Divesting from the genocide in Gaza is on the Council’s Monday agenda

On Monday the Council will consider a policy to divest from companies complicit in the genocide, apartheid, and occupation of Palestinians. It’s going to be tough policy to pass, so here I’m going to cover:

• Why I support boycott and divestment in general, as someone who grew up in Israel and still has close family there.
• Why I think it’s a reasonable thing for Cambridge specifically to do.

Why Israel won’t change on its own

Before I lived in the US, I spent half my life in Israel. And since moving here, I have encountered many misconceptions Americans have about Israel.

Consider Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and Israel’s apartheid regime and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Many Americans take the seemingly reasonable position that Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition partners are to blame for these actions. In this telling, current Israeli policies are an aberration, with no relation to Israel’s past governments or the Israeli public.

Israel is holding elections in a few weeks; Netanyahu might be replaced by a new Prime Minister. One might therefore ask if boycotts and divestment are really necessary.

Unfortunately, the election won’t change much. Disproportionate force, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and blockades have been applied by Israel long before the current government, especially against Palestinians and Lebanese. And they will continue to be applied regardless of which political parties are in control of the government.

From 2006 to early 2009, Netanyahu was leader of the opposition; his opponents ran the government. During this time, in the month-long 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, 1,200 Lebanese were killed by Israel, and 159 Israelis were killed by the Lebanese, a 10× ratio. Citing this war, in 2008 a general in the IDF explained that this was official Israeli military doctrine:

“We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases. This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.”

He also stated:

“Hezbollah understands that shooting out of villages will result in their destruction… The possibility of harm to the population is the biggest constraint on [Hezbollah].” (My translation)

This is the same strategy applied to Gaza, albeit at a vastly larger scale: disproportionate retaliation via mass destruction of civilian infrastructure and mass killing of civilians. And this doctrine was being applied in 2006, long before 2023, and at a time when Netanyahu wasn’t in power.

The general who made this statement later became IDF Chief of Staff, the top military officer. And after retiring from the IDF, he became a politician. His political party opposed Netanyahu, but joined a unity government after October 2023. As a result, the former general became part of the five-person War Cabinet that led the war.

During that time he proposed cutting off humanitarian aid to Gaza in order to pressure Hamas. And by the time he left the War Cabinet in June 2024, Israel had killed at least 37,000 Palestinians, though this number is likely a significant underestimate.

This general-turned-politician is named Gadi Eisenkot. He is the leader of the anti-Netanyahu camp in the upcoming election; if the opposition wins, he will likely become Prime Minister.

It’s also worth noting that Eisenkot’s new political party, Yashar!, has made clear that it opposes a Palestinian state and will preserve Israel’s settlements, which are illegal under international law. Thus Eisenkot supports the apartheid regime in the West Bank that has Jewish settlers under a completely different legal system than Palestinians.

Of course, this support for apartheid is true of the vast majority of political parties running for election in Israel, as well as the public. Per the latest polls, something like 80% of members of parliament after the election will be from parties that support this apartheid regime and oppose a Palestinian state.

Both Netanyahu and Eisenkot were part of the 5-person War Cabinet that led the Gaza genocide; Eisenkot developed the military doctrine it is based on. Both Netanyahu and Eisenkot support the apartheid regime in the West Bank, and oppose a Palestinian state. A new government might make some changes at the margin; perhaps the pogroms of Palestinians in the West Bank will be stopped. But fundamentally, government policies towards Palestinians won’t change.

Essentially there is no meaningful opposition in Israel to the genocide in Gaza, nor to the apartheid regime and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Netanyahu and his partners may have made things worse, but on this topic at least they reflect the political and public consensus in Israel. Israel is never going to change these policies on its own; only external pressure will make any difference.

This is why I support a boycott on and divestment from Israel: first and foremost, to try to prevent the unspeakable harms being done to Palestinians and residents of neighboring countries. But also because I want my nieces and nephew who live in Israel to grow up in a better society than their current one, a society that has leapt into a moral abyss.

Do boycotts and divestment work?

The UK, France, and Canada recently announced sanctions designed to prevent companies from doing business with Israel’s illegal settlements. Israel’s aggressive response suggests that Israel found this very disturbing.

And one can’t help but notice how vociferously pro-Israel organizations oppose these sort of municipal policies. They, at least, seem to think these policies can have an impact. If not, why spend so much energy fighting them?

It’s also worth noting that one of our Representatives in Congress is Katherine Clark, who will likely be the second most powerful member of the House after the election, if Democrats win. Actions taken by her constituents will have an impact; the end-goal is to have Congress take action, as it has the most leverage.

Isn’t this time and energy better spent elsewhere?

Anyone who has spent time at City Council meetings will see them spending time on ridiculous trivia.

For example, per the Cambridge Day, in October 2025:

Councillor Patty Nolan urges fellow councillors to revoke a curb cut they granted at 177 Hancock St., Mid-Cambridge, citing procedural deficiencies and missing information in the application – a topic that got a thorough working over Monday, with Sobrinho-Wheeler injecting into the 45 minutes of discussion a reminder that “the majority of the council has said very clearly we do not want this power. We want city staff to decide on curb cuts.”

This after years (decades?) of spending time voting on and discussing curb cuts before the topic was, in theory at least, punted to city staff. And this is just one example.

The issue of Palestinian genocide is rather more important than many things the Council spends time on. And the City can actually make an impact here, even if it’s a small one. Certainly it’s a better use of time than spending 45 minutes talking about one curb cut.

It’s also worth noting that Israel’s supporters spend quite a lot of time trying to make criticism of Israel illegal. If they can spend all this legislative time and energy protecting Israel, I don’t see why we can’t spend legislative time trying to help Palestinians.

Take action

Email the council at council@cambridgema.gov; tell them you support divesting from companies involved in Israel’s apartheid regime and genocide in Gaza. You can read the relevant policy order here.

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