“You get two Jews in a room, you’re going to get three different opinions,” Kelcie Smolin Grega, a Jewish resident in City Council District 4 says. It’s an old joke—one that was echoed by others who spoke to the Mercury after recent calls for the city to divest from companies that contribute to human rights abuses devolved into what some say was a stark example of weaponizing charges of antisemitism.
A September 3 Council committee meeting was intended to be a place for updates and a discussion about the city’s investment policy, including time for the public to provide testimony. City staff gave a brief history of why the city invests in some things and not others, and compared the portfolio to other cities. Toward the end of the meeting, the discussion went off the rails after District 4 Councilor Eric Zimmerman claimed that councilors in favor of barring the city from investing in corporations whose products facilitate global human rights atrocities were fixated on sending an “anti-Jewish statement,” and were being antisemitic.
Three weeks after the tense Council meeting, on September 25, four letters arrived in councilors’ inboxes from different coalitions in favor of a policy that would further the city’s current approach and apply a human rights screen to filter out companies that contribute to atrocities globally.
“[Weaponizing antisemitism] actually makes us less safe,” Smolin Grega said. “It puts us in a position where our peoplehood is conflated with the actions of a nation-state. It also others us by forcing a choice that aligns the community with institutional supremacy rather than collective solidarity, it ultimately isolates us from the very movements and allies who share the struggle for a liberated world.”
The four separate letters were sent by the Oregon for Human Rights Coalition (O4HR), which represents over 30 groups and other individuals; a joint letter from Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the anti-Zionist advocacy organization, and the Jewish-Palestinian Alliance of Oregon (JPAO), which works to end the oppression of the Palestinians; Jobs with Justice, a coalition of over 100 organizations advocating for workers rights; and the Oregon chapter of the global network International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP).
The city has an investment policy that restricts certain industries, like small arms, casinos, fossil fuels, prisons, and more. The city bases its restrictions on federal Bloomberg Industry Classification Standard (BICS) codes, and according to the city budget office, other industries like tobacco, military vehicles, or munitions, could be added to the city’s restricted investments. Still, the city is allowed to invest in 32 broad categories.
But nearly all councilors want to strengthen the policy’s restrictions. As it is required to do every year, City Council passed a resolution in December 2025 approving its investment policy for the following year. Central to the resolution is an effort to ensure the city “does not invest in companies that enable or facilitate war, armed conflict, or human rights abuses including but not limited to genocide, slavery, torture, indefinite or arbitrary detention, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; as well as labor, environmental, and consumer policies and impact; and to evaluate other jurisdictions’ policies as part of this process.”
The resolution passed last December with 10 votes in favor. Zimmerman was the lone vote against it, and Councilor Olivia Clark was absent.
Comforting myths
But when the investment policy issue came up again September 3, Zimmerman raised new concerns about the policy, saying it secretly focused on Israel, and in his view, was antisemitic.
“I have heard this divestment conversation for as long as I have been in politics,” Zimmerman said. “And the dog whistle is no longer a dog whistle. It’s now a screaming-from-the-mountaintops moment, and it is so clear that it is about anti-Jewish and anti-Israel in a way that is different than being opposed to a country’s current operations or current politics.”
Councilor Loretta Smith followed, claiming the progressive councilors—including four Democratic Socialists—had a hidden objective, despite her yes vote months prior.
“My grandmother used to say, ‘don’t throw a rock and hide when you know what you’re doing,’” Smith said. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to act like this is a broad conversation, but it is not a broad conversation.”
Councilor Elana Pirtle-Guiney followed, saying as a Jewish member of council, she believed the conversation had become “deeply antisemitic in some places.”
“I heard one and only one group of Portlanders have to identify themselves by that group today,” Pirtle-Guiney said. “I heard one and only one group of Portlanders feel pressured to adhere to some sort of litmus test: what kind of Jew are you?”
Randy Splitter, a representative of the statewide Jewish-Palestinian Alliance, told the Mercury that different organizations may have their own standards based on a diversity of beliefs. But, he said, the individuals providing testimony and fighting for the city to divest from human rights abuses are following their own conscience.
“They, as individuals, are not adhering to some litmus test,” Splitter said. “They’re speaking their consciences—which I am. I’m certainly not depending upon what someone else is telling me to say. I’m following my conscience.”
The Oregon for Human Rights letter sent to city councilors said the comments “gravely mischaracterized O4HR and did not at all reflect the broad testimony by supporters of the [human rights] screen,” adding that councilors who “misrepresented the scope of the proposed screen clearly did not listen to the testimony before their weaponization of charges of antisemitism.”
The tense discussion comes amid a pivotal election season. And it mirrors countless narratives across the country, from student-led protests following Israel’s military response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling his critics antisemitic when they criticize his policies, to Macklemore being dropped from Ed Sheeran’s tour recently after the rapper called for peace and said “Free Palestine” from the stage, to the false accusation-rich rise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim, in New York.
Generational traumas
Sami Ortoleva is a second-generation Palestinian-American and an individual contributor to the Oregon for Human Rights letter. His family’s village was destroyed in the 1948 Nakba—an ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs by Zionists in an effort to establish the State of Israel. Ortoleva’s family fled to the West Bank, and his mother was born near Ramallah in 1949.
He said the dismissal of Palestinians’ generational trauma of ethnic cleansing and displacement is a common experience, and the US cannot maintain a political situation of purporting to care about human rights and equality and freedom, while also contributing tens of billions of dollars to programs of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
“That contradiction requires dismissing people who stand up,” Ortoleva said. “Palestinians, but also many other people who directly experience or who are the descendants of people who experienced ethnic cleansing and genocide. You have to dismiss their experiences in order to claim that you care about human rights and also participate in the state project of violating human rights.”
He said he believes Zimmerman’s misrepresentation of the testimony was not an accident.
“It’s not my first experience having elected officials dismiss me and my family’s experience,” Ortoleva said.
Zimmerman did not respond to the Mercury’s request for additional comment on the letters.
Universal human rights screen
While the resolution is not as hyper-specific as some councilors suggest, applying the human rights screen equally would by nature necessitate divestment from Israel’s military, according to the Jewish Voice for Peace and Jewish-Palestinian Alliance letter.
“Let us be clear: it is no secret that we wish to divest from Israel’s war machine, which is currently violating international law to slaughter civilians,” the letter states. “The reason we condemn the State of Israel’s occupation of Palestine is because we do not believe any nation should be exempt from or above international law.”
The Jewish Voice for Peace and Jewish-Palestinian Alliance letter adds that the coalition seeks to hold corporations doing business with Israel to the same standard as anywhere else, including but not limited to Myanmar, the Philippines, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, and the United States—as with its brutal Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.
Rabbi Ariel Stone is a spiritual leader at Portland’s Congregation Shir Tikvah, the first female Rabbi to lead a congregation in Oregon, a recipient of a city of Portland Human Rights Award for Lifetime Achievement, founder of the Portland Interfaith Clergy Resistance, and adjunct faculty in Judaic Studies at Willamette University and Portland State University.
“I don’t think the pro-Palestinian councilors are anti-Israel, not in the slightest,” Stone told the Mercury. “I think they are pro-peace, and I would challenge those who would accuse them of being antisemitic or anti-Israel in an antisemitic way, rather than in terms of legitimate criticism—the kind that I offer toward my beloved ancestral country that has broken my heart over and over again.”
In the media
In their letters, human rights advocates hoped to turn the discussion back to its intended purpose.
“We believe it is important to correct the record and bring the conversation back to the policy before the Council: establishing a principled, universal standard for the investment of Portland’s public dollars,” the Jewish Voice for Peace and Jewish-Palestinian Alliance joint letter stated.
Recently, Zimmerman went on a local right-wing podcast NW Fresh, and claimed without evidence, as he had in the Council chambers, that city councilors supportive of the policy aimed to investigate businesses in Oregon who do business with Jewish companies.
The host, Andy Chandler, doubled down on the false statement.
“It sounds kind of scary honestly,” Chandler said. “I’ve talked on this show about, even local businesses here, not directly being targeted by councilors, but sort of indirectly. And that also scares me. Like, these are our local businesses.”
Smolin Grega, the District 4 resident, said if a person doesn’t have sufficient media literacy around local issues, “they’re going to see that and think they’re targeting the local deli down the street.”
“There’s nothing in the proposal itself that names Israel specifically,” Smolin Grega said. “And it especially did not mention Jewish businesses. That was such a ludicrous lie.”
The Oregon chapter of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP Oregon) says it supports a human rights screen to ensure the city’s investments don’t come at the cost of the rights of the Filipino people. Their letter names mining companies that pollute and displace Indigenous communities, and weapons companies that support the armed forces of the Philippines—which recently massacred 19 people, including two US citizens, in the country’s Toboso, Negros Occidental province. Filipino communities face surveillance, intimidation, arrest, torture, and extrajudicial killings for resisting corporate seizure of their lands, and councilors should engage productively to ensure Portland does not help perpetuate human rights abuses anywhere, according to the letter.
“We are concerned that attempts by certain councilors to portray a human rights screen as antisemitic is in fact an attempt to shield Israel from its grave crimes against humanity, as to avoid taking responsibility for city investments which are implicated in human rights abuses anywhere in the world,” the ICHRP Oregon letter reads.
“Antisemitism is real and dangerous, as are all hate-filled ideologies, including racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and hatred toward LGBTQ people,” the Jewish Voice for Peace and Jewish-Palestinian Alliance letter read. “We must oppose all of these interconnected forms of hate.”
Ortoleva said the profit the companies make, which they use to pay back corporate notes and bonds with interest that Portland buys from them, is theft when it comes on the backs of human rights abuses.
“Portland is not just sharing in the wealth and the profit-making of these innocent companies who happen to be accidentally hurting people,” Ortoleva said. “Portland is sharing in theft.”
