JVP-RI leads diverse coalition to rally in support of Israel bonds divestment ordinance

"We are here as a multiracial interfaith coalition to say with one voice, 'We want our city to invest in our community, not genocide in Gaza. We're going to Break the Bonds!'”

Jewish Voice for Peace - Rhode Island (JVP-RI) held a rally on the steps of Providence City Hall to show their support for Providence City Council Ordinance 45610, which would ensure that the City of Providence refrains from investing city funds in sovereign bonds from the State of Israel. Over 150 people attended the rally.

The ordinance is supported by JVP-RI, a growing community of Jewish residents and allies in the capital city and across the state who oppose United States support for the Israeli military as it continues its war in Gaza. Since its introduction on June 6th, the ordinance has been endorsed by over a dozen community organizations and local businesses, including Working Families Power - Rhode Island, Reclaim Rhode Island, Rhode Island Democratic Socialists of America, Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM), and the Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance (AMOR).

Here’s the video. Note that the constant blare of sirens and whistles was provided by a small right-wing Zionist group, the Rhode Island Coalition for Israel (RICI). See the bottom of the page for more on RICI.

JVP-RI’s Joel Reinstein emceed the rally:

For eight months we have shouted, we have marched, and we've taken the streets to condemn Israel's ongoing genocide and Gaza. Today we are here to support meaningful change and take a step towards accountability. We're here to support our city divesting from Israel's genocide and apartheid, investing in our community, and Breaking the Bonds.

Our City Council made Providence one of the first cities in America to call for a ceasefire. But as recently as two years ago, Providence had $2 million invested in Israel's extremist apartheid government. That's money that Benjamin Netanyahu can use to do whatever he wants, whether it's bombing hospitals, setting up torture camps for detained Palestinians, killing World Central kitchen aid workers, killing healthcare workers, killing journalists, or killing children by the thousands.

We are here as a multiracial interfaith coalition to say with one voice, “We want our city to invest in our community, not genocide in Gaza. We're going to Break the Bonds!”

It's not going to be easy. They're doing everything they can to spread division, to sow confusion, to intimidate and silence us. Mayor Smiley says that he will veto the ordinance to divest from Israeli bonds if it passes, but we are not going to give up that easily. Whether it happens this month or next month or next year or the year after that, we're not going anywhere. We will not stop. We will not rest until we divest. Democracy means it's up to us to make the community we want to live in. I need you to be loud, so loud they can hear you in Burnside Park, so loud they can hear you in Cranston, College Hill, Chalkstone Avenue, or down by the docks.

Break the Donds, Divest! We will not stop we will not rest!

Sovereign bonds of the State of Israel - also known as “Israel Bonds” - are direct loans to the Israeli treasury, providing unrestricted funding for general operating funds for the Israeli military and government. The City of Providence has been invested with Israel Bonds for more than 20 years, and directly held over $2 million in these bonds as recently as 2022. Previous direct investments in these bonds have expired, making now the opportune time to ensure that the City doesn’t make this bad investment again in the future.

If the ordinance is passed, Providence would be the first known municipality in the country to make such a commitment. Providence set a precedent as the first city to stop supporting companies conducting business in Sudan during the genocide in Darfur in 2006.

JVP-RI organizer Julian Drix was the next speaker:

I want to introduce myself before I talk about this. I am speaking to you today as the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. My grandmother got false papers in Poland, hiding other Jews in her apartment. My grandfather's entire extended family was murdered along with his wife and his 2-year-old baby. He survived almost a year inside one of the Nazi's concentration death camps and he escaped before it was liquidated.

I know antisemitism. It's the military forces of fascism that are backed up by widespread hate of everyday people who condone it and justify it. That is how genocide happens and it's what Israel is and has been doing to Palestinians. My grandfather was a medical doctor who cared for fellow inmates in the concentration camp. There is no justification for what Israel is doing as they decimate the entire healthcare infrastructure in Gaza, target medical professionals, kill entire extended families, and impose starvation and disease on millions of people. There is no justification for anything that Israel has done since starting its colonial project through ethnic cleansing and mass murder.

Zionism is an insidious and hateful ideology. It exploits the history of Jewish suffering in Europe to commit atrocities in Palestine. It is the hateful ideology that allows this group of far-right Christians to be here trying to speak over me, a Jewish grandchild of Holocaust survivors. Shame on you.

I am here to talk to you about Zionism and to speak to my fellow Jews. We are calling this campaign Break the Bonds because we need to break the bonds that tie us, as Jewish people, to the hateful and racist ideology of Zionism.

It is not just about the financial impact - and that is substantial. The City of Providence has invested millions of dollars directly into the State of Israel into a treasury department that is now managed by far-right extremists to commit war crimes. We do not need to have our public dollars connecting us to genocide and war crimes. We can say no.

It is not just about the financial impact of this, it's about the narrative impact also. Israel sells these bonds as a way for people to show their support for the future of the Zionist project - to buy into their colonial land grabs, military occupations, and genocide. Israel bonds are how they hook people. It's how they hook institutions into being financially and emotionally directly invested.

We are in a strategic moment right now, globally. Zionism is in crisis. There is more public pushback to their narrative than ever before. There is opposition everywhere around the world and Israel's war-based economy is not doing well. They are crumbling and they need these investments to survive.

We can push them. We can win this. Locally, Providence's investments have expired other than a small amount that's left in this index fund for retirement accounts. This is a critical and strategic moment to intervene, which is why JVP Rhode Island took up this national call and launched a campaign in Providence.

We anticipated the Zionist backlash, and the bullshit accusations of antisemitism, and we moved quickly to launch the campaign this summer.

I want to be crystal clear to the haters, the oppositions that are here listening - There is Jewish leadership behind the [proposed ordinance.]. The only Jewish member of the City Council, our Council President, is sponsoring this. There are Jewish anti-Zionist council staff who are supporting this. This legislation is supported by the Jewish members of Jewish Voice for Peace, both locally in Providence and nationally.

In response, there has been some very quick and fierce Zionist opposition, predictably, with the classic accusations of antisemitism saying that we anti-Zionist Jews are not real Jews. These [are] hateful and cynical identity attacks on us. The Zionist opposition, like our Zionist mayor and Councilman John Gonsalves, who isn't Jewish but dares to accuse us of antisemitism. Shame on you for your audacity and for you and any other non-Jew like the Christian extremists here today to accuse us of antisemitism.

Zionism is a political movement that framed itself as colonial from the start. It capitalized on the Jewish suffering in Europe to get military support from European powers. It is a hateful ideology that continually commits and justifies atrocities in the name of Judaism. Zionists do this in the name of all Jews and it's on us to make clear that they don't speak for us. They attack Jews who don't agree with them and they call us fake, or less than Jewish.

I'm here today to say real Jews don't support Genocide. Straight Up, no ifs, ands, or buts. The Zionist lobby here in Providence is saying that this campaign makes them feel unsafe as Jews. So to my fellow Jews, I want you to understand - If you feel uneasy when you hear a critique of Israel or when you see something pro-Palestine, that is not you being threatened and it's not antisemitism - it's your conscience trying to speak to you.

Zionism is trying to dehumanize you. Reclaim your humanity.

What we will not allow them to do is perform white fragility and weaponize their whiteness by calling the cops and calling on a military state to commit war crimes on their behalf. The opposition is fierce and they're loud with their machines and their money and their fancy trucks, but they're small and they're isolated and we will win.

JVP is here to speak to our Jewish brothers, sisters, and non-binary people to build our bases and be a loud voice of Jews in support of this ordinance. We are proud to be joined by all of these coalition partners who are organizing their bases and bringing out their people to be loud, to be fierce, and to win this when it comes to the council in September.

If the ordinance is passed, Providence would be the first known municipality in the country to make such a commitment. Providence set a precedent as the first city to stop supporting companies conducting business in Sudan during the genocide in Darfur in 2006.

Reen is a Palestinian mother and activist:

Peace be upon you and shalom to my Jewish brothers and sisters. You have been nothing less than allies to the Palestinian community in Rhode Island. You have given Palestinians a voice when Palestinians have none in the United States.

All of this opposition is coming out of fear. They're afraid the truth is coming out and they're afraid because they have so much that is at stake. The colonialism barrier is breaking and they are afraid.

I met yesterday with our one and only genocide Jack Reed, who only wanted to meet with me alone. No community members, not even my kids. He was willing to shake hands with, but not face them. He's so ashamed of looking my kids in the eye because he knows how much blood is on his hands. I am here to tell you he hates that you are on the streets. All of these cowards hate that you are on the streets and the numbers.

Realize this: They're not holding their own rallies. No one goes to them. Instead, they decide to disrupt our rally. It is too late for them, my friends. The has come out. We're taking the streets from now until we end colonialism, imperialism, and all of the Senator's thought process.

Our fight has started. We still have a way to go, but you need to hold on tight. Remember, this did not start on October 7th. It started in the early 1800s. We have to breathe and keep going and keep united - don't let these people break us apart. I thank you from the bottom of my heart, as a Palestinian.

God bless you all, keep on going, and Free, Free Palestine!

Rabbi Lex Rofeberg:

Shabbat shalom.

I want to join the train of folks who have commented on our musical accompaniment that's here today. I'll let them speak for themselves because they tell their own story on their website. https://www.ricoalitionforisrael.org/about-us When you to the Rhode Island Coalition for Israel website, the first thing they say is that they're not a Jewish organization. They speak for something they call Western Judeo-Christian values and they have a quote from a fellow named Ze'ev Jabotinsky, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze%27ev_Jabotinsky Talk about people who embody what it is to not have a heart. Jabotinsky is a notorious revisionist Zionist and I'll let him speak for himself and this organization that chooses to quote him. Here's the kind of thing that Jabotinsky thought about Jews and that the Rhode Island Coalition for Israel thinks about Jews.

To imagine what a true Hebrew is, to picture his image in our minds, we have no example from which to draw. Instead, we must use the method of ipcha mistavra (Aramaic for deriving something from its opposite): We take as our starting point the Yid (used here as pejorative for Jew) of today, and try to imagine in our minds his exact opposite. Let us erase from that picture all the personality traits that are so typical of a Yid, and let us insert into it all the desirable traits whose absence is so typical in him. Because the Yid is ugly, sickly, and lacks handsomeness (הדרת פנים) we shall endow the ideal image of the Hebrew with masculine beauty, stature, massive shoulders, vigorous movements, bright colors, and shades of color. The Yid is frightened and downtrodden; the Hebrew ought to be proud and independent. The Yid is disgusting to all; the Hebrew should charm all. The Yid has accepted submission; the Hebrew ought to know how to command. The Yid likes to hide with bated breath from the eyes of strangers; the Hebrew, with brazenness and greatness, should march ahead to the entire world, look them straight and deep in their eyes and hoist them his banner: “I am a Hebrew!”

That's who's marching against us. Those marching with us, dancing and singing on Shabbat as Jews and Palestinians, as Muslims, as Christians, as secular folks, that's who I'm with this Shabbot.

I want to talk a little bit more about who I'm here with and who I'm not here with. As previous speakers mentioned, there are people in this city who have had the gall to claim that this group of people, including so many Jews like myself, are being antisemites by speaking our Jewish values. I'm not here for it. I live in Federal Hill and I have one Jewish person that has been elected to represent me and that's Councilperson Rachel Miller. That's the one Jewish person who has been elected by the public - and not self-appointed - to represent me. There are self-appointed groups of people who speak for me all the time. They say they're doing so on behalf of the 25,000 Jews that live in Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts. They don't.

The Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Board of Rabbis had the gall to say this: "We urge the Providence City Council to reject this effort to demonize Israel, alienate Providence's Jewish community, and expose the city to potential liability in litigation." That's what these two organizations said.

Let's take those three bullet points. I want to address this to the local Jews who these organizations are claiming to represent, and I want to say this to Brett Smiley, and to each city council person. I want to say this directly to you.

The first bullet point: “demonize Israel.” I have news. Israel is demonizing itself. There are 40,000 dead human beings in Gaza over the last eight months. There are tens of thousands more from past decades. It is unconscionable. It is not something that they are doing as an instantiation of Judaism. It is something they are doing as an instantiation of their terrible values. They don't represent me. Demonizing Israel? That's not something that we're standing here to do today. That's something Israel is doing to itself.

I am part of the people, the cloud, the collective that is the Jewish people and called in Hebrew is-ra-al, those who wrestle with God. Those who wrestle with what it is to be a good human being. I'm part of that community. I am not demonizing myself or my community by standing here. I am being a part of it and celebrating Shabbat.

The second bullet point says that this is an effort to alienate Providence's Jewish community. Who here is in the Providence Jewish Community? Make some noise.

Again, I'm not alienating myself. I'm not alien to my body. I'm not alien to my values and neither are any of you. And you don't have to listen to Brett Smiley or anybody who's not part of the Jewish people claim that you are somehow out to harm yourself by standing with all human beings - by standing with Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims, secular people, and Christians - and saying that no child should die from a bomb in Gaza or anywhere else. You are not alienating anything by standing here today.

Third, “expose the city to potential liability and litigation.” I'm not a legal expert. I don't know anything about that, but I do know that I am a person who was taught by my government, by other people, that what I do with my money actually speaks to people. I saw that one of the co-sponsors today for this wonderful march is White Electric.

This is a little tangent. I live a couple of blocks from White Electric and I'm there just about every week, often with many of you, talking about how we dream of a Jewish world in Providence that would not look like the organizations we have that don't speak for us. That's often what I'm doing at White Electric, a worker-owned co-op that I love. Part of why I go there is because I recognize that when I put my money on the counter - when I go to a worker-owned co-op - I am expressing that that's the kind of place I want to spend my money. And when, just a couple of weeks ago, I bought some art that was on the walls there and the money was going to benefit the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, I was excited to do that with my money too. Because when I spent that $36 I understood that it was a manifestation of my commitment to all children of all ethnicities anywhere in the world. When I went to White Electric, when I purchased that beautiful artwork on the wall, I was doing something because our money is not nothing. Our money is not just sitting in investments. It is an expression of values.

That's what this is. That's why we're here because we understand that. They're called bonds. Bond is a word for friendship. Bond is a word that is supposed to connect. I don't want to commit my friendship to a government that is killing thousands of people. I don't want to do it. [We say] not another nickel not another dime because our money speaks. Our money conveys something.

They say we're exposing the city to potential liability and litigation. I don't know if that's a threat. I don't know if they're just saying, but I want our morality, our ideology and our values to stand in the right place and that's extended through our money.

Thank all of you for being here today. Whether you're here as a Jew, whether you're here as a Muslim, whether you're here as a Palestinian, an Israeli, a secular person, a Christian, whatever your identities are, you're here marking Shabbat, you're here in the midst of the Torah cycle, the cycle of our Jewish narrative that is all about speaking your values, and it's also all about intercommunal debate. It's about standing up and saying that if some group of Jews is claiming to be the real voice of Judaism, maybe stand and question that.

This very week there's a majority group, 10 tribes that goes and speaks something in a group of two tribes is actually deemed the winner. Just being part of what is deemed or perceived to be the Jewish majority is not always the place to be. We're building the Jewish majority - we're building the human majority - that's standing on the side of Palestinians. That's what we're doing.

Break the bonds and let's keep our momentum building. I want to close actually with liturgy from the Shabbat service. It's from the Ashra prayer that seeks to instantiate joy for all people. When we open our hands, we satiate all that lives. What we do with our hands, what we do with our money is not bullshit. It actually means something. And that's why I don't care if it's 0.1%, 0.5%, 1% of our budget. We should not be invested in these crimes.

Claire is a cochair of the Rhode Island Democratic Socialists of America.

Providence's investments are ostensibly meant to benefit us and our city, but at a time when the citizens of Providence are bearing the burden of multiple crises - unfettered inflation, lack of affordable housing, stagnant wages - we must ask why it is that our local government is concerned with funding atrocities abroad? The answer to this question is unsurprising. The ruling class of our society seizes any opportunity to profit off of and abet war, destruction, and genocide. While the $2 million in Israeli bonds held by the City of Providence is just a fraction of the billion sent to Israel, they still fuel the larger American war machine and enrich those in power. When financial gain comes at the cost of human life, we must stand up and fight back and say that violence against the people of Palestine is violence against the people of Providence.

Today we refuse to be further implicated in the genocide of Palestinians. We are demanding decisive action from our city counselors to divest from Israel's campaign of death and destruction and to reinvest in justice and peace. If our city councilors want an end to the violence in Gaza as they stated in their ceasefire resolution, they are obligated to take steps to end that violence by cutting off the supply of funds to Israeli apartheid and occupation. We can hold them to this because remember, we are the ones who not only keep them in office but keep this economy running.

We hold incredible power to effect change and right now we have the opportunity to use that power, as citizens of Providence, to set an example of international solidarity with other cities across the United States and the world. We can send a message to the politicians and the people that the citizens of Providence value life over profit, abundance over destruction, peace over endless war, and liberation over oppression by divesting our city's money from Israeli bonds.

It may feel like only a small improvement, but every time we resist the impunity with which the ruling class exerts its financial power, every time we affirm that we have more in common with oppressed peoples abroad than we do with those who put money over human life, we continue to build a better world in which all of us live free from violence and occupation.

Thank you everyone for coming out here and letting our elected officials know where we stand. We will continue to do so until these Israeli bonds are broken and Palestine is free.

Eli, from the Party for Socialism and Liberation:

We're here today to demand that the City of Providence divest from the genocide against Palestinians. Our City Council in Providence has been invested in Israeli bonds for 20 years.

It's shameful.

This is a relationship for which the city recently got a personal thank you from the Israeli bonds company. Israel bonds are an investment in the Israeli occupation. They keep the government and its apartheid state running. That means that over the last 20 years, the City of Providence has financed Israel's murder of Palestinians, expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland, and the decimation of Palestinian lives.

When Israel fenced off Gaza, turning it into an open-air prison in 2007, the City of Providence was invested. The 2014 bombing of Gaza in which Israel murdered more than 2000 Palestinians was co-signed by Providence's tax dollars. The City of Providence co-financed Israel's 2018 and 2019 attacks on Right of Return marchers in Palestine. The Providence City Council and Brett Smiley intend to keep financing this genocide indefinitely unless we put a stop to it.

We are here to say, “No More!” The Providence City Council must end its relationship with Israeli bonds and Divest Now! When the Providence City Council and Brett Smiley claim to represent the working people of Providence, we know they're blatantly lying to us. Providence City Council and Brett Smiley only represent the United States war machine, exploitative corporations, and the gentrifying developers that are displacing our neighbors every single day in our city.

Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled that cities and states can criminalize unhoused people for sleeping outside. Shameful. They won't house the people but they pour billions into genocide. Brett Smiley won't provide housing, but he funds both the genocide and the cops who brutally sweep the encampments in our city. And while Smiley weekly lies that our protests are making Jews feel unsafe, hundreds of anti-Zionists Jews in Rhode Island have joined marches, made phone calls, and stood with Palestine day after day.

The City of Providence will not be fooled by the city council or Brett Smiley. We stand with Palestine!

Let's be clear: Investment in Israel props up the settler colonial state. It props up the genocide. It bails out the occupation. But we know the occupation is unstable. It would not and could not be sustained without the constant bailout of financial support, investments, and weapons from the United States.

Do the people of Providence want the return on investment to be dead Palestinian children, parents, and elders? Do the People of Providence want to bail out a genocide? Hell No. Should Providence bail out the occupation? No!

The resistance of Palestinians, freedom fighters, militants across West Asia, and the people of the world has the Zionist state on its last legs. Investing In Israeli bonds is like investing in Nazi Germany during World War II, which, by the way, the United States did. United States capitalists were the single largest foreign investor in the Nazi project. It's the equivalent of investing in apartheid in South Africa right before apartheid imploded, which Israel supported apartheid fell.

It's not just a moral imperative to divest from genocide. Israeli bonds are a bad investment and that's thanks to the resistance of Palestine and the world. The apartheid cannot continue and will not continue. Palestinians have been resisting Zionist occupation since 1908. The indigenous peoples of the land we call the United States have been resisting colonialism and imperialism since 1526 and today our movement in Providence and across the world grows stronger every single day.

We demand full divestment from genocide. We demand an end to the occupation of Palestine, the apartheid regime, and the United States government's violence around the world.

We cannot be free until this imperialist regime crumbles to the ground. And we will never, ever stop fighting until Palestine is free! From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

Also speaking were Catarina Lorenzo, director of AMOR (Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance) and Providence City Councilmember Miguel Sanchez (Ward 6). [I just ran out of steam, so I didn’t get to transcribe their words.]

JVP-Rhode Island is the local affiliate of Jewish Voice for Peace, the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world. JVP is organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of United States Jews in solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle, guided by a vision of justice, equality, and dignity for all people.

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Rhode Island Coalition for Israel (RICI)

The rally was protested by just over a dozen members of a small right-wing Zionist group, the Rhode Island Coalition for Israel (RICI). The constant drone of sirens and whistles was their attempt to drown out the speakers. Occasionally the sirens were held close to the ears of attendees, perhaps as an attempt to assault them.

RICI also had a banner truck nearby, displaying their messaging.

Rabbi Lex Rofeberg explained RICI during his address to the crowd:

When you to the Rhode Island Coalition for Israel website, the first thing they say is that they're not a Jewish organization. They speak for something they call Western Judeo-Christian values and they have a quote from a fellow named Ze'ev Jabotinsky. Talk about people who embody what it is to not have a heart. Jabotinsky is a notorious revisionist Zionist and I'll let him speak for himself and this organization [RICI] that chooses to quote him. [Jobotinsky’s full quote is at the link]

Reen spoke about an encounter she had with a RICI protester:

These people were telling me to go to the zoo. They don't see me as a human being. What's the first to genocide? Dehumanization. These bastards think I'm an animal, but I'll tell you this much. I still think they're humans, but they don't have a heart.

Julian Drix also spoke about the counter-protesters:

Zionism is an insidious and hateful ideology. It exploits the history of Jewish suffering in Europe to commit atrocities in Palestine. It is the hateful ideology that allows this group of far-right Christians to be here trying to speak over me, a Jewish grandchild of Holocaust survivors. Shame on you…

What we will not allow them to do is perform white fragility and weaponize their whiteness by calling the cops and calling on a military state to commit war crimes on their behalf. The opposition is fierce and they're loud with their machines and their money and their fancy trucks, but they're small and they're isolated and we will win.