Councils have an urgent obligation to divest local government pension scheme funds they administer from companies enabling Israel’s attacks on Palestinians, such as companies supplying Israel with weapons and military technology. 

PSC’s research has previously uncovered that local authority pension funds collectively invest £4.4billion in companies complicit in Israel’s violations of international law. It is a scandal that the deferred wages of local government workers are being invested in companies enabling Israel’s grave human rights abuses. 

The International Court of Justice has ruled it plausible that Israel is committing genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza, while the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has applied for arrest warrants for Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians. 

The UK, as a state party to the Genocide Convention, has a legal responsibility to take action to deter and prevent genocide in another state. 

Councils must take immediate action to divest from companies that are enabling Israel’s grave violations of human rights and international law. 

The recent defeat of the anti-boycott bill means there is no barrier to councils acting to fulfil their profound ethical, as well as legal, obligation not to contribute to harm to Palestinians as they face down Israel’s genocidal attacks. 

Councils must divest local government pension scheme funds they administer from: 

• Companies supplying weapons and military technology to Israel, which it uses in its unlawful attacks on Palestinians. 

• Companies complicit in Israel’s violations of international law, whether through activity in, or with, Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise, or by providing infrastructure for Israel’s illegal military occupation of Palestinian land. This includes all companies on the UN OHCHR’s list of business enterprises conducting activity in, or with, Israel’s illegal settlements.