Guest Opinion | Jason Moss : Keep Pasadena’s Investments Apolitical and Locally Focused

For more than a year, public comment during Pasadena City Council meetings has been dominated by a coordinated campaign urging the City to adopt divestment measures barring investments tied to Israel. Week after week, speakers have pressed the Council to align Pasadena with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement—a national and international effort intended to isolate Israel economically and institutionally.

The Council now faces a decision that will determine whether those demands become policy. As it considers revisions to Pasadena’s investment guidelines, including potential expansion of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria, Councilmembers should reject efforts to use those tools to single out one foreign nation—and one alone—for sanction.

At a practical level, the BDS proposal accomplishes nothing. Pasadena holds no direct investments in Israeli companies and does not meaningfully invest in firms whose limited activities in Israel would be affected by a municipal policy change. Any action would therefore be purely symbolic—an expression of political alignment, not financial stewardship.

That is precisely the problem.

Municipal investment policy is not a platform for geopolitical signaling. Its purpose is to safeguard public funds, guided by well-established principles: safety, liquidity, and return. Converting that function into a vehicle for highly partisan ideological positioning risks distorting its purpose and undermining disciplined fiscal management.

Recent Council meetings have featured rhetoric that extends far beyond policy disagreement, including repeated accusations of “genocide” and “apartheid,” as well as language many Jewish residents experience as stigmatizing. The term “Zionist,” used pejoratively, is used not as a narrow critique of policy, but weaponized as a broader denunciation of those who support Israel’s existence—an overwhelming majority within the Jewish community, and many others as well.

It would be unthinkable for the Council to validate this environment by adopting a measure demonizing Israel, as activists insist.

These concerns are not abstract. Jewish institutions and individuals in Southern California, including Pasadena, have reported incidents of antisemitic harassment, vandalism, and even violence. Earlier this year, the remains of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center (destroyed in the Eaton fire) were defaced with anti-Zionist graffiti. Community leaders have warned that normalizing extreme rhetoric about Israel can contribute to a climate in which hostility toward Jews becomes more acceptable.

That context should give the Council pause before adopting any measure likely to be interpreted as taking sides in a deeply polarizing international conflict—and, in the process, alienating members of its own community.

The broader conflict itself is complex and contested. It followed the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, in which Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 Israelis and took around 250 as hostages. Israel’s military response in Gaza that targeted Hamas terrorists, in the face of Hamas’ promise to do it “again and again,”  has resulted in significant death and destruction. These events continue to generate intense global disagreement. But they are matters for national governments and international institutions—not for municipal bodies, which lack both the authority and the expertise to adjudicate them.

If modified ESG principles are to be incorporated into Pasadena’s investment strategy, they must be applied consistently and tied to financial risk, long-term value, and matters within the City’s proper scope of responsibility. Selectively targeting Israel—as BDS advocates demand—undermines both the integrity and the credibility of such policies.  It would call into question whether Pasadena remains a welcoming place for its Jewish residents.

The Council’s upcoming deliberations—expected to culminate at its May 11 meeting—offer an opportunity to reaffirm proper boundaries. After months of acrimonious Council meetings, the time has come for a clear and final determination rejecting BDS.

Pasadena faces real and pressing local challenges—fiscal, social, and infrastructural. Our City’s investment policies should reflect those priorities, not serve as instruments for highly polarizing symbolic foreign policy pronouncements.

The Council has listened. Now it should act—by refusing to adopt BDS, keeping its investment policies apolitical, and focusing on its core responsibility: governing in the best interests of all Pasadena residents.

Jason Moss is the Executive Director of the Jewish Federation of the Greater San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys.