Organizers Aim to Thwart Purchase of Israel Bonds by World’s Largest Investor

Organizers in Palm Beach County, Florida, are fighting to stop the county from investing further in bonds that help fund Israel’s occupation and genocide. The county already holds $1 billion in Israel Bonds, making its investment the largest in the world and roughly three times the next highest investor, the State of Florida. The Our Taxes, Our Needs campaign is ramping up ahead of the county’s next planned purchase of Israel Bonds on November 1.

“[The campaign] is twofold, because one, we don’t want our taxpayer dollars to go to actively genociding any other individuals,” Melissa Salerno, an organizer with the Our Taxes, Our Needs campaign, told Truthout. “And two, we could really see some positive changes in our community [with local investment], there’s a long list of ways we could improve the quality of life for our fellow community members.”

The Development Corporation for Israel sells Israel Bonds to raise foreign funds for the Israeli treasury. Divestment campaigns targeting the bonds have gained steam nationwide since Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October 2023. Campaigns elsewhere are making similar demands that local dollars be invested at home, rather than in fueling violence abroad.

A unique piece of the Palm Beach County campaign is a lawsuit against the clerk of the circuit court and comptroller of Palm Beach County, which argues that the county’s Israel Bonds holdings violate Florida’s constitution and laws governing the investment of taxpayer dollars. The plaintiffs are three unidentified Palestinian American county residents whose family members in Gaza have been killed or displaced during Israel’s assault on the enclave.

“Our plaintiffs feel this really extra level of pain that is physically wreaking havoc on their bodies because they are locally financing this genocide,” Lydia Ghuman, executive director of the Internationalist Law Center, the firm leading the suit, told Truthout. “Taxes that they pay on their home are then being used to bomb their family members’ homes.”

The case was filed in state court last October, seeking acknowledgement from a judge that past investments in Israel Bonds violated the law and an order barring similar investments in the future. A state circuit court judge dismissed the case on the basis of standing following a July hearing, but lawyers for the plaintiffs filed a notice of appeal in late August. The case will continue in appeals court, with the next filings due in late November.

While lawyers prepare next steps in the case, organizers with the Our Taxes, Our Needs campaign are hard at work aiming to stop an anticipated November 1 reinvestment of $67.5 million in maturing Israel Bonds that would deepen Palm Beach County’s ties to the foreign treasury funding the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

“Our first and foremost form of organizing is awareness and education,” johann c. muñoz-tapasco, a lead organizer with the campaign, told Truthout. “[County officials] have been moving very much with impunity; they’re not hiding the fact that they’re investing all of this money into this. But not everyone necessarily knows about it.”

To change that, muñoz-tapasco said the campaign is focused on outreach by canvassing and tabling at local events. “We’re telling people about what an Israel Bond is, what happens when this money is invested into Israel’s treasury, and how the funds could actually be used here locally rather than abroad,” muñoz-tapasco said. Organizers hope that increasing awareness in the community will improve attendance during public comment sessions at Palm Beach County Board of Commissioners meetings, where residents have already begun voicing dissent.

The stakes are high. At a budget hearing before the county board of commissioners on September 15, police removed dozens of residents who planned to give public comment and arrested Palestinian American legal scholar Noura Erakat on trespassing charges. But organizers told Truthout they are undeterred and plan to speak next at three meetings in October.

“They will be voting the week of October 20 to reinvest $67.5 million more in these bonds, and we obviously want to stop that,” Ghuman told Truthout. “We’ll continue doing that and [stay] grounded in what is actually going on — the death and destruction that we’re trying to stop.”

Alongside the concern that Palm Beach County’s taxpayer dollars could be funding human rights violations in Palestine, organizers and the lawsuit against the county are raising a slew of other ethical questions about the county’s investment practices. Notably, the case alleges that the county’s decisions to invest in Israel Bonds are based on social and political justifications while ignoring metrics indicating the bonds could be higher-risk and lower-earning than other investment alternatives.

Read more There Are 0 Data Centers on Public Lands. Trump Is Considering Building 12.

Justin Marlowe, director of the University of Chicago’s Center for Municipal Finance and an expert quoted in the legal filing, told Truthout that investment decisions based on a county official’s political opinions are unlikely to align with best practices for investing municipal funds. “Overtly political statements made by pension funds and by county treasurers and others who make decisions about investments where they say straight-up, ‘We support Israel. It is consistent with our views as a community. Therefore, we are going to channel investments into Israel bonds,’ is an explicit violation of the fiduciary obligation that portfolio managers, pension trustees, and others have, which is to make sure that the investments are safe, liquid, and diversified,” Marlowe said.

Many began raising questions over the diversification of Palm Beach County’s investment portfolio when then-Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller Joseph Abruzzo started dumping more of the portfolio into Israel Bonds after October 7, 2023. Abruzzo’s term ended in June 2025, and his successor Mike Caruso continued to aggressively purchase the bonds. The investments have required multiple approvals from the county commission to override limits meant to ensure a diversified portfolio. A percentage cap on Israel Bonds holdings was raised from 5 percent in 2021, , and then to 18 percent in October 2025 to allow Caruso to increase the county’s total holdings to $1 billion in January. After February 28, 2026, the cap then back to 15 percent.

“It’s pretty rare that a local government would decide to relax those diversification rules, and it would be even more rare, to my understanding, for them to relax those diversification rules to allow for one specific type of investment — in this case, in these Israel Bonds,” Marlowe told Truthout. “I’m not aware of any other county government anywhere in the country that allows for that type of concentration of anything in their investment portfolio, much less a single type of investment.”

Organizers also highlight the fact that the Big Three credit rating agencies have downgraded Israel’s credit rating since its invasion of Gaza in October 2023. Moody’s reaffirmed this July that Israel’s rating remains the lowest it has ever been, at Baa1 — a ranking that puts Israel Bonds just ahead of so-called junk bonds. Under Florida law, most investments purchased by local governments must have “the highest credit quality rating from a nationally recognized rating agency.” However, last June, the state enacted a law that prohibits ​​local governments from requiring a minimum bond rating for Israel Bonds. The bonds are also the only foreign bonds that localities in Florida can legally hold in their investment portfolios.

“They’re always moving the goalposts to allow this investment to be larger and larger over time,” muñoz-tapasco told Truthout. “It’s at 15 percent, then 18 percent, which was at some point illegal to do, and in a way, it’s unsafe because the rating of Israel Bonds has been downgraded. But [to continue investing] they just ended up changing the laws.”

Critics in Palm Beach County are also condemning a conflict of interest on the county’s Investment Policy Committee, an advisory body that works with the county comptroller to develop, review, and evaluate the county’s investment policies and practices. Norman Taplin was appointed to that advisory body last February; he also serves on the National Cabinet of Israel Bonds and is past chairman of the Palm Beach County Community State of Israel Bonds. The Palm Beach County Board of Commissioners approved a waiver of county conflict‑of‑interest rules to allow his appointment.

The office of the clerk of the circuit court and comptroller of Palm Beach County has repeatedly held, in the words of Caruso at an April board of commissioners meeting, “There is nothing illegal about [the county’s Israel Bonds investments] and it has nothing to do with politics.”

When contacted for comment about its investment portfolio by Truthout, a representative of the office of the clerk of the circuit court and comptroller of Palm Beach County responded by saying:

Palm Beach County’s investment policy provides guidelines for how the Clerk’s office manages the County’s investment portfolio. Investment in Israel Bonds is capped at 15 percent. Because that 15 percent cap has been reached based on investment decisions made by previous Clerks, our office is not permitted by policy to invest or reinvest any additional money in Israel Bonds.

Salerno hopes that by raising awareness of Palm Beach County’s record-breaking investment in Israel Bonds and by challenging it in court, locals will force meaningful change in the county’s future investment decisions. She also said she hopes other organizers will begin looking critically at the investment portfolios in their municipalities — even if advocating for change can feel daunting.

“The advice I would give would just be like, ‘Be afraid and do it anyway,’ because literally lives depend on this,” Salerno told Truthout. “They depend on us being strong enough and being willing to be uncomfortable enough to shift the power dynamic and to change the status quo.”

Read more Trump Administration Faces Second Lawsuit to Keep ICE Agents Away From Polls