CLEVELAND — Just under two weeks after two Cuyahoga County Council members introduced a resolution calling for a stop to future investments in Israel bonds or other foreign securities, those members have withdrawn it.
This all started after Palestinian activists, including Dr. Shereen Naser, have packed Cuyahoga County Council chambers in recent months, calling on members to meet three demands: a promise to make no future investments in Israel bonds, an assessment of the due diligence process for county investments, and the creation of a community investment review board.
“As Palestinians living in the diaspora and as citizens of the U.S., I see the system that created a genocide of my people as a same system that is hurting our kids here in the U.S.,” Naser said. “The people who are willing to send $3.8 billion a year on top of paying millions and billions of dollars in Israel bonds are the same people who are taking food out of the mouths of our kids and out of our kids education systems.”
Cuyahoga County currently holds $16 million in Israel Bonds.
“At the end of the day, the residents of this county and so many other counties across the United States, they strongly support investing in Israel bonds,” Nathan Miller, an Israel Bonds spokesperson said. “That’s why Israel Bonds has seen a huge, unprecedented growth in its investment since October 7th. More than $3 billion has been invested in Israel Bonds, an unprecedented number.”
In a council meeting earlier this month, members Cheryl Stephens and Patrick Kelly introduced a resolution urging the county’s investment advisory committee, which is responsible for the county’s investment portfolio, to make no future investments in foreign securities, including Israel Bonds.
This sparked a public comment section during the June 4 council meeting that lasted about three hours and drew in voices from both sides of the issue.
After hearing from the community, Stephens and Kelly sent a letter to county executive Chris Ronanye and Treasurer Brad Cromes to notify them of their decision to withdraw the resolution.
In the letter, they said it’s up to the county’s fiscal team to make these decisions and that even with a proposed ordinance off the table, they still “strongly encourage you to suspend investments in sovereign debt issued by any foreign countries.”
The decision to withdraw the resolution also comes after Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost sent a letter to Ronayne, urging the county executive not to change the county’s stance on investing in Israel Bonds.
Yost said that change by a government agency could violate an Ohio law that makes it illegal for businesses that receive state funding to boycott, divest or sanction Israel.
However, some local attorneys argue that the resolution would not have been in violation of that law.
Yost’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on this story.
County spokespeople said Stephens, Kelly and Ronayne are not interviewing about this issue at this time.
“I also don’t see the withdrawal of the resolution as backing down,” Naser said. “I think it’s them having done a full assessment of what would be the most impactful path forward, and that is for the Investment Advisory Committee to make these decisions as they should have been making these good decisions in the first place.”
In a statement, the Jewish Federation of Cleveland said, in part, “Resolution 2024-0208 is nothing more than yet another attempt by a well-coordinated international effort to attack the Jewish state and the Jewish people. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is a decades old tactic that is used whenever there is turmoil in the Middle East involving Israel.”
The next county council meeting is on July 2nd at 5 p.m. in the Cuyahoga County administrative building downtown.
Nora McKeown
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