FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
New Jersey Organizations Call on State Investment Council to Divest from Palantir and Israel
29 April 2026

NEW JERSEY– Break the Bonds NJ and a broad coalition of justice-oriented New Jersey organizations call on the State Investment Council (SIC) of the Treasury Department’s Division of Investment to divest from Palantir, the technology firm that profits from both assisting ICE in its persecution of immigrants and aiding Israel in its ongoing genocide in Gaza. This represents an emerging awareness that these issues are linked, and that New Jersey’s state government must do more to distance itself from ICE’s cruelty and Israel’s war crimes. Dozens of New Jerseyans are expected to speak against Palantir at the SIC’s quarterly April 29 meeting.

As Mindy Greenspan of Jewish Voice for Peace explains, “Break the Bonds is a grassroots campaign devoted to cutting all of New Jersey’s financial support for the genocide and Israeli apartheid of the Palestinian people. The campaign started by targeting the unrestricted loans given by NJ in the form of Israel bonds and through our pressure the loan amount was reduced by $5 million. While we continue to call on the SIC to divest completely from Israel Bonds we are working to strengthen the language in the Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) policy and make it mandatory so that NJ makes no investments in entities that support genocide, war crimes and human rights violations. We are currently focusing on the large investments in the AI tech company Palantir which has enabled the genocide in Palestine, war crimes in Iran and terror to our immigrant communities at home.”

Haliema Twam of the Palestinian American Community Center in Paterson adds, “As unethical as New Jersey’s investment in Israel bonds is, the state holds an even greater investment in Palantir, the tech firm founded by extreme rightwing fanatic Peter Thiel. Palantir builds and manages digital surveillance systems that have enabled Israeli military violence in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as the recent U.S. bombing that killed nearly two hundred schoolgirls in Iran. New Jersey has one of the largest Palestinian populations in the country. Why are they being forced to contribute to the harm of their own families here and abroad? The idea that people who escaped Gaza only to fear ICE detention here is gut-wrenching. Why does New Jersey commit tens of millions of dollars of pension funds to Palantir’s technologies of death?”

Palantir links the struggle against Israel’s genocide with calls for immigrant justice. As Rachael Bane of the Green Party of New Jersey notes, “Palantir is also a key facilitator of our carceral state here in the US, with ICE utilizing its (often custom-built) tools to surveil this country’s residents and violently target immigrants. Horrific human rights abuses are taking place in detention centers across the country, while Palantir profits. We must organize to divert our funds away from Palantir and back into our communities!”

“It’s increasingly clear that the movements for immigrant justice and against Israel’s genocide and apartheid share common goals,” adds Whitney Strub of North New Jersey Democratic Socialists of America; “Palantir is one obvious and egregious example, but so too are the wave of state censorship and repression of protest, the militarized ‘national-security’ state, and the McCarthyist attacks on student and immigrant dissent. New Jersey has a chance to stake out a necessary moral position here by divesting from Palantir.”

For Omayma Mansour of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), “Today I speak with a heavy heart but with firm conviction: our pension funds and tax dollars should not be invested in systems that harm human rights, fuel surveillance, or enable brutality at home and abroad. This reversal signals that short-term financial considerations are being placed above serious moral and humanitarian concerns.”

“Every dollar New Jersey puts into Palantir Technologies is a contradiction,” adds Wassim Kanaan, the New Jersey chair of American Muslims for Palestine; “Our state must invest in the well-being of our communities, not in their harm. Any investment in systems of harm undermines any claim to justice or human rights.”

Break the Bonds NJ invites all New Jerseyans to call upon state officials for divestment and more ethical state investment practices. Those interested can get involved at https://breakthebondsnj.org/
###