Pro-Palestinian activists are attempting to bring a proposal before Pittsburgh voters that would prohibit the city from doing business with entities that have ties to Israel. But an effort to put that question on the ballot this fall faces a number of hurdles — including likely legal challenges and arguments that the measure is unworkable and antisemitic.
The "No War Crimes on Our Dime" campaign launched an effort earlier this summer to add a ballot question for city voters in November. As stated on the petitions that organizers have been circulating, voters will be asked whether the city’s Home Rule Charter should include a provision “prohibiting the investment or allocation of public funds, including tax exemptions, to entities that conduct business operations with or in the state of Israel unless and until Israel ends its military action in Gaza, fully allows humanitarian assistance to reach the people of Gaza, and grants equal rights to every person living in the territories under Israeli control.”
Supporters argue that the question would allow city voters to weigh in on the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, which Gaza’s health ministry says has killed more than 39,600 Palestinians and wounded over 91,700 others (Those totals have been disputed by Israel, which suffered the loss of nearly 1,200 people in attacks by Hamas last October.)
“We don't want our public resources going to fund bombs that are being dropped on children in refugee camps. We don't want our public resources going to a military occupation, and an apartheid system,” said Ben Case, one of the founders of the effort. “It seems like, honestly, the least that we can do is say that we don't want our public resources going into that.”
Case added a successful referendum could reveal investments in Israel by local universities. At protests earlier this year, advocates called for University of Pittsburgh officials to disclose and divest from any holdings tied to Israel. A group that helped drive the protests, Pitt Divest from Apartheid, is one of more than a dozen local organizations supporting the referendum campaign, for which Pittsburgh Democratic Socialists of America acts as fiscal sponsor.
Critics of the proposal say it would be unworkable.
City Controller Rachael Heisler said she has concerns about the measure, including her belief that in the wake of the October 2023 attacks by Hamas that launched the war, “This referendum does not say to Jewish or Israeli Pittsburghers, ‘You are welcome here.’” But as an official whose office oversees city finances, she said, “If this referendum was for any other country on earth it would be concerning because we live in a global economy.”
She cited a number of examples: The city buys ambulance and police cars from Ford, she said, which has business dealings in Israel. So do companies that make fire and safety equipment and medication used to treat people for opioid overdoses, as well as those that provide financial management software used by her office.
“I assume they didn’t mean city ambulances wouldn’t be Fords anymore,” she said, “but that is what this says.” (Organizers themselves have said they are working “to identify investments, contracts, and tax exemptions that would be ended by this referendum,” but cited an arrangement with Dell computers as one example of the kind of contract at issue.)
Tax-exempt entities such as UPMC also have Israeli connections: The referendum language would seem to prevent such entities from receiving exemptions from city taxes, but Heisler notes that tax-exempt status is determined by state and federal authorities.
Supporters said if passed, the ban would apply to only city contracts moving forward. They argued that it would be functionally similar to licensing and other requirements the city already imposes on contractors.
A spokesperson for Mayor Ed Gainey said that his office is aware of the proposed referendum and that it has been sent to the city’s law department for review.
Some potential foes of the proposal were guarded about how they would respond to it: The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, for one, would say only that it is “ currently exploring all avenues to address this dangerous proposal." But a legal challenge on the substance of the petition seems all but inevitable, and that will likely not be the only hurdle the ballot question will face.
Enough signatures?
Last week, organizers submitted hundreds of pages of petitions containing more than 12,800 signatures from people who said they wanted the question on the ballot.
Under the state’s home rule charter law, organizers must gather signatures that amount to at least 10% of the local votes cast in the past gubernatorial race. Based on the number of city residents who voted in that contest in 2022, organizers need to compile at least 12,459 signatures. And though organizers narrowly passed that threshold, a challenge to last week’s filing seems all but assured.
A certain percentage of signatures on any petition are almost guaranteed to be flawed, often because some signers are not properly registered to vote in the community. (A cursory review by WESA turned up a number of signatures that, for example, indicated the signer lived outside the city.) A rule of thumb among many politicos is to assemble twice the number of signatures required — a much larger margin of error than organizers of the Israel petition have.
Efforts to mount a challenge to those signatures appeared to be underway within days of the filing. The Beacon Coalition, a Pittsburgh-based advocacy group seeking to raise political awareness of antisemitism, last week hosted two training sessions to teach people how to review and potentially challenge the petitions.
Jeremy Kazzaz, the group’s founder and executive director, declined to discuss potential challenges, but he said it is working with other groups to raise awareness about the situation. He condemned the ballot question and argued that if successful, it would “completely cripple the ability for the city of Pittsburgh to function.”
Kazzaz also warned of the recent uptick in antisemitism and targeting of Jewish people, including the recent vandalism of a local synagogue and the Jewish Federation offices.
He called the proposal an “attack on the Jewish community” and “an attack on the overall capitalist, free-enterprise business community and the city of Pittsburgh itself.”
Case disputed that characterization and said many of the effort’s organizers, including himself, are Jewish.
“Antisemitism is a very real and very dangerous problem in the world,” he said. “Unfortunately. I see that accusation being weaponized to distract from the conversation at hand.
“I would hope we would agree that we don't want our public resources going to war crimes,” he said. “We don't want our public resources going to restricting humanitarian aid to reaching people who are desperately in need.”
The deadline to challenge the legitimacy of the petitions is Tuesday. Election officials must begin assembling ballots for the 2024 election in the weeks ahead, but such legal fights are typically expedited by the courts.
Chris Potter contributed to this report.
