DAILY TRIFECTA: Money In The (West) Bank
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TITLE: How Israel Bonds Put the Cost of the War in Gaza on US States and Municipalities
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/israel-bonds-palm-beach-lawsuit/
EXCERPT: Israel bonds are state-issued securities—comparable to US savings bonds—that the Israeli government sells to support general spending. The money from the bonds is deposited directly into the “general budget” for the State of Israel. The capital raised is not earmarked or publicly disclosed. As money in the Treasury, the funds are currently under the control of far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—a man who recently called for “no half jobs” regarding the “total and utter destruction” of Gaza.
Israel bonds have long been popular gifts and investments purchased by the Jewish diaspora, often given as birthday or bar- or bat-mitzvah presents; the different series of bonds, themselves, are sold under titles like Jubilee and Mazel Tov. Yet it is American states and municipalities that have emerged over the past 20 years as a primary investor in these sovereign bonds.
In the six months following the Hamas attack, at least 14 states and four municipalities invested in Israel bonds. Their total holdings, as of February 2024, amounted to $1.6 billion.
This swell of support, despite a shrinking Israeli economy, illustrates how Israel bonds have more in common with war bonds than with standard Treasury bills. Historically, Israel bond sales have spiked dramatically with each conflict dating back to the nation’s establishment, and, like war bonds, there is no secondary market—meaning the bonds are held by their original purchasers until maturity. Without the ability to trade, the buyer is tied to the bond regardless of market or political conditions. This intentional feature of the bond signals the commitment of the investor to the project of Israel, not necessarily to their own profit maximization.
Moreover, an analysis by Duke University’s Michael Bradley found that Israel bonds act, essentially, as a countercyclical debt instrument: allowing the country to maintain a constant level of spending amid war-induced recessions. It is a process historically dependent on what is called the “patriot discount,” whereby investors knowingly accept below-market returns in an act of nationalistic altruism. In times of conflict, Bradley concludes, investors in Israel “give more and take less.”
Last Wednesday, May 22, residents of Palm Beach County filed a groundbreaking lawsuit alleging that the county comptroller and clerk of the Circuit Court, Joseph Abruzzo, violated his fiduciary duty by investing $660 million of local tax revenues in Israel bonds in the months following the October 7 attack.
On September 30, 2023, the end of the fiscal year and just days before the Hamas attack on Israel, Palm Beach County held just $40 million in Israel bonds. At the time, this represented about 1 percent of Palm Beach County’s total portfolio. Yet, over the next six months, Abruzzo made a series of investments adding up to a total of $700 million of taxpayer dollars in Israel bonds. The comptroller’s office described the investments as a “show of support for Israel following their declaration of war against Hamas militants.”
Abruzzo’s spending spree transformed Palm Beach County into the single largest holder of Israel bonds in the world. The investment now represents 15 percent of Palm Beach County’s $3.6 billion investment portfolio.
The lawsuit alleges that these investments constitute a violation of Florida Statute 218.415(24)(b), which mandates that “[t]he unit of local government must make decisions based solely on pecuniary factors and may not subordinate the interests of the people of this state to other objectives.” Ironically, this statute, passed just a year ago, was championed by conservative governor Ron DeSantis as a way to forestall any state investment considerations of ESG, or green, bonds.
The timing of Abruzzo’s investments, and his many public statements supporting Israel, reveal the openly political character of these decisions. And Abruzzo is not alone. As the Israel’s bombing campaign ramped up this fall, the Texas State Treasury invested $65 million in Israel bonds, Illinois added $10 million, Indiana bought $35 million, Florida put down $145 million, and the New York Common Retirement Fund invested $20 million, among a handful of other multimillion-dollar purchases across the county.
TITLE: Stefanik Israel Trip Funded by Group Tied to Anti-Muslim Figures
https://readsludge.com/2024/05/30/stefanik-israel-trip-funded-by-group-tied-to-anti-muslim-figures/
EXCERPT: According to a new disclosure, [Rep. Elise] Stefanik’s trip was paid for by the conservative Jewish Policy Center, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that describes its mission as “educat[ing] the American public about Israel, foreign affairs and domestic issues of importance to the Jewish community.” The organization spent nearly $48,000 on the trip, including on business-class airfare tickets for the representative and stays at luxury hotels. Stefanik’s chief of staff, Patrick Hester, joined her on the trip.
The Jewish Policy Center has multiple individuals on its board of fellows who have been identified as anti-Muslim hate figures by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and other left-leaning groups.
Fellow Daniel Pipes, the president of the rightwing think tank the Middle East Forum, was listed as one of the top five purveyors of anti-Muslim misinformation by the Center for American Progress in its 2011 report Fear, Inc. on the roots of Islamophobia in America. Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative, a multi-year research project on Islamophobia, has an extensive profile of Pipes’ comments over multiple decades, as he has argued for various forms of discrimination against Muslims to counter the threat of Islamic terrorism. The initiative says Pipes “supports racial profiling and the surveillance of Muslim communities and believes Muslims in the United States seek to infiltrate and overthrow the country.”
Another fellow, David Horowitz, runs an organization that SPLC labels an anti-Muslim hate group called the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The Freedom Center says its mission is to “combat the efforts of the radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values and disarm this country as it attempts to defend itself in a time of terror.” Founded in 1988, the David Horowitz Freedom Center operates as a hub for multiple anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and anti-Black misinformation projects, including the websites FrontPage and Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch that distort news stories and history to depict Muslims as terrorists and rapists.
TITLE: Christian organizations come together to take boycott, divestment action as Rafah campaign continues
https://religionnews.com/2024/05/29/christian-organizations-come-together-to-take-bds-action-as-rafah-campaign-continues/
EXCERPT: Amid global outrage over an Israeli airstrike that killed at least 45 displaced Palestinians sheltering in tents in Rafah, a coalition of Christian groups is calling for a boycott and divestment of companies “supporting Israel’s military oppression of Palestinians.”
“As Christians, we seek to illuminate the sacred dignity of all people. We have tirelessly advocated for our U.S. government to stop the mass slaughter in Palestine,” the organizations wrote in a Wednesday (May 29) statement.
Citing the New Testament story of Jesus overturning sellers’ tables in the Temple, the organizations called “economic non-cooperation with injustice” a core practice of nonviolent resistance within the Christian tradition.
The letter links to a list of companies that American Friends Service Committee, a major advocacy organization for Quakers, has identified as involved in specific human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories and Israel.
The signatories of the letter include the Alliance for Baptists, American Friends Service Committee, Christians for a Free Palestine, Friends of Sabeel North America, Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace and Pax Christi USA.
SEE ALSO:
Gaza Aid Deliveries Have Fallen By Two-Thirds After Israel’s Move Into Rafah, UN Says
https://www.news18.com/world/gaza-aid-deliveries-drop-by-two-thirds-since-israels-move-into-rafah-un-says-8909472.html
Israeli soldiers film themselves stealing aid from starving Gazans
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240531-israeli-soldiers-film-themselves-stealing-aid-from-starving-gazans/
‘Solidarity over hatred’: the small band of Israelis stopping settlers obstructing aid trucks
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/31/solidarity-over-hatred-the-small-band-of-israelis-stopping-settlers-obstructing-aid-trucks
Israel settlers destroy wheat fields in historic Palestine village of Sebastia
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240531-israel-settlers-destroy-wheat-fields-in-historic-palestine-village-of-sebastia/
The Polite Israeli Settlers, Courteously Dispossessing Palestinians
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/2024-05-28/ty-article/.premium/the-polite-israeli-settlers-who-courteously-dispossess-palestinians/0000018f-ba79-d19e-a19f-fefb8c710000
New settler units on Palestinian land hand Israel a powerful demographic weapon
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2518196/middle-east