Palestinian Mission to UK welcomes major pension fund selling Israeli assets

A major UK pension fund has sold Israeli assets reportedly worth £80 million ($100 million).

The Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) has "materially" decreased its exposure to Israeli investments such as Israeli government debt and currency in the last half a year, two informed sources were cited as saying by the Financial Times newspaper.

The Palestinian Mission to the UK welcomed the "principled policy", while USS said its decisions were purely financial. The pension scheme also said it had not disclosed or confirmed the numbers the Financial Times reported.

Lewis Backon, campaigns officer at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, also welcomed the news, adding: "We call on the scheme to listen to its members and fully divest from all companies enabling Israel's war crimes.

"Investing in companies complicit in Israeli apartheid not only violates the ethical obligation of pension funds to avoid contributing to grave abuses of human rights and international law, it's also financially risky."

Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), said her trade union and its members "have campaigned relentlessly for USS, Britain's biggest private pension scheme, to divest from complicity in Israel's apartheid regime and its genocidal war on Gaza".

"This decision is a huge step in the next direction – and a historic win for the Palestine solidarity movement," she added.

But USS has insisted its decisions were purely financial and weren't "exclusions" but based on "relative value".

"It would be wrong to state or imply these decisions were made for anything other than financial reasons," a spokesperson for the scheme said.

"We can only make investment decisions on financial best interest grounds, so this isn't a result of the range of views members may have or any form of comment on events other than the financial circumstances."

In a statement on its website, USS said it had not "excluded Israel from our investment portfolio".

Shamiul Joarder, head of public affairs at pro-Palestine group Friends of Al-Aqsa, called the selling of the reported £80 million of Israeli assets a "great victory".

"Regardless of their public justifications, external pressure and the need to comply with ICJ rulings to end complicity in [Israeli] genocide and occupation are clearly considerations for USS," he said.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) said in July in an advisory opinion that Israel's occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip was unlawful.

The ICJ separately ruled in January that there was a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza after South Africa dragged Israel before the court.

Asked about Joarder's comments by The New Arab, USS said it would "clearly" reiterate its spokesperson's remarks that its decisions were solely financial.

In its latest annual report and accounts, USS said it was "grateful for the engagement we have had with our stakeholders on broader responsible investment matters throughout the year".

"This has importantly touched on the horrific events that have unfolded in the Middle East, both on 7 October and subsequently," it said.

 "We appreciate the diversity of views that these events have precipitated among those who share an ambition to see peace in the region.

"We are, however, mindful of our legal duty to invest in the best financial interests of our members and beneficiaries, rather than any wider basis.

"We have actively monitored the implications of ongoing events on our investment outlook. We continue to keep our portfolio and broader positions under regular review; in response to the financial risks that became apparent, we have reduced our exposure to the region."

In November, USS Investment Management chief executive Simon Pilcher said the scheme would "only be able to take non-financial factors (such as ethical preferences) into account if they did not pose a risk of significant financial detriment to the scheme and we had good reason to think that the scheme's members shared each other’s concerns about the non-financial factors".