By Jaisal Noor

This article was originally published by Truthout

Maryland’s public pension fund raised its Israeli bond holdings to $74 million in 2024.

On a cold, sunny morning in October, Grace Smith, a 42-year-old Baltimore County middle school teacher, arrived at the annual statewide teachers union convention in Ocean City, Maryland, with two fellow educators and a folder full of zines. Their mission: talk to as many teachers as possible about Maryland’s pension investments in Israel and hand out every copy they’d brought.

Smith estimated that they spoke to dozens of educators and distributed over 200 zines. The response, she said, was overwhelmingly positive.

“Everyone I talked to was glad to hear about it,” she said. “They didn’t know about it — and they were pissed.”

As part of a national movement to end U.S. complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Maryland Break the Bonds produced the zine to explain how Israel finances its genocide in Gaza and settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank by selling “Israel Bonds,” and how, according to information gleaned through FOIA requests, the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System (MSRPS) holds more than $70 million in these bonds despite recent credit downgrades and a growing divestment push.

Its demand is simple: “Invest Maryland money in Maryland’s future, not in genocide.” Representing one-tenth of 1 percent of Maryland’s $70 billion portfolio, the holdings have become a symbolic target in a campaign focused on the system’s 420,000 members — teachers, state workers, and municipal employees.

Smith learned about the campaign through a weekly vigil for Gaza held in Baltimore, Maryland, that she attends regularly. As an educator, she said she was especially shaken by reports that Israel, backed by U.S. weapons and aid, has killed one Palestinian child every hour, and destroyed 90 percent of schools in Gaza.

The thought that her retirement is bound up in that destruction haunts her. “It’s a hellscape to have your ability to retire depend on continuing the U.S. war machine,” she said. “I don’t know why it’s acceptable for a pension fund to grow through investing in genocide. I just know it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Smith was drawn to the campaign because it builds on the legacy of previous divestment movements. “Of all the tactics, divestment has been one of the most effective,” she said. 

The U.S. Investing Against the Global Tide

Over the past two years, the U.S. has supplied Israel with more than $21 billion in military aid, but public opinion is changing. Polls show half of U.S. voters and three in four Democrats now believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Even still, the campaign acknowledges divestment won’t come easily but sees it as a concrete way for constituents to put pressure on public officials and hold Israel accountable.

“Federal policy is not going to change,” said Lauren Leffler, 31, an organizer with the campaign. “But we can make it politically inconvenient for state officials to continue these investments.”

In the past two years, Israel has turned to international bonds to finance its war machine, including selling $5 billion worth to U.S. investors, mostly state and local governments.

Using Public Information Act requests, the campaign uncovered that Maryland’s state pension system quietly purchased about $10 million in Israel Bonds between July and December 2024, raising its total holdings to $74 million — even as major international funds divest over genocide concerns and credit rating agencies downgrade the investments.

“People can feel really helpless seeing a genocide funded by your tax dollars,” said Leffler. “Until you realize it’s not just at the federal level — it also happens at the state and municipal level. And that’s maybe something I can change.”

The campaign has about 40 core members and is led by the Baltimore and D.C. chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the largest anti-Zionist Jewish organization in the U.S. After months of unsuccessful private meetings with state officials, they’re going public.

Maryland has deep economic ties to Israel and in 2017 barred companies that boycott Israel from receiving state contracts. Pro-Israel groups have called divestment antisemitic — a claim the campaign rejects.

Raised Jewish in Maryland, Leffler said her faith compels her to oppose violence done “in the name of Jewish safety.”

“There is no freedom or safety for Jews in forcing people off their land and now killing people en masse in Gaza,” she said. Her stance has drawn support from some relatives and caused painful rifts with others, but only strengthened her conviction that “action is the only salve for moral failure.”

Spearheaded by young Jewish activists like Leffler, the campaign reflects a broader shift: A recent poll found 4 in 10 U.S. Jews believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and 61 percent say it is committing war crimes.

Maryland Moves One Way, the World Another

Earlier this year, funds in Norway and Denmark both divested from Israeli firms, citing the situation in Gaza and accelerating Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank. On November 4, voters in Somerville, Massachusetts, became the first city to approve a ballot measure calling for divestment from Israel, joining Portland, Maine; Hamtramck, Michigan; and the California cities of Hayward and Richmond, which have passed similar measures through their city councils. 

Maryland is moving in the opposite direction. Over the past 18 months, Moody’s, Fitch, and S&P have all downgraded Israeli bonds and maintained negative outlooks. As a result, the debt now offers unusually high returns — more than 5 percent compared to about 2.5 for similar sovereign bonds.

“The high interest rate shows how risky these investments really are,” Leffler said. “Even if they looked good on paper, they’re still investments in genocide.”

For Rebecca Riley, a 29-year-old University of Maryland employee who has been deeply involved in the campaign since August, the effort offered a path beyond protest.

“Before joining Break the Bonds, my activism was mostly street protests,” she said. “What I found here is direct, effective action.”

Responses vary, Riley said. “Some people become very open once they learn the history of occupation,” she said. “Others, because of misconceptions about Israel and Judaism, don’t want to engage with the facts.”

She believes that resistance often stems from confusion about Israel, Judaism, and Jewish safety. “Some people think divestment is antisemitic,” she said. “When really it’s about understanding the difference between Judaism as a religious identity and the Israeli government enacting military violence.”

For her, divestment is about moral accountability. “It allows me to say, ‘This is our money, our fund, and you have an ethical responsibility to stop funding human-rights violations,’” she said.

Officials Say This Isn’t Their Responsibility

Over many months, activists said they met with MSRPS Acting Chief Investment Officer Robert Burd, Deputy CIO Thomas Kim and Comptroller Brooke Lierman, who serves as vice chair of the board. Each, Leffler said, gave the same answer: Moral and human rights concerns are beyond their purview and any change in investment policy would require legislative action.

In a statement to Truthout, SRPS Acting Chief Investment Officer Robert Burd said the fund’s investments are managed “for the exclusive benefit of our members and retirees” and in line with state law. He added that the system’s divestment policy is set by legislation and must comply with its legal responsibility to prioritize financial returns for retirees.

A spokesperson for Comptroller Brooke Lierman said the pension system is following state law and that investment decisions are made by its Chief Investment Officer, not the Board. Any change in policy, the spokesperson added, would have to come from the Maryland General Assembly.

Participants in the divestment campaign like Leffler say they are working on drafting legislation, but they argue that genocide requires urgency. “Those officials basically said, ‘This isn’t my responsibility. It’s only our job to consider the finances,’” Leffler said. “I would argue we all have a human responsibility to do everything in our power to end a genocide.”

Activists point out that Maryland has acknowledged moral imperatives elsewhere. In 2018, it became the first state to require its pension fund to routinely analyze climate-related financial risks. Last year, the board created a Climate Advisory Panel “to address and mitigate climate risk” in the system’s investments. To campaigners, that precedent shows the fund can weigh systemic harms when it chooses.

They also note that MSRPS has signed the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, which call for human rights considerations in investment decisions. In September 2025, a UN panel found Israel responsible for acts of genocide in Gaza.

When activists asked officials to apply that same logic to Israel, they say they were told further purchases are at the discretion of fund managers. “We were told they simply couldn’t or wouldn’t change because it would attract attention,” Leffler said. “They said it wouldn’t be politically expedient — but continuing to buy the bonds is itself a political decision.”

Echoes of the South Africa Fight

In 1984, Maryland became one of the first states to divest from apartheid South Africa, withdrawing $1 billion dollars and playing a role in isolating the regime, which fell a decade later under mounting international pressure.

South Africans have long drawn parallels between their struggle for liberation and that of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. In 2024, when the country brought a genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice, South African officials called the move a continuation of their anti-apartheid legacy.

For Leffler, the link is deeply personal and rooted in experiences a decade ago. In Cape Town, where she studied for a semester, she walked through the visible remnants of apartheid each day. “I was confronted every day with the very obvious vestiges of apartheid,” she said. When protests flared during Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, she began to connect the struggles. “It made me see the parallels to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians — something I’d never learned growing up.”

Israel’s genocide in Gaza prompted her to join JVP’s Baltimore chapter, where she serves on steering committee of Maryland Break the Bonds — her first campaign. “The only thing that really felt like a salve for that sense of moral failure was action,” she said.

Break the Bonds is part of a broader reckoning over how public money fuels violence and planetary harm. Around the world, pension and university funds that once poured billions into fossil fuels and apartheid regimes are facing questions about their complicity in death and destruction.

“Just as institutions once realized they couldn’t profit from South African apartheid or from climate destruction, the same is true here,” Leffler said. “We have a moral and financial obligation to stop funding genocide.”

From Maryland retirement funds to global investment boards, the question driving the movement is simple: What should — and shouldn’t — be profited from?

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