Applause from a resident-packed meeting Wednesday greeted the 5-4 passage of a City Council order to divest from businesses seen as intertwined in Israel’s actions against Palestinians. When a second order seeking legal advice on how investing and procurement would change failed 4-5, chants broke out and – despite the meeting being essentially done – the mayor cleared the Cambridge City Hall chamber.
The two-hour special meeting was complicated by a series of amendments to the orders addressing the thorny issue of singling out Israel, where government actions responding to a Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack out of Gaza are mingled with reports of antisemitism – including in Cambridge.
The amendments broadened the conversation raised by councillors Ayah Al-Zubi and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler to address human rights violations and atrocities beyond Israel.
Despite assurances from councillors on all sides of the issue that they abhorred antisemitism, there remained resistance to the orders and amendments that were seen by some as blurring a line. “They take admirable goals of keeping Cambridge from doing business with companies that enable genocide, apartheid and persecution and aim it at one country, the world’s only Jewish state. In a time of rising anti-Semitism, this legislation risks fanning the flames,” councillor E. Denise Simmons said.
Another ultimate vote against, councillor Patty Nolan, said that passing the policy orders “does endanger our residents, divides our city, helps the far right both in the U.S. and Israel, makes us more likely to be a target for the Trump administration attacks and makes us complicit in rising antisemitism.”
“One of the difficulties of all this fear is that it makes it incredibly difficult to have a conversation,” vice mayor Burhan Azeem said. In addition, the orders have inspired “a lot of fear that you could not give the other side a win – that somehow it was not about what was on the paper in front of us, but it was about legitimizing the other side. And I feel like that is not a way that I can simply govern.”
This most recent attempt at a divestment vote came to the council Oct. 19, but that meeting was given over completely to hear more than 350 public speakers give their opinions on the orders for more than six hours. The council reconvened Oct. 20 to take up several agenda items, but moved the two around divestment to this special meeting.
An order about programming at the historic kiosk in Harvard Square also landed on Wednesday’s agenda, but was tabled so it didn’t interfere with the more fraught debate around divestment. Kiosk discussion is expected Monday.
Israel, not antisemitism
On divestment, Azeem offered language that addressed “concern around naming Israel in particular versus a generic policy order that tries to set a fair standard for all countries,” giving as context that in the past 45 years the council had called out 61 countries to condemn actions there, such as during South Africa’s apartheid regime. His amendment spelled out that the council had voted to divest public money from the fossil fuel sector and private prisons and to cut ties with vendors whose products are used to perpetuate violations of International Human Rights Laws, and it asked staff to identify companies with “severe and consistent involvement directly contributing to genocide, apartheid, and occupation of Palestinians.” Some companies were identified by name: Palantir, Elbit Systems – which had been protested until it moved out of offices in Central Square in 2024 – and Lockheed Martin, GE Aerospace and Boeing.
The order also condemned antisemitism and other forms of discrimination. “No one should feel unsafe or unwelcome in Cambridge for any reason. We have a responsibility to protect everyone in our city, and we must do better, regardless of what happens today,” councillor Marc McGovern said, before offering an amendment with more names of companies for inclusion because they are linked to “serious human rights abuses elsewhere in the world,” including in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in immigration enforcement activities in the United States.
Broader condemnations
Another amendment led by councillors Simmons and Nolan that failed 4-5 wanted the city to develop a framework for divestment including “procedures for evaluating credible evidence” within 90 days, taking into account the financial implications of divestments.
Even McGovern’s additions to Azeem’s list didn’t go far enough, Nolan said, citing “China’s brutal repression, Russia targeting, South Sudan massacres – which companies are tied to those and deserve divestment? An Iranian here asked me why there wasn’t a single march in Cambridge when literally tens of thousands of her people were being killed in the streets. The only answer she could see is selective outrage, which is immoral and unjust.”
The sponsors of the original order rejected the framing. Sobrinho-Wheeler read from a 1986 order in which Cambridge’s elected leaders singled out South Africa for its apartheid policies and noted it “went further than this policy order does in calling on all business institutions in the city, not just the government of the city, to divest.”
In rejecting the reasoning opposing the singling out of Israel, Al-Zubi said: “We’ve never waited for this perfect universal policy before acting on moral emergencies.”
Final votes
The five members voting yes for the final order were mayor Sumbul Siddiqui and councillors Al-Zubi, Azeem, McGovern and Sobrinho-Wheeler. The votes against were Nolan, Simmons and councillors Tim Flaherty and Cathie Zusy.
The group Cambridge for Palestine said the vote divests $24 million in taxpayer dollars, including the retirement fund. “With this vote, Cambridge becomes one of the first cities in the country to explicitly name Israel’s genocide of Palestinians as the primary reason for divestment,” the group said.
On moving the second order to committee, the minority in favor was Siddiqui and councillors Al-Zubi, McGovern and Sobrinho-Wheeler. For this vote, Azeem joined the opposition with remarks that the first order had done enough to “push the Israeli government in a way that advances a peaceful resolution to the conflict.”
“This second policy order is a lot more complicated” and adds procurement issues to those of investment, Azeem said. “My call would be that we don’t need to spend more time on this.”
This post was updated Oct. 28, 2026, to remove a reference to the order going to the council’s Ordinance Committee.
