JTA — As pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel progressives in the United States find some success at the 2026 ballot box, the long-gestating Israel divestment campaign is looking to capitalize in Rhode Island.

Voters in Providence, the state capital, will vote on a referendum this November saying the city should refrain from investing in “foreign countries conducting ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal military occupation, or genocide.”

The language of the actual ballot petition does not mention Israel, nor any other country, by name. But the signature campaign was led by Providence for Palestine, a local activist coalition, and both its proponents and opponents have framed the measure as a referendum on Israel and the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

With the referendum’s ballot placement secured, Providence has become the largest American municipality ever to place divestment before the voting public.

“We’re in this moment when the general public at large, and particularly Democratic voters, very much understand what’s going on in Gaza and Palestine as genocide, as apartheid, and want their leaders to take action on it,” Zack Kligler, a lead organizer of the ballot initiative and member of the Rhode Island chapter of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Kligler described the current divestment campaign as having “definitely been led disproportionately by Jewish organizers.”

To determine which countries are “conducting” any of its list of human rights abuses, the referendum would rely on “resolutions” from various bodies, including the United Nations Security Council, the International Court of Justice and “any” US court ruling or UN body. Some, though not all, of those bodies have reached conclusions that would implicate Israel in the ballot language’s divestment campaign.

Both Israel and the Trump administration have strongly rejected all genocide accusations leveled against the country. “Apartheid” can be considered an independent crime under international law, while “ethnic cleansing” has no formal legal definition.

Divestment from Israel has seen some success on the municipal level since the bloody October 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel sparked the war against Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza, which has sunk the country’s popularity across the American electorate. Last year a non-binding divestment resolution in Somerville, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb with less than half of Providence’s population, became the first such initiative to win at the ballot box. Over objections from Jewish groups, the city this summer began exploring the question of how to enact the measure into law.

Critics of divestment measures argue that they force local governments to put undue focus on international issues, could prompt division and backlash against local Jewish communities, and jeopardize public........

© The Times of Israel