BY HARPER FREEMAN

City workers who pushed their unions to pass resolutions calling on the city’s pension fund to divest from Israeli stocks and bonds celebrated City Comptroller Mark Levine’s announcement on Wednesday that the city’s five pension funds would not be reinvesting in Israeli bonds. But the workers and pro-Palestinian advocates say they plan to continue pushing Levine to fully divest the over $200 million in investments the city’s five pension funds still hold in Israeli securities and companies. 

“It feels like a victory initially,” said Tomasia Kastner, co-chair of City Workers for Palestine, a cross-union, cross-agency organizing group of pro-Palestinian workers who coordinate actions and strategy. “But when you look at the numbers, it no longer feels like a victory. It feels like a punch in the gut after a victory. It feels like one step forward two steps back.” 

The pledge Levine made this week marked a reversal from the comptroller who promised on the campaign trail last year to reinvest in Israel after former Comptroller Brad Lander allowed $40 million of the pension system’s holdings in Israel to mature and expire. 

Levine clarified in a social media post on Thursday that the city’s five funds still hold more than $285 million in investments tied to Israel, mainly through equities that he said are an “important part” of the funds’ portfolio. He said the decision not to reinvest in Israeli bonds was an “ordinary rebalancing and management of a pension portfolio,” and not a political decision. 

“At present, a number of challenges, including constraints related to a rules change on our short-term investment desk made by the previous comptroller, prevent us from making direct purchases,” he said. 

But supporters of Israel and former Comptroller Scott Stringer criticized Levine’s decision nonetheless, telling the New York Post that his move was, in essence, caving to the two-decade old Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement that seeks to boycott, divest and sanction Israel.  

‘More work remains’ 

City workers have been an active and vocal part of BDS and specifically the movement pushing to divest the city’s pension funds from Israeli companies, stocks and bonds since the genocide in the Gaza Strip began. The Association of Legislative Employees was the first union of city workers to pass a divestment resolution and was followed by Local 3005, Local 1113 and the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY, although PSC’s resolution was later revoked.  

Workers have held repeated protests to call for divestment, including just before the start of Levine’s tenure, outside of what soon became his office alongside Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish group that advocates for Palestinians.  

Matt Molloy, president of the ALE, said that Levine’s move was a “positive step forward” but said that he must go further. 

“More work remains to ensure that our city’s pension funds are fully divested, and we hope this decision is the beginning of that process,” he said. 

Evan Rothman, a CUNY graduate student who introduced the divestment resolution that narrowly passed the PSC delegate assembly in early 2025 said Levine’s announcement was a “welcome development” and a “testament to the Palestine solidarity movement’s impact on city politics.” 

“It also confirms what New York City public sector unionists have long said: investment in Israeli genocide and apartheid is not just a moral albatross, but a financial one as well,” he said.  

Under former Comptroller Lander, the boards of all five of the city’s pension funds voted to divest from Russian securities shortly after that country’s invasion of Ukraine began in early 2022. At the outbreak of war in late February, the funds held $185.9 million in Russian securities.  

Lander, who is the Democratic Party’s nominee for New York’s 10th congressional district said in a statement that Levine’s decision on Israeli bonds was the “right move.” He pointed out that the funds hold no other foreign bonds and argued that the decision of previous comptrollers to invest in Israeli bonds was a “political move, not a fiduciary one.” 

Since the Islamic militant group Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has killed at least 74,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Around 1,500 of those have been killed since Israel agreed to a ceasefire over a year ago.

Kastner said that City Workers for Palestine would soon meet to discuss their strategy moving forward in response to the union’s announcement. She stressed that workers would keep pushing until the $285 million in Israeli investments are no longer in the city’s portfolio.  

“We’re just going to stay the course and keep fighting and demanding full divestment,” she said. “We want to continue to create a strategy to fully divest the pension from Israel.”