Historic Claim — or an Unfinished Fight?
A statewide coalition of Maryland teachers, state workers, and activists is declaring a historic victory: they say pressure campaigns, union organizing, and legislative hearings pushed Maryland’s public pension system to cut more than $62 million in Israeli sovereign bond holdings over eight months — one of the largest such reductions ever claimed by a U.S. state fund.
But the pension system itself tells a different story.
According to the Maryland Break the Bonds Campaign, the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System (MSRPS) reduced its Israeli bond holdings from approximately $73.7 million in July 2025 to roughly $11 million by March 2026 — an 85 percent drop the coalition is calling a “historic divestment victory.”
MSRPS pushed back. “The board has not adopted any policies to discourage or prohibit investments in Israel bonds or in any securities associated with Israel,” the system told JNS on May 28, 2026. The pension system said its investment staff “continuously monitor the system’s holdings and available opportunity set to capitalize on dynamic market opportunities in the best interest of the system’s participants.”
The gulf between those two statements — activist victory and institutional denial — is the real story. And it is playing out against a backdrop of national divestment pressure, a pending Maryland bill, and a June 17 rally in Annapolis.
A $70 Billion Fund and a 0.1% Flashpoint
The MSRPS manages approximately $70 billion in retirement assets on behalf of more than 420,000 members: teachers, state employees, correctional officers, and municipal workers across Maryland.
Israel Bonds — direct loans to the Israeli government treasury — represent about one-tenth of one percent of that portfolio. But to the campaign’s members, the fraction carries moral weight far above its size.
Using Maryland’s Public Information Act, campaign organizers say they uncovered that MSRPS quietly purchased approximately $10 million in additional Israel Bonds between July and December 2024, raising total holdings to roughly $74 million — even as credit rating agencies downgraded Israeli debt and international funds were reducing their exposure.
Over the past 18 months, Moody’s, Fitch, and S&P all downgraded Israeli sovereign bonds and maintained negative outlooks. The debt now yields more than 5 percent, compared to roughly 2.5 percent for comparable sovereign bonds — a spread campaigners argue reflects substantial risk premium on a country at war.
“The high interest rate shows how risky these investments really are,” said Lauren Leffer, 31, an organizer with the campaign and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace Baltimore. “Even if they looked good on paper, they’re still investments in genocide.”
Who Built This Campaign
The Maryland Break the Bonds Campaign was initiated by Jewish Voice for Peace, the largest anti-Zionist Jewish organization in the United States, through its Baltimore and D.C. Metro chapters. It grew into a coalition of roughly 40 core organizers drawn from labor unions, faith communities, universities, and mutual aid networks — including AFSCME Local 3399, the Baltimore Teachers Union, Montgomery County DSA, and CAIR Maryland.
Their model was deliberate and multi-pronged. They filed Public Information Act requests to expose the holdings. They produced zines to bring the issue to teachers at union conventions. They held community workshops, delivered testimony in Annapolis, and met repeatedly with pension officials and state legislators.
Grace Smith, a 42-year-old Baltimore County middle school teacher, described handing out over 200 zines at the statewide teachers union convention in Ocean City last fall. “Everyone I talked to was glad to hear about it,” she said. “They didn’t know about it — and they were pissed.”
For Rebecca Riley, 29, a University of Maryland employee and campaign member, the work offered something street protest hadn’t: direct leverage. “Before joining Break the Bonds, my activism was mostly street protests,” she said. “What I found here is direct, effective action.”
What Officials Said — and What They Didn’t
Campaign organizers say they spent months in private meetings with state officials before going public — and met the same wall each time.
MSRPS Acting Chief Investment Officer Robert Burd told campaign organizers and confirmed to Truthout that the fund’s investments are managed “for the exclusive benefit of our members and retirees” and in accordance with state law — and that divestment policy is set by legislation, not by staff.
A spokesperson for Comptroller Brooke Lierman, who serves as vice chair of the pension board, said investment decisions are made by the Chief Investment Officer, not the Board, and any policy change would require action by the Maryland General Assembly.
“Those officials basically said, ‘This isn’t my responsibility. It’s only our job to consider the finances,'” said Leffer. “I would argue we all have a human responsibility to do everything in our power to end a genocide.”
Campaigners fired back with a precedent argument. In 2018, Maryland became the first state to require its pension fund to routinely analyze climate-related financial risks. The fund subsequently created a Climate Advisory Panel to address climate risk in its portfolio. MSRPS has also signed the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, which call for human rights considerations in investment decisions.
The campaign argues that if the fund can weigh climate and ESG risk factors when it chooses, it can — and should — apply the same framework to human rights.
Critically, even if the reported reduction is accurate, MSRPS confirmed to JNS that no binding policy prohibits future Israel Bond purchases. Investment staff retain full discretion.
The Bill in Annapolis
While organizers celebrated an apparent administrative reduction in Israel Bond holdings, they have also pursued a legislative fix to make any change permanent.
House Bill 1455, introduced in the 2026 Maryland General Assembly session, would require the MSRPS Board of Trustees to review its Israeli bond holdings, divest from Israeli government debt, prohibit future purchases, and add transparency requirements for human rights considerations in investment screening.
A hearing on HB 1455 was held on March 19, 2026, in the House Appropriations Committee, drawing testimony from more than 100 witnesses including labor union members, faith leaders, and civil rights advocates. Testimony submitted to the committee cited the fund’s holdings of approximately $65.5 million in Israeli sovereign bonds as of December 2025.
AFSCME Local 3399’s written testimony stated that its Executive Board had unanimously approved a resolution calling for the divestment of those funds.
Without HB 1455 passing into law, the reported reduction is not locked in. The pension fund’s investment managers retain full discretion to purchase Israel Bonds again — a fact the pension system itself underscored in its response to JNS.
Maryland in a National Wave
Maryland is not alone. A national movement specifically targeting Israel Bonds — direct sovereign debt instruments, distinct from broad BDS divestment screening — has accelerated since 2024 and gained traction in state and local governments.
In February 2026, Waging Nonviolence documented how local BDS campaigns in North Carolina and other states had won divestment of millions from Israel Bonds through similar organizing: Public Information Act requests, union resolutions, and sustained legislative pressure.
Internationally, funds in Norway and Denmark divested from Israeli firms. Somerville, Massachusetts, became the first city where voters approved a ballot measure calling for divestment. Portland, Maine; Hamtramck, Michigan; and the California cities of Hayward and Richmond passed similar measures through their city councils.
If the campaign’s figures are independently confirmed, Maryland’s reported $62–63 million reduction would represent one of the largest single cuts to Israeli sovereign bonds by a U.S. public pension fund.
Echoes of South Africa
Campaign organizers frequently invoke the precedent of Maryland’s 1984 divestment from apartheid South Africa, when the state became one of the first to withdraw an estimated $1 billion from the apartheid regime — a decision widely credited as part of the international economic isolation that contributed to apartheid’s fall a decade later.
“Just as institutions once realized they couldn’t profit from South African apartheid or from climate destruction, the same is true here,” said Leffer. “We have a moral and financial obligation to stop funding genocide.”
The parallel is pointed: Maryland helped end one system of racialized dispossession by pulling its money. Organizers believe it can do so again — but this time, they want a law to back it up.
What Comes Next
The campaign has called a statewide rally in Annapolis for Wednesday, June 17, 2026, from 3 to 6 p.m. — a public mobilization aimed at keeping pressure on the General Assembly and the pension board.
Their core demands remain: pass HB 1455 to codify divestment into law, prohibit new Israel Bond purchases, and require the pension system to publicly disclose its full holdings on a regular schedule.
For Grace Smith, the teacher who spent a morning handing out zines at Ocean City, the fight is personal.
“It’s a hellscape to have your ability to retire depend on continuing the U.S. war machine,” she said. “I don’t know why it’s acceptable for a pension fund to grow through investing in genocide. I just know it doesn’t have to be that way.”
TANTV News reached out to MSRPS for independent confirmation of the reported holdings reduction and for current bond-level data. Detailed Q1 2026 holdings schedules had not been published in MSRPS’s public disclosures as of the date of this report. Updated investment schedules are expected during the summer reporting cycle.
The central question — whether organizing actually moved a $70 billion institution, or whether the fund simply let bonds mature on schedule — will only be answered when those records become public.
Coverage of this story is ongoing. For the latest civic accountability reporting on Maryland’s pension system, visit tantvnews.com. For TANTV’s coverage of the beauty industry’s legal battles, read our report on the Breromi Hair Clique lawsuit.