Governments across the Bay Area have issued resolutions or policies meant to oppose Israel’s two-year-long assault on Gaza.
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors last week became the latest to do so — but not really.
The board voted to adopt its “ethical investment plan” but not implement it, pushing a decision down the road. The plan won’t go into effect until further review, which could take months. The policy doesn’t directly name Israel, but supporters and opponents understood it as an effort to divest from companies that facilitate the nation’s war in Gaza.
Israel’s military has been pummeling the Gaza Strip since Hamas militants killed 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel has killed more than 66,000 Palestinians in Gaza since then, while about 2,000 Israelis have died, according to figures reviewed by the United Nations (opens in new tab).
The plan proposed last week by Alameda Treasurer Henry Levy would “discourage” the county from investing $1 billion of its $10 billion investment fund in companies that facilitate human rights abuses. The plan outlines other investment no-nos — including fossil fuel companies and firearm manufacturers — but the crowd at Friday’s meeting was there to talk about Israel and Palestine. More than 200 people signed up for public comment.
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The vote came less than a year after Alameda County divested from Caterpillar (opens in new tab) because it sells bulldozers to the Israeli military. Hayward became the first city in the country to cut companies with ties to Israel from its investment portfolio, in January 2024, and Richmond followed suit four months later. Also in January 2024, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Some might say the resolutions from California cities and counties urging a distant country to stop bombing its neighbor are performative, but the boycott, divestment, and sanctions strategy has shown success. Indeed, Alameda County voted to divest from apartheid South Africa in the 1990s.
In this case, though, the four-hour meeting ended in a 4-1 decision to decide on it later.
“It’s a crime to support Israel during this genocide,” one resident said. “Everything that we do here comes back around.”
Opponents said the plan would embolden antisemites. “People use Israel as a pretext to hate and kill Jews,” one commenter said.
Board of Supervisors President David Haubert tried to play mediator. “Some people are rightly concerned about genocide,” he said. “Unfortunately, this has been very politicized.”
One of the only comments that was not about Israel and Gaza came from Chris Moore, a self-described “public finance watchdog” who helped lead the recall campaigns of District Attorney Pamela Price and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao.
Moore claimed Treasurer Henry Levy’s investment strategy led to bigger-than-anticipated losses. Levy rejected the accusation, describing Moore’s comments as misleading and uninformed.
“Anytime you implement a policy that is going to limit your investments, any finance professional would say you’re bound to impact your returns,” Moore said in a phone interview Monday. “It’s a political thing he’s doing.”
Levy dismissed Moore’s comments at the meeting as “lies and innuendo,” and repeatedly said Moore did not know how the investment of public funds works.
The meeting’s lukewarm conclusion initially seemed to dissatisfy everyone.
Supporters of the investment plan, including Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas, were disappointed that the board did not adopt the plan outright; opponents were disappointed that they passed it at all.
But in a true bit of comity, everybody was quick to claim victory in the aftermath.
“Palestine organizers win,” proclaimed (opens in new tab) Bay Area Current, an outlet funded by the Democratic Socialists of America. The anti-Zionist organization Jewish Voice for Peace said county leaders adopted the policy “with broad Jewish support.”
Meanwhile, the local chapter of the Jewish Community Relations Council, in an X post (opens in new tab), called the decision to delay implementation a “constructive development” and thanked the supervisors who recognized that “the measure was causing division.”
The plan will move to the county’s Finance Committee for further review, but at the meeting, there was confusion from the supervisors about who was actually on it.