Preface
“It is important to remember the role that organized protest movements have played in the United States. The arc of justice in this country has always been served by listening to dissent rather than silencing or squashing it. Indeed, protest movements are how we got to a time and place in the U.S. where men, women, and all people of color can vote; how we ended unjust wars; and how we improved upon inhumane working conditions. While there is a lot of work still to be done, it is important to recognize that we have come a long way from the worst days due to robust and organized protest movements. The current protest movement for Palestine is no exception. Especially in light of the 2024 election results, we as a community must stand firm in our commitment to peaceful protest, to ensure the arc of history continues to bend toward justice.”
– Renee Morgan, Director of Impact, Adasina
Adasina Categorically Opposes Violence Against Palestinians & All Civilians
As we detailed earlier this year, Adasina stands unequivocally against state violence and mass incarceration — a stance that is explicitly implemented in our portfolio and campaigns. Our commitment to ending state violence extends globally and has always included Palestine.
We support the right to protest and believe it is a tenet of social justice that has been at the heart of progress toward equity both in the United States and around the world. We oppose police intervention in peaceful protest — including crackdowns in spring and summer 2024 on student protestors for Palestine — and attest that state-sponsored violence against civilians is wrong, whether committed by police, military, or other agencies.
We affirm:
- Israel is wrong in waging a campaign of violence against Palestinians.
- The United States is wrong in supplying weapons and funding in support of Israel’s campaign against Palestinians.
- Palestinians have been living in an apartheid state for many years, and the oppression is well documented by respected international organizations. Both Amnesty International (2022) and Human Rights Watch (2021) have produced extensive reports documenting apartheid in Palestine as defined by International laws.1
If we are to champion social justice, we must be dedicated to liberation for all. Therefore we see no dissonance in equally condemning Hamas’ actions on October 7th, 2023, supporting a safe return for Israeli hostages, and condemning antisemitism in general. All violent assaults and abuses against civilians are wrong.
Further, as a public markets impact asset manager that invests globally, we believe it is vital that companies take responsibility for their products, services and actions. This includes, among others: weapons manufacture; surveillance, detention, and other tools of oppression; and violation of Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ land rights. Investors have the right and the power to hold publicly listed companies accountable for their complicity in these and other unjust activities in Palestine and everywhere.
Rigorous Criteria Against State Violence & Oppression, Including Abuses of Human & Land Rights
As a public markets investment firm, Adasina integrates material racial, gender, economic, and climate justice data into our investment strategy both to hold companies accountable for the injustices they perpetrate and to give investors a method of aligning their investments with social justice tenets.
We screen companies for violations of more than 40 criteria. These include several that directly relate to the violence being perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians:
- Prison Involvement
- Prison Labor
- Citizen & Immigrant Surveillance
- Occupied Territories
- Indigenous Peoples’ Rights
- Local Communities’ Rights
- Weapons and Firearms
These scrupulously sourced and diligently applied criteria have been developed alongside experts in the field and in social justice movements. Our sources include AFSC guidance from Dov Baum, one of the foremost experts on the topic of Occupied Territories, and the United Nations Principles on Business and Human Rights. If a company is flagged as violating any of our Social Justice Investment Criteria based on available data, it is excluded from our portfolio — without exception.
Consistent application of these criteria has always been a priority for our firm, is a priority now, and will always be a priority regardless of the next news cycle, market cycle, or political cycle.
What We Hold & Why
To the best of our ability to make such a determination, none of the companies in our portfolio actively participate in or profit from violence against civilians in Palestine, or anywhere else around the world.
While we understand that many in the protest movement have taken to divestment as a form of advocacy, Adasina takes a company-by-company, rather than country-by-country, approach to implementing our Social Justice Investment Criteria. We do not flag any company solely due to the country it is based in, which means we do not exclude Israeli companies from our portfolio simply because they are based in Israel. If we did, we would have to extend that logic globally and lose exposure to many countries, including the U.S., which is by far the most incarcerated country in the world2 and has a far higher rate of police killings of civilians than comparable developed, democratic countries.3
As of December 2nd, 2024, Adasina’s ETF contains 0.40% companies based or operating in Israel. These companies — and all companies included in the JUSTICE Index (Bloomberg: JUSTICE), our ETF, our model portfolios, and our SMAs — have been deemed investable because they were not flagged by any of our social justice datasets, and furthermore were not flagged by subsequent qualitative review and application of our Social Justice Investment Criteria through our semiannual Investable Universe Review.
We Invite You to Take Action With Us
We are proud to offer one of the most rigorous investment products on the issue of Palestinian rights, and the rights of all people everywhere subject to state violence and oppression. We invite you to join us in advancing social justice at the scale of the market.
As we prepare for the incoming Trump regime, our role as impact investors has never been more important. Together, the investor community provides one of the few remaining checks on extractive, exploitative, and/or abusive corporate activities. Therefore as public market impact investors, we urge all other investors to individually and collectively:
- oppose state violence in all forms;
- support the right to protest;
- affirm land sovereignty; and
- hold responsible all those who provide support, products, services, enforcement, and financing to state or corporate violence
- and other human rights violations in Palestine and around the world.
We invite investors to take action in their own portfolios by exploring the most comprehensive investor dataset on occupied territories involvement, developed by our partners at the American Friends Service Committee. You might also consider joining Adasina’s mission to transform the financial markets – or deepening your commitment – by emailing invest@adasina.com.
Endnotes
1. As outlined in 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, apartheid consists of three primary elements:
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An intent to maintain domination by one racial group over another;
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A context of systematic oppression by the dominant group over the marginalized group;
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Inhumane acts such as “forcible transfer” and “expropriation of landed property.”
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