Illinois Municipalities Vote to Oppose State Anti-Boycott Law

Voters in eight municipalities across Illinois approved ballot measures last week that formally register objections to the state's law prohibiting pension funds from investing in companies that boycott Israel. While these local votes do not directly change state policy, pro-Palestinian groups are celebrating the results as signs of shifting public opinion against the legislation, which was originally signed in 2015 to counter the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

The approved measures were adopted in the village of Oak Park and the townships of Champaign, Cunningham, DuPage, Kickapoo, Medina, Normal, and Peoria. Each ballot measure contained similar language urging the state to either repeal its anti-BDS law or support specific state legislation that would achieve the same result. Unofficial tallies indicate that 65 percent of voters in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb, approved the measure despite a sustained objection campaign led by the local Jewish population.

The Jewish United Fund, which is Chicago’s Jewish federation, had campaigned against the ballot measure. The organization was a primary champion of the Illinois law when it was first passed, making it the first of what have since become dozens of similar state anti-BDS laws across the country. First Amendment groups have also challenged these laws in various legal contexts.

Dan Goldwin, the chief public affairs officer for the Jewish United Fund, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Monday that the organization would have preferred a victory. However, he noted that Oak Park voters approved the measure by smaller margins than they did for top Democratic candidates, including Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and former presidential candidate Kamala Harris, in the 2024 election.

Goldwin suggested that the opposition ran out of time to effectively communicate the meaning of the referendum to voters. He stated, “Once people began to be exposed to the meaning of what the referendum was about, they moved against it. We just didn’t have enough time.” He added that some members of the Oak Park opposition spent significant time in a drawn-out fight over the eligibility of signatures gathered by activists, which he theorized was time better spent convincing people to vote against the measure.

In a separate development, voters in Bloomington Township approved a measure stating that the federal government should ban the transfer of weapons to any country that is a dictatorship, an apartheid state, or a major violator of human rights. Although the ballot language did not explicitly mention Israel, pro-Palestinian activists have long argued that Israel fits these descriptions and that the United States should halt weapons sales to the country.

Local Jewish figures expressed that the campaign troubled them. Rabbi Adir Glick of Conservative Temple Har Zion in River Forest, which borders Oak Park, told the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest that the effort felt like a local chapter of a global movement to destroy the world’s only Jewish state. He noted that while some people lost friendships and experienced difficult moments with neighbors, the campaign also galvanized the Jewish community.

Goldwin said that the passage of these measures would not change the Jewish United Fund’s strategy of opposing the repeal of the anti-BDS law at the state level. He observed that activists largely targeted municipalities without large Jewish communities, with the exception of Oak Park. In his view, those seeking the repeal of the law remain a significant minority.

The BDS movement secured a more significant policy victory on election night in Providence, Rhode Island. Voters there passed a binding referendum to divest the city from foreign countries conducting ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal military occupation, or genocide. Both proponents and opponents of that measure believe the language will include Israel, a position Israel adamantly denies while pointing to the equal rights of its Arab citizens and blaming Hamas for fighting within civilian population centers during the war that began with the October 7, 2023, onslaught.