Another Massachusetts City Faces Lawsuit Over Anti-Israel Divestment Resolution
“No city council has the power to transform municipal pension funds and public treasuries into instruments of foreign policy.”
For the second time this year, a Massachusetts city is locked in a legal battle over an anti-Israel divestment policy. A group of 10 taxpayers sued Northampton last month, challenging the lawfulness of its resolution to divest from Israel.
The lawsuit was filed in Massachusetts Superior Court on behalf of the residents, represented by the National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC) and the Gevura Fund—the same two organizations that challenged a similar BDS-style policy passed in Medford, MA this February, in a pending federal case we covered here.
While the Medford resolution was couched as a “Values-Aligned Local Investments Ordinance,” the Northampton measure is an explicit call to divest from the Jewish State. The “Resolution Calling for the City of Northampton to Divest from Entities Complicit in Human Rights Violations in Israel and Palestine” directs the city to pull investments from companies deemed to have “a substantial, ongoing, and intentional complicity” in alleged human rights violations in Israel.
The problem, the plaintiffs’ lawyers say, is that the resolution “provides no objective definitions for its key terms, including ‘complicity’ or ‘human rights violations'”—leaving enforcement “entirely to subjective political judgment.” The ordinance also bans future investment in Israel Bonds and mandates full divestment within two years.
The lawyers argue Northampton’s mandate intrudes on an area reserved exclusively to the federal government, is preempted by both federal and state law, and conflicts with the city’s fiduciary duties. They’re asking the court to declare the resolution unlawful and block its enforcement.
The push to pass the measure unanimously last September was led by the as-a-Jew contingent from the local Jewish Voice for Peace chapter, joined by the Democratic Socialists of America, Demilitarize Western Mass, and Showing Up for Racial Justice:
Northampton—home to Smith College and long a hub of progressive activism—has been building toward this moment for years. Its latest resolution followed an earlier Gaza ceasefire call, a vote to support Senator Bernie Sanders’ embargo on weapons to Israel, and prior divestment measures targeting fossil fuels and nuclear weapons manufacturers.
Organizers view Northampton as part of a broader campaign. After the resolution passed, community activist Eve Glazier predicted their win would have “a ripple effect,” with towns across Western Massachusetts, New England, and Connecticut following suit. Another campaign organizer, Ella Carlson, hoped the Northampton divestment success would “snowball to other municipalities.”
It already has. As we reported earlier, cities in Michigan, Maine, California, and Vermont, have reportedly passed their own BDS-aligned divestment ordinances.
For their part, the Jewish groups vow to push back against the unlawful mandates. As NJAC’s Mark Goldfeder put it, “No city council has the power to transform municipal pension funds and public treasuries into instruments of foreign policy.”
[Featured image via Instagram]
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Comments
I hate living in Massachusetts.
Never seriously thought of leaving until last year. Can’t say there’s a single destination I’d consider tho.
Had this discussion today with someone too.
There are a lot of red states with sane state legislatures.
I fled three years ago, the state is a lost cause. It’s full of sanctimonious virtue signaling leftist nut jobs, but you already knew that!
I don’t even live there and I hate it.
Northampton – Cambridge West
Seems like performative nonsense on the part of lefty wokiestas.
I’d nuke Northampton right this minute if I could,
Northampton is a festering hive of wokeness, home of Smith College, where you send your daughter to unfailingly become a lesbian, and smack dab next to Amherst, home to UMASS and physics professor Jenny Traschen, who sparked a national controversy in September 2001 when she told the Amherst Select Board that the American flag was a “symbol of terrorism and death and fear and destruction and repression.” Her remarks were made on September 10, just hours before the September 11 terrorist attacks, which led to her becoming a “target of harassment and hate” and receiving thousands of threatening emails, letters, and phone calls.
Just walking around there makes you think “we aren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto,” with surly pedestrians that cross the street on the rainbow crosswalk without looking. It is a circus atmosphere in the freak show vein.
Check. It’s a horrible place; Main Street probably nice at one time but not any more. Pride predominates.
I can reliably assure you, as one who attended college in Amherst, that once there were a significant number of attractive, heterosexual young women at Smith.
In fact, there was at one time a popular observation, perhaps from an old movie: “Smith to bed, Mount Holyoke to wed.
and speaking of ma…bostons chief tribal warrior mayor wu hands out 500usd to trans etc immigrants so they can feel welcomed in boston
its tea time
Something to love out of all of this
dem jewishvoters who had kept the regressives in power are going to fight harder and with more money to stop the leftists continued onslaught
now if we can just get the other 60% of jewish voters to wake up to these facts
The unasked question is:
Why is any American State. County, or Municipality investing outside the United States?
Governments should not be making any long term investments, because any excess funds should result in lower taxes the next year or current year refunds.
“A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude. One of the first signs of the breaking down of free government is a disregard by the taxing power of the right of the people to their own property. It makes little difference whether such a condition is brought about through the will of a dictator, through the power of a military force, or through the pressure of an organized minority. The result is the same. Unless the people can enjoy that reasonable security in the possession of their property, which is guaranteed by the Constitution, against unreasonable taxation, freedom is at an end.”—President Calvin Coolidge
Just so it’s said out loud, former Northampton mayor, Calvin Coolidge.
These resolutions are almost laughable if it weren’t so ridiculous. Israel is not, and has never been, an “”apartheid” country. Their Arab citizens enjoy more opportunities and privileges than they would ever have in any other country in the Middle East. Have any of these idiots ever spoken to an Arab living in Israel ? I very much doubt it, so they just come up with baseless resolutions to hurt the ONLY Democracy in the Middle East !
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