Pittsburgh Jewish groups hope to quash a referendum that would force the city to boycott Israel
Though unlikely to make the ballot, the referendum has prompted a top staffer in the mayor’s office who supported it to resign
The Pittsburgh skyline. Photo by Haizhan Zheng/iStock
(JTA) — A city employee has resigned and Jewish leaders have gone to court over a ballot referendum that would prohibit Pittsburgh from working with companies that do business with Israel.
Both of Pennsylvania’s U.S. senators have condemned the referendum, which would appear on voters’ ballots in November. John Fetterman called it “rank antisemitism” and Bob Casey said it “targets Pittsburgh’s Jewish community.”
The head of the local Jewish federation, who filed a formal legal challenge to the measure together with local rabbis and cantors, is confident that the referendum will be quashed, whether on Monday when a judge first reviews the challenge or at another time. A separate challenge was filed by the city controller.
“I think we’re in a position where if we don’t do it, no one else will,” Laura Cherner, director of Pittsburgh’s Jewish Community Relations Council, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Even though this referendum disproportionately targets the Jewish community, we didn’t see other people stepping up to the plate.”
The ballot initiative is part of a series of attempts by activists to influence U.S.-Israel relations on the local level. Following campaigns by pro-Palestinian groups, a string of cities have passed resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza over the last 10 months. In recent years, at least one City Council, in Durham, North Carolina, has voted to bar police officers from training in Israel, while dozens of states enacted laws aimed at deterring the movement to boycott Israel.
But no city has seen a measure to boycott Israel brought to voters. And Pittsburgh’s measure has caused quite a stir. The mayor’s head of communications resigned from her post Wednesday after confirming that she signed the petition to hold the referendum. Meanwhile, the group spearheading the initiative, called No War Crimes On Our Dime, accused the lawsuits of trying to “prevent voters from deciding” and claimed it had broad support.
“We know the deck is stacked against grassroots campaigns, but we are committed to ending unconditional US support for the Israeli military’s war crimes and illegal occupation, and the majority is with us,” campaign spokesperson Ben Case, who is Jewish, told JTA in an email. “If they take away our ability to put this referendum to a vote in November, we will have to find another way to make our voices heard.”
The language of the referendum would add a clause to the city charter “prohibiting 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.”
The lawsuits charge that the petition for the ballot question lacked the requisite number of signatures. They also allege that the measure would violate the state’s law prohibiting any government contracts with companies that boycott Israel.
The group behind the boycott rejects that argument, noting that the referendum “does not call for an unconditional boycott.” Case claimed that demands to end the war in Gaza and reshape Israel’s treatment of Palestinians are “simple conditions which the Israeli government could choose to meet.”
Jeff Finkelstein, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, criticized the group’s effort to get enough signatures to land on the ballot.
“We know that the group that was organizing it was showing up at farmers markets and other places. We know from friends of ours that they were approached, saying, ‘Do you want the war in Gaza to end?’” he said.
“Well, I think we all want the war in Gaza to end,” Finkelstein continued. “But we want it at the right time, when the hostages are released, when Israel accomplishes whatever her goals are. So it was a little misleading, the way some people were approaching it.”
The federation’s lawsuit claims more than 10,000 of the signatures on the ballot petition are invalid, for various reasons including the residences of the signatories. That would put the referendum well below the requirements for making the ballot.
More than 150 federation-affiliated volunteers, working with pro-Israel activist groups including StandWithUs and the Pittsburgh-based Beacon Project, combed through every signature in a matter of days to formulate the challenge in time, Finkelstein said.
Those activists also identified local government staff who signed it. One of those signatories was Maria Montaño, communications director to Mayor Ed Gainey, a revelation that prompted her to resign from her position. Other signers, according to local reports, include a county council member, a vice chair of the county Democratic Committee and a staffer of progressive U.S. Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, a frequent critic of Israel.
Pittsburgh City Controller Rachael Heisler also said the referendum, which if passed would be her responsibility to enforce, would hobble basic city services. Many of Pittsburgh’s contracts, she said, are with companies such as Ford and Dell, which do business with Israel.
“It could prevent us from carrying out basic city functions, like providing electricity, purchasing life-saving medications, buying protective equipment for first responders, and even fueling police vehicles, to name a few,” Heisler told the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. “It would severely disrupt the city’s entire contracting process, causing tremendous inefficiency and creating a massive risk of financial waste.”
Heisler, a Democrat who according to her office is not Jewish, is a former fellow of the local federation and a board member of Pittsburgh Jewish Family and Community Service. On social media, she frequently inveighs against antisemitism and has suggested that criticism of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was passed over as Vice President Kamala Harris’s own VP choice, was rooted in Shapiro’s Judaism.
The dispute comes weeks after the federation’s office and other Jewish buildings were targeted with antisemitic and pro-Palestinian graffiti. Spray paint on the federation building said the center “funds genocide,” while the local Chabad was tagged with “Jews 4 Palestine” and an upside-down triangle symbol associated with Hamas.
It also follows another dispute involving Israel and contractors this year. In the spring a city contractor and former city employee was charged with ethnic intimidation after security footage showed the contractor throwing a resident’s Israeli flag in the trash; Heisler responded to that incident by questioning city payments made to the individual after they were identified.
The group says it receives financial support from the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter, and denies the charge that its ballot proposal is antisemitic, saying that many of its organizers are Jewish.
“Institutions like the Jewish Federation would have everyone believe they speak for all Jews when they defend Israel’s policies, but in fact a growing number of Jewish communities see reflections of our own histories as the oppressed and persecuted in the experiences of Palestinians today, and embrace our generational role in ending the cycles of violence,” Case wrote.
Among the ballot initiative’s other supporters is Pennsylvania’s chapter of the Uncommitted movement, which encouraged Democratic primary voters to withhold their votes from President Joe Biden in protest of his support for Israel’s actions in Gaza. The group is mobilizing next week at the Democratic National Convention. Another supporter is Pitt Divest From Apartheid, a University of Pittsburgh student group that backed a pro-Palestinian encampment at the school this summer.
On Instagram the groups alleged that Montaño, the first openly trans woman to serve in her role, was “forced to resign” over her signature and shared posts that said her resignation “is an indication of how fascist Zionism attacks everyone.”
They added that the challenges to the referendum were “trying to disenfranchise voters by invalidating petition signatures” and called them “anti-democratic,” criticizing the federation for hiring two lawyers who had briefly represented former President Donald Trump’s 2020 efforts to overturn the state’s election results before quitting because of concerns about the merits of the case.
In his email to JTA, Case added that, because statewide officials support Israel, organizers believe that going directly to voters is their best shot at advancing their cause.
“When it comes to our city’s policies in Pittsburgh, we think the direct democratic vote here should take precedence over legislation written by out of touch politicians in Harrisburg,” the state capital, Case wrote. “The law says we do get a democratic say over policy in our city of Pittsburgh, and that’s what we’re using.”
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