April 29, 2026
- What Is BDS?
- What Is The Current Law in Illinois?
- What are House Bill 2723 and Senate Bill 2462 and Who Is Behind Them?
- Why Is This Fight Unfolding in the Land of Lincoln?
Since a landmark bill was passed unanimously in 2015, Illinois has barred its state retirement system from investing in foreign companies that engage in antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The bipartisan legislation made Illinois the first state in the nation to add an anti-BDS investment policy to its canon of anti-discrimination laws.
An additional 37 states went on to adopt similar measures – some almost word for word – with the same broad consensus.
Now a group of Illinois state lawmakers are attempting to become the first state in the country to roll back and repeal the restrictions.
Here’s what you need to know about this effort to reverse engineer and set a dangerous precedent.
Key Takeaways:
- Paved With Good Intentions: Many members of the BDS movement sincerely want peace and are drawn to the movement’s human rights façade. But the leadership of the BDS movement seeks nothing less than the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.
- Anti-Israel or Anti-Jewish? While BDS supporters say they are simply protesting Israel’s policies, some have engaged in harassment of public officials, academics, performers, and business owners simply because they are Jewish.
- The State is Minding Its Own Business: The narrowly tailored provision applies only to Illinois pension fund investment decisions and does not restrict speech, advocacy, or commercial activity in Illinois.
What Is BDS?
BDS markets itself as a non-violent movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel until its leaders agree to go back to the original borders that Israel and Jordan agreed upon in 1949, before the 1967 War. But the movement’s so-called pursuit of human rights is a façade. BDS leadership seeks nothing less than the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.
The BDS movement was established to economically and diplomatically isolate Israel and rejects mutual recognition and negotiated treaties, including a two-state solution. Omar Barghouti, co-founder, and leader of the BDS movement has stated: “We oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine… [only] a sellout Palestinian would accept a Jewish state in Palestine.” He also has justified antisemitism by pointing to Israel’s leaders as the ones responsible for its recent rise.
BDS leaders have endorsed armed Palestinian resistance including physical violence. The movement uses inflammatory, false, and hate-fueling rhetoric such as labeling Israel an “apartheid” state or accusing it of “genocide” and “white supremacy” that demonize the Jewish state and seek to undermine its existence. Furthermore, some supporters use terms that are antisemitic, like comparing Israeli soldiers to “Nazis” and referring to the Gaza Strip as “concentration camps” or “ghettos.”
BDS supporters also have engaged in harassment of public officials, academics, performers, and business owners, leading Jewish organizations to take special security precautions around public events. For example, one morning in 2024, after Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerich’s office chose to invest in Israel bonds, a common practice for many state investment portfolios, he woke up to find protesters vandalizing his property with red paint and shouting into a bullhorn that his infant sons didn’t deserve to sleep.
What Is The Current Law in Illinois?
All states routinely set standards for how public dollars are invested.
For example, Illinois has barred public pension funds from investing in companies that assist Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, companies in the business of sheltering detained migrant children, and companies that dodge U.S. taxes by moving their headquarters abroad. The state has also restricted investments in Russian and Belarussian companies after the invasion of Ukraine.
The 2015 restriction on foreign companies that target the Jewish state is no different. But it’s important to understand the law’s limited scope. For starters, the anti-BDS measure affects only 30 of the 580 companies deemed prohibited from investment. The rest fall into other categories such as Russian or Belarussian companies or tax evaders.
Furthermore, the narrowly tailored provision in the state pension code applies only to state pension fund investment decisions and does not restrict speech, advocacy, or commerce in Illinois. So when in December 2021, Ben & Jerry's announced it would no longer sell ice cream in the West Bank, the Illinois Investment Policy Board chose to divest state pension funds from its British-owned parent company Unilever. But that decision had no effect on ice cream sales or consumption in the U.S. (Unilever is no longer on the list amid a dispute with Ben & Jerry’s.)
Individuals, organizations, and companies remain free to express their views, protest, or support boycotts (or eat as many pints as they want). Furthermore, foreign companies that boycott Israel can still do business with the state. Montreal-based Air Canada can still fly out of Chicago O’Hare Airport and Illinois shoppers can still find German-based Adidas footwear in local stores, even though investments of public funds in both companies are prohibited.
What are House Bill 2723 and Senate Bill 2462 and Who Is Behind Them?
House Bill 2723 and Senate Bill 2462, companion bills introduced in the 104th Illinois General Assembly, would remove the language that restricts investments in foreign companies that boycott Israel. Federal law already prohibits U.S. companies from participating in any foreign boycotts. Since that does not apply to international firms, the state law closes the gap.
Illinois lawmaker Abdelnasser Rashid, who in 2022 became the first Palestinian American to serve in the Illinois General Assembly, unsuccessfully introduced bills to end the restriction two years in a row. This year, he introduced HB 2723 and found 21 co-sponsors.
Rashid says he is pursuing the repeal for his southwest suburban Chicago district, which houses one of the country’s largest populations of Palestinians. But AJC Chicago Director Sarah van Loon, who will testify at a hearing on the pension code this week, said amending the law is merely a political statement about Israel with no practical benefits.
“No part of this is going to improve the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza or here in Illinois,” she said.
Illinois State Senator Mike Porfirio, who hails from Rashid’s district, and 12 other colleagues co-sponsored the companion bill in the State Senate (SB 2462).
When Israel defended itself from the Hamas terror attacks that began on October 7, 2023, both Porfirio and Rashid and other lawmakers issued a statement lamenting the violence and blaming Israel.
Why Is This Fight Unfolding in the Land of Lincoln?
Illinois was the first of 38 states with anti-BDS laws that apply to foreign companies targeting Israel. The state set the standard and became a bellwether for states across the country that followed its lead.
“Repeal would not only reverse that leadership, it would create a precedent that opponents elsewhere would seize upon, putting hard‑won protections in other states at risk and weakening a shared national commitment to confront discrimination,” said Melanie Maron Pell, AJC’s Chief Engagement Officer.
Colorado and Indiana, for example, have laws similar to the one in Illinois that restrict the investment of public pensions funds. Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, and Idaho have laws prohibiting state contracts of a certain amount with firms that single out the Jewish state. Florida has both.
Some laws have been amended after court challenges. Others have been challenged and upheld in federal courts. For example, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Arkansas law did not infringe upon constitutional free speech protections, but fell within the state’s power to regulate its own economic activity.
Until this recent attempt to repeal the restriction, the Illinois law has never faced a challenge. After all, Illinois already had a mechanism for values-based divestment in place long before BDS became an issue. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the state restricted investment in companies doing business with Iran and Sudan.
But BDS has become a hot button issue, particularly in Illinois. In 2017, a Jewish gubernatorial candidate in Illinois, Daniel Biss, parted ways with his running mate, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, over differences of opinion on BDS. Biss, whose mother is Israeli, opposes BDS, while Ramirez-Rosa has been an outspoken advocate and belongs to Democratic Socialists of America, a far-left group openly hostile to Israel.
Over the past several years, Israel has fought a defensive war on seven fronts, including attempting to stop the Iranian’s regime’s nuclear program, which poses an existential threat to the New Jersey-sized nation, and Tehran’s ballistic missile development. It also has had to defend itself from an onslaught of misinformation aimed at steering public opinion against Israel. The effort to change the Illinois law is part of that strategy.
“Opportunists see it as a way to create momentum for the BDS movement to change these laws nationwide,” van Loon said. “They are trying to go far beyond how the state is investing its pension dollars. They’re trying to use this as a case for the rest of the country to be more formally anti-Israel.”
