U.S. states, municipalities, and public pension funds own at least $1.6 billion worth of Israel bonds combined.
As Israel continues its relentless bombing of Palestinians, raising the death toll in Gaza to over 27,000 people, state and local treasuries across the United States are investing hundreds of millions in the state of Israel by purchasing Israeli bonds. Israel Bonds, also known as the Development Corporation for Israel, raised a record-setting $2 billion in bond sales in 2023, with $1 billion raised since October 7th, as Israel bombed hospitals, destroyed essential infrastructure for water, medicine, fuel, and electricity, and used starvation of civilians as a weapon of war.
Activists and some elected officials in the U.S. have been calling for an end to monetary aid to the Israeli government and purchases from the weapons manufacturers enabling Israel’s assault on Gaza, but few have directed their attention to the U.S. investments being made in Israel through the purchase of Israel bonds.
This post explains how Israel Bonds work, highlights the institutional investors who have recently bought Israel bonds, and shares some history of the human rights activists who have been calling on institutions to divest from Israel bonds.
That video is misleading at best, and is itself propaganda (i.e. the thing they’re claiming to object to). It follows the normal narrative of a propaganda piece:
In this case, we have:
But this glosses over a few things, such as whether socialism is actually viable, what transitioning looks like, and the very real hit to productivity that often accompanies a switch from capitalism (as in, a reduction of resources). A lot of leftists just take current resources for granted, and that’s just not fair.
So this piece tells half the story, but doesn’t explain why we might want the current system over alternatives, or what a competing system might look like, it just riles people up. I’m not going to rail on socialism here, just pointing out that this video is incredibly slanted for appearing as a PSA-type video.
Universal health care isn’t socialism, but of course you’re just here to spread half truth too.
I never said it was, I said the point of the video is to pitch socialism, it just uses universal healthcare as a hook.
He straight up said this is a very brief introduction, and provides links to further videos & articles.