CP photo: Mars Johnson
Hundreds of people participated in the "Hands off Rafah" protest organized by Students for Justice in Palestine from the University of Pittsburgh outside of Target in East Liberty on Feb. 16, 2024. Protesters marched down Penn Ave. demanding justice and calling for a ceasefire in Rafah, a city in Gaza.
“We’re putting divestment from the state of Israel conditional on a ceasefire, humanitarian aid being able to reach all Gazans in need, and equal rights being granted to everyone living in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories on the ballot,” says Ben Case, an organizer with the No War Crimes on Our Dime campaign.
On Aug. 6, the group, which is fiscally sponsored by the Pittsburgh Democratic Socialists of America, filed a petition bearing more than 15,000 signatures with the county elections division in hopes of making the ballot for the upcoming general election in November.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and the City Controller’s office filed legal challenges in the Court of Common Pleas on Tuesday, asking a judge to throw out the petition.
“The proposed referendum is not only illegal but also a dangerous and insidious attempt to target local entities connected to the State of Israel,” said Jeff Finkelstein, President & CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. “This measure will do nothing to impact policy in the Middle East, but it will impose an unreasonable burden on our city and its Jewish institutions, synagogues, and other houses of worship.”
In their court filing, the Jewish Federation is challenging the validity of more than 10,000 of the 15,253 signatures on the petition, which requires 12,459 signatures to be successful (full disclosure: the author is a signatory). Senior rabbis from four congregations including Temple Sinai, Congregation Beth Shalom, and Shaare Torah Congregation join the Federation in their suit.
Two of the lawyers hired by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh previously represented Donald Trump in his attempt to overturn Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential election results. Ron Hicks and Carolyn McGee initially represented former president Trump in his federal suit seeking to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania but withdrew from the lawsuit after public backlash. The Philadelphia Inquirer described the pair as “some of the most in-demand GOP elections lawyers in the state.”
In a written statement, the No War Crimes on Our Dime campaign characterized the challenge to the signature count as “voter suppression,” drawing parallels between the effort to block the referendum and Trump’s unsuccessful attempt to throw out Pennsylvania’s election results.
“It is disheartening and concerning to see the Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh attempting blatant voter suppression rather than let Pittsburghers vote in November on how we want our tax dollars spent,” said Matt Rubin, field director for No War Crimes on our Dime.
“The challenge they’ve brought is carried out by a legal team best known for attempting to invalidate hundreds of thousands of voters on behalf of former President Trump’s campaign following his loss in the 2020 election, and it seems they’re once again working to overturn the will of thousands of voters.”
Hicks did not respond to a request for comment.
CP photo: Mars Johnson
Pro-Israel supporters protest the pro-Palestine "die-in" protest that took place at the Cathedral of Learning on March 29, 2024.
“As City Controller, I have a responsibility to City residents to protect their tax dollars and ensure the City can continue to provide essential services — especially keeping people safe and healthy,” said Heisler in a press release. “If this initiative becomes law, it would severely affect our ability to do both. 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. It would severely disrupt the City’s entire contracting process, causing tremendous inefficiency and creating a massive risk of financial waste.”
In response to Heisler’s arguments that the referendum would be too difficult to implement, Case says that while “the specifics of implementation are always going to be a question with popular referendums, especially when you have a 75-word limit,” referendum advocates are confident that, should the initiative pass, the city government will be able to implement it “in a way that is reasonable and responsible,” while upholding the spirit of the referendum, “which is that Pittsburghers do not want our public resources going to support the Israeli war machine that is committing massacres in Gaza and enforcing an apartheid regime over Palestinians.”
Both challenges argue that the proposed referendum would violate Pennsylvania's 2016 anti-Boycott, Divest, and Sanction legislation that bars the commonwealth from contracting with companies that boycott Israel and similar federal legislation that disallows governmental bodies from boycotting Israel.
Case says that, unfortunately, there is no mechanism in Pennsylvania or on the federal level for voters to register their objections to U.S. military support for Israel’s violence against Palestinians.
“The United States single-handedly enables Israel to commit war crimes and maintain its illegal occupation. No one gives us a democratic say on these policies nationally because both parties’ leadership support it, so we have nowhere to turn. And the U.S. doesn’t have a national ballot initiative and referendum system. Pennsylvania doesn’t have citizen initiated ballot measures either,” Case tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “But our city of Pittsburgh does. So we’re using that democratic mechanism to send a very clear message that we’re through letting our public resources enable Israeli war crimes, and we hope others will follow suit.”
The case will be heard on Monday before Judge John T. McVay Jr.
Despite these legal objections, the activists advancing the proposed referendum say most Pittsburghers approve of this attempt to apply economic pressure to Israel. New polling commissioned by the No War Crimes on Our Dime campaign indicates that a substantial majority of Pittsburgh voters approve of the referendum as currently worded.
Graphic courtesy of No War Crimes on Our Dime
A poll conducted pro bono by a leading firm found broad support for Pittsburgh's divestment from Israeli companies.
“Voters in Pittsburgh across the board want to see this referendum on the ballot and they want to pass this referendum. They want to vote yes for this,” said Case.
Although a majority of every demographic breakdown according to race, age, and gender supported the referendum, Black voters were the most likely racial group to support it, at 70%, and women were more likely than men to approve of the proposed referendum, which was presented in full to respondents.
The polling firm offered its services to the campaign pro bono on the condition of anonymity, but City Paper has verified that the polling was done by an industry-leading firm. An individual who worked on the poll told CP that the poll drew from a pool of high-quality survey responses that is larger than that of the average poll and has a margin of error that is low by industry standards. The firm also confirmed that all responses considered belonged to a registered voter and weighted results to likely voters in Pittsburgh based on demographic data and party affiliation.
“Americans are tired of the bloodshed and injustice that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, and voters are done funding the Israeli military’s war crimes and illegal occupation,” reads the campaign’s one-pager on the polling results. “It is time to change course. Pittsburgh voters are ready to take concrete action toward peace.”
