Ordinance on Tuesday evening, making Massachusetts the third state — after Michigan and Maine — where a municipality has barred investments in companies that profit from a conflict many experts have now labeled a genocide.

“We are in a new era where taxpayers are not just concerned with the services they receive as part of a city and town, but also how city and town resources are impacting global issues,” Council President Zac Bears, the ordinance’s sponsor, said on Monday.

“It’s heartening to see Medford take this one,” he continued. “We hope this proactive approach to ensure that municipal resources contribute to the public good and not to major forms of harm will become a trend.”

Medford introduced its ordinance in June, expanding on Boston’s landmark 2021 fossil fuel divestment to also bar public funds from being invested in weapons manufacturers, prisons and other entities contributing to international human rights violations like displacement, war crimes, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and illegal occupation. While the ordinance does not outright name Israel, the international community has accused the country of carrying out those actions against Palestinians.

Supporters of Medford’s ordinance say its language is also meant to apply to companies complicit in the mass deportation, incarceration and inhumane treatment of immigrants by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“There is expanding clarity among the American public about how they want public money to be used and not used. That includes not just tax dollars but also investment dollars that stem from taxes,” Medford resident and attorney Micah-Shalom Kesselman said.

“People are clear that they want quality public services at the local level, not billions being spent on forcibly starving the civilian population in Gaza to death. People are clear that they want money spent to support services for veterans and children, rather than masked ICE officers detaining our friends and neighbors and tearing families apart,” he continued. “This ordinance puts that clarity into action in a concrete way.”

On Monday, the Trump administration announced that it would withhold $1.9 billion in federal disaster preparedness funds from any state or city that boycotts Israeli companies. The White House appeared to change that specific language after backlash, but the Department of Homeland Security maintains it will deny funds “as it relates to the [Boycott, Divest, Sanction] movement.”

Bears, the Medford City Council president who sponsored the ordinance, did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on whether he believes the Trump administration will follow through on its threat to withhold funds.