New York City comptroller, with Mamdani’s backing, abandons vow to buy Israel bonds

*New York’s annual report details hundreds of millions invested in China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Vietnam, Kuwait, and other unfree or risky countries that hardly anyone raises a peep about. *

By Ira Stoll, The Washington Free Beacon

New York City comptroller Mark Levine is the latest Democratic politician to throw Israel under the bus, declaring that he is “heartbroken at the state of politics in the country right now” and that he would break his campaign promise to invest some city pension funds in Israel bonds.

Levine made his comments in an interview with the New York Times, which described the citywide elected official as “criticizing the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister who is up for re-election this month.”

Levine joins the governor of Pennsylvania, Democrat Josh Shapiro, and the Democratic leader in the U.S. Senate, Chuck Schumer, who used to be pro-Israel and who now, according to President Trump, has become “like a Palestinian,” in publicly denouncing Netanyahu.

Levine’s announcement won immediate praise from the mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, who has been a strident boycott-Israel activist since his days as a student at Bowdoin College.

“I welcome the comptroller’s decision,” Mamdani said at a Wednesday, October 14, press event.

“I don’t believe that our city should purchase Israel bonds. … this is the decision that the comptroller is making, and it’s one that I support.”

An Israel Bonds spokesman, Nate Miller, said the bonds are a solid investment and that the organization hopes to meet with the comptroller.

“Comptroller Levine pledged many times to restore New York City’s investment in Israel Bonds and had it right when he called them ‘a long-term safe and secure investment.’ That remains true,” Miller said in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon.

“The State of Israel has made every payment of principal and interest on its bonds, on time, since 1951, including every payment owed to New York City’s pension funds over nearly fifty years. The Israeli economy behind Israel bonds remains strong. Moody’s projects growth accelerating to 5 percent next year with inflation near only 2 percent, and Israel’s technology sector, nearly a fifth of GDP, drives more than half of the country’s exports. Moreover, Israel’s debt-to-GDP ratio remains significantly below the OECD average, by approximately 40 percentage points.”

Miller added that:

“Many of Israel Bonds’ investors around the world, including many local governments across the United States, continue to make clear that Israel Bonds deliver a strong and steady return: since October 2023, institutional and retail investors have bought more than $8.5 billion in Israel Bonds. The New York City Comptroller has said his office’s analysis is ongoing, and we look forward to sitting down with him and his team.”

Israel’s economy has been so strong that even after the previous comptroller, Brad Lander, performatively divested from Israel bonds, the annual report for the New York City Employee Retirement System disclosed $36.1 million in New Israeli Shekel-denominated investments as of June 30, 2025, up from $21.6 million worth the previous year.

Lander endorsed Mamdani for mayor, then ran a winning congressional primary campaign against an incumbent Democratic congressman, Dan Goldman, almost entirely on the basis that Goldman had been too supportive of the “genocide” in Gaza, the U.S.-Israel relationship, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

The New York City comptroller oversees about $330 billion in total pension funds for five different retirement systems for the city’s teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other employers and retirees.

The long-term performance of the investments has been mediocre, though the bureaucracy generates vast fees for consultants and private equity managers.

The annual report details hundreds of millions invested in China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Vietnam, Kuwait, and other unfree or risky countries that hardly anyone raises a peep about.

The only country that Levine is performatively announcing a pullback from is the Jewish state.

Levine served up to the Times a nonsensical explanation. He “struggled with the decision personally,” but “his team said that when accounting for instability in the region and the office’s preference for shorter-term bonds, it made sense not to reinvest.”

Among the investments that Levine has touted publicly recently are $37.8 billion by 2035 as part of “Net Zero implementation plans” aimed at ending fossil fuel emissions and $4 billion in “affordable housing.”

A variety of far-left, extreme, and virulently anti-Israel groups have targeted Israel bonds with a “Break the Bonds” campaign that is part of the global Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement aimed at demonizing and delegitimizing Israel and, ultimately, eliminating it. A March rally by such groups outside Levine’s office targeted him as part of a push against purchasing the bonds. Levine’s pairing of the announcement with Netanyahu-bashing allowed the far-left groups to portray it as a BDS victory.

Mamdani has an appointee, Ahmer Qadeer, on the board of the pension funds.

Federal campaign finance records show Qadeer donated to Lander’s congressional campaign and also to an anti-Israel congressional candidate in New Jersey, Patricia Campos-Medina.

Qadeer also participated in a Harvard Law School program, funded by the Ford Foundation and Hewlett Foundation, that produced a 2020 report complaining that “Across our entire history, access to economic and political power has been unforgivably shaped by racial and gender discrimination, by discrimination based on immigration status, by sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, and by ableism.”

It went on to say that “Given that the American labor market is rooted in the institution of chattel slavery, it should come as no surprise that we have a tiered system of protections.”

At that rate, never mind Israel bonds; it’s a wonder that the New York pension fund is still buying U.S. sovereign debt.

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