Like It or Not – Every Illinois Retiree Is Invested in The War on Iran

A 2015 state law sacrifices our pensions to ban boycotts of Israeli companies, including those profiting from the Israeli war on Iran that’s getting Americans killed.

A War Americans Did Not Choose

On Saturday, the United States and Israel launched what the Pentagon is calling “Operation Epic Fury” — a massive bombing campaign against Iran. At least a thousand people have been killed in the region, including over a hundred children. U.S. military bases across in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, the UAE, and Jordan have been struck by Iranian missiles in retaliation. American service members are losing their lives.

On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio walked up to reporters on Capitol Hill and said:

Secretary of State Rubio: Credit Intercept

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

The United States did not go to war because Iran attacked us. Senior Democratic Senator Mark Warner said it plainly: 

“There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory.”

This discussion is unfolding at a moment when Americans’ public support for Israel has hit historic lows, and Americans on both sides of the aisle have had enough, which is why Democrat Congressman Ro Khanna is forcing a vote this week alongside Republican Thomas Massie on a bipartisan resolution to end what he calls this “illegal and unconstitutional conflict.” Invoking President Eisenhower in a recent op-ed, Khana stated: 

“Every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” 

Only 1 in 4 Americans support this war.

Americans don’t want higher gas prices spiking at the pump. They don’t want higher inflation. They don’t want to pour tens of billions of dollars into a war while millions of Americans lose their healthcare. They don’t want to destabilize the Middle East further while well-connected Pentagon contractors enrich themselves. They want Washington focused on jobs, childcare, infrastructure, schools, and healthcare at home. 

So What Does Any of This Have to Do With Illinois?

Since 2015, Illinois has prohibited our state pension from investing in companies that boycott Israel. Our teachers’ pensions. Our state workers’ pensions. Your retirement money is legally blocked from divesting from a government that — by the admission of our own Secretary of State — just pulled the United States into a war we did not vote for, did not authorize, and that three out of four Americans oppose.

Right now, state law is forcing our pension money to financially prop up the same foreign government whose military planning — by Rubio’s own words — determined when and whether American soldiers would be put in harm’s way. It is a direct assault on the right to peacefully protest and on the principle that our tax dollars and retirement savings should serve us — the people of Illinois.

House Bill 2723 would repeal Illinois’s anti-BDS law. Much like the American sentiment on war in Iran, this law doesn’t represent what Americans want. 

• 80% of Democrats, 62% of Republicans oppose legislation that restricts boycotts of Israel. (2020)

• More Americans sympathize with Palestinians than they do with Israelis, with 53% of young adults sympathizing more with the Palestinians, while 23% sympathize more with the Israelis. (2026)

Repealing this law is not only about Palestinian rights, it’s about all our rights. It’s about a foundational democratic principle: our government should serve us, not a government that acts against our interests.

Illinois doesn’t have the power to stop this war on its own, but it does have the power to stop shielding Israeli policymakers and businesses that benefit from reckless and horrific wars of aggression that the American people oppose even as we’re made to pay for it.

End the madness. Pass the Illinois Human Rights Protection Act.