I’m an economist. Zohran Mamdani’s stance on Israel investments is misguided
A potential divestment from Israeli companies would only harm New Yorkers
New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during the “Fighting Oligarchy” town hall, Sept. 6, New York City. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Contributing Columnist Dany Bahar September 25, 2025
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One piece of Zohran Mamdani’s platform that has drawn particular scrutiny amid his campaign for mayor of New York City is his policy toward investing in Israel.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that New York City Comptroller Brad Lander — a close ally of Mamdani’s — had chosen not to renew about $39 million in Israel bonds that had matured in the city’s pension funds, which have held such bonds since 1974.
Lander did not present the move as a political gesture, but rather as a fiduciary one in line with city management guidelines. But in the months since, some have recast his decision as a precedent for broader divestment from Israel. Mamdani, who recently said he supported the decision on the basis of “values,” is chief among them — raising the question of whether, as mayor, he would seek to go further by divesting the city’s pension funds from any company connected to Israel.
He could, but it would not matter. And the reasons why suggest an important lesson for the American political left. Since October 2023, a younger generation of politicians in America and elsewhere have increasingly treated Israel as an outlet for performative politics — passing ceasefire resolutions or other symbolic gestures to appease a small but noisy group of constituents who expect city halls to run foreign policy. Divestment, even if it sounds like a serious “threat,” is performative, at best.
I analyzed the city’s holdings using NYC Open Data, which includes detailed records of the holdings in all five pension systems: NYCERS, TRS, BERS, Police and Fire. As of June 2024, the total market value of assets based in Israel came to under $70 million.
That’s just 0.02% of total pension assets, which sum up to $275 billion. Some anti-Israel activist groups have cited higher numbers (though their methodology is unclear), suggesting that the city’s Israeli assets amount to around $115 million in just one of the five pension funds. But even if we take that more generous figure, it is still negligible at under 0.05%.
With so little at stake, divestment is certainly possible. At such a small scale, however, the fact that this issue is even on a New Yorker’s radar reveals that it is an obsession more than a substantive policy issue.
Why is Israel singled out for special treatment? New York City’s pension funds hold millions of dollars in companies based in countries whose human rights records clash with the same values that Mamdani has often invoked. They include Saudi Arabia, whose crown prince ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi; Turkey, which has steadily dismantled democratic institutions; China, responsible for mass repression of the Muslim Uyghur minority and political dissent; and Egypt, where opposition voices are silenced.
Yet only Israel is deemed unacceptable for investment. And the only people who stand to lose from that constrained focus are New Yorkers themselves.
The Tel Aviv exchange has quadrupled in value over the past five years, and in 2025 alone is up more than 80%. That dwarfs even the S&P 500’s impressive doubling over the same period, or its 10% growth so far this year. For a pension system, like New York’s, with a 7% annual return target, voluntarily cutting off access to such gains is not fiduciary prudence. It is ideology, plain and simple.
It is fanciful to suggest New York City could “pressure” Israel through divestment, against the backdrop of over $200 billion market capitalization of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. What such a move would do, however, is deprive New Yorkers of strong returns.
Furthermore, where would divestment end? Would it also include Israeli firms that are part of the American stock exchange, like Teva, Check Point and Wix, that have had incredible performance in the past? Or even American giants like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, all of whom operate major R&D centers in Israel, which are integral to their global strategies? To consistently apply the logic that Israel must be divested from would be to strip city retirees of exposure to exactly the firms that have driven solid returns for decades.
If Mamdani did take that logic to its natural conclusion, he’d be placing himself in a bind: He’s pledged to solve New York’s affordability crisis, and making divestment from Israel a central aim would come into direct conflict with that promise.
There are good reasons to question how thoroughly Mamdani is thinking through these issues. Among them: Mamdani has promised that, as mayor, he would instruct the NYPD to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he visit New York, citing charges against him in the International Criminal Court.
But the United States is not a signatory to the ICC, and the NYPD has no authority to enforce its rulings. The very idea of threatening to jail a foreign leader without legal grounds reveals how far Mamdani might be willing to go in using New York City’s resources — resources of a city with a GDP of more than $1 trillion, larger than most countries on earth — to satisfy a foreign policy goal for which a mayor has no mandate.
New York City’s employees deserve to know their mayor will treat the city’s $275 billion pension system as a fiduciary trust, not a political stage to grandstand upon. Divestment from Israel is not a sound economic plan. It is a distraction, one that sacrifices the well-being of New Yorkers for the sake of ideology.
