Disappointing announcement:
New 5 year Israel Bond purchase but inspirational turnout by supporters of Break the Bonds NJ at annual meeting.
In our last post, we announced a campaign win, the non-renewal of the $20 million Israel bond that matured on November 1, 2025. In that post we said that while we would continue advocating for divestment of the remaining $10 million Israel bond that matures in 2028, we were going to shift our focus. We asked supporters to speak at the annual State Investment Council meeting on January 28, 2026, to call for the divestment of the $144 million in Palantir stock owned by the NJ Division of Investment.
However, at the beginning of the meeting, much to our shock and disappointment, Shoaib Khan, the director of the DOI announced that he had unilaterally decided to buy a new Israel bond with $15 million of the $20 million that had been cashed out November 1st.
Two members of the SIC, Adam Liebtag and Tom Bruno, went on record expressing strong displeasure that the advisory committee was not consulted prior to this purchase. Khan justified the decision to reinvest primarily on fiduciary grounds while Liebtag and Bruno countered that since Israel bond investment is contentious, the SIC should have been included in the decision. The only foreign debt that the NJ Division of Investment holds is to the state of Israel, so this decision was clearly politically motivated.
More than 20 people spoke strongly during public comments and many others wrote in to the State Investment Council to express their demand that the Division of Investment divest from Israel bonds and Palantir. Speakers were from a wide range of community and political organizations and perspectives. There were faith-based speakers, union members, academics, state pension holders and immigrant rights activists all united around the call to divest NJ from Israel bonds and Palantir.
Here are some highlights of the powerful comments that were made:
“We learned that the failure of the ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) policy to reinvest in Israel Bonds was because a routine process was used instead. The fact that “routine process” does not include ethics is extremely concerning and is a failure of leadership.”
Dillon Washington, DivestNJ
“As a historian, by your logic of fiduciary duty, I’d like you to think about companies you would have invested in in 1935 Germany. You would have invested in the most profitable companies at the time, which would have been those funded by the German state: government bonds that funded weapons, the German rail industry that funded the deportation of Jews, and IG Farben and Krupp that funded the creation of Auschwitz and the gas chambers. These were the companies that eroded the civil rights and human rights of people across Europe.”
Myles Drake Zhang, historian
“Today I speak with a heavy heart but with firm conviction: our pension funds and tax dollars should not be invested in systems that harm human rights, fuel surveillance, or enable brutality at home and abroad. This reversal signals that short-term financial considerations are being placed above serious moral and humanitarian concerns.”
Omayma Mansour, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
“Palantir is guilty of profiting from human rights abuses in Palestine and in the United States. Social responsible investment is the will of our people.“
Rev. Annie Allen, pastor, Rutherford Congregational Church; Justice and Witness Taskforce, NJ Association of the United Church of Christ; Faith in NJ
“If we continue to invest in war profiteering we will see the world around us crumble.”
Haleima Twam, Palestinian American Community Center (PACC)
“Palantir’s core business—large-scale data analytics tied to surveillance, law enforcement, and military operations—places the company at the center of persistent legal, ethical, and regulatory scrutiny. These risks are not abstract. They can translate into contract cancellations, litigation costs, employee attrition, consumer backlash, and heightened regulatory oversight, all of which directly affect shareholder value.”
Aly Azhar, Emgage Action
“I’m here with others to urge the Division of Investment to move quickly to divert the $144 million in Palantir stock toward the plethora of other businesses that are profitable without breaking the law, ignoring due process, or knowingly or willingly participating in genocide”.
Rachael Bane, Green Party of NJ
“The Division of Investment’s ESG policy prohibits investment in companies that show disregard for stakeholders’ rights. Palantir’s decision-making process is generally considered undemocratic. It is a highly centralized system controlled by its three founders, often described as an oligarchy.”
Meera Jaffrey, Ceasefire Now NJ
“As an electrical engineer that has studied machine learning and AI, AI is not as smart as people say it is, it’s only as good as the data that you give it and the data that police and military give it is usually racially biased.”
Anthony Lee, Democratic Socialists of America
“We shouldn’t be investing in a company that is destroying people’s lives. Stop investing in Israel. Stop investing in Palantir!”
Donna Ristorucci, Ceasefire Now NJ
“On behalf of fellow union members at Rutgers, we urgently call upon NJ to divest pensions from Palantir that has built a massive surveillance infrastructure that is built to limit people’s privacy and freedom. For now immigrants are the target of Palantir’s system, but the implications for our rights and privacy is a grave concern to all Americans as well as people abroad. Alex Karp at Palantir is on record saying that he and Palantir are proud of their technologies that kill and detain people and that they want to end public education.”
Britt Paris, Rutgers University Faculty
“Palantir is a monster. It has profited from the suffering of people in Gaza and the US, and has facilitated the invasion of Venezuela as well as actively facilitating the invasion of Iran and Colombia.”
Lily Benavides, Green Party of NJ
“Palantir is a company that profits from surveillance, repression, and human suffering. New Jersey’s public employees and taxpayers deserve better. We demand that New Jersey divest from Israel bonds and from Palantir—and ensure that our investments reflect our values of justice, human rights, and moral accountability.”
Mindy Greenspan, JVP Northern NJ
Stay tuned for next steps, calls to action and ways you can plug into this growing fight to withdraw NJ’s the material support and complicity in the ongoing genocide and occupation of Palestine.
See media coverage of the SIC meeting below:
breakthebondsnj.org 
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