Whenever I table at an event as a representative of Jewish Voice for Peace’s New Orleans chapter, one of my top priorities is to make visitors to our booth aware that the Louisiana State Treasury has invested tens of millions of dollars in Israel Bonds in the past three years. I usually get one of a few reactions to sharing this information: a sharp gasp or guttural sound of frustration, a brow furrowed in confusion, or tightened lips and a look that says they didn’t know but they aren’t surprised. For many living in Louisiana who don’t have family in Palestine, the genocide being committed in Gaza and the West Bank can feel far removed. The newfound knowledge of our immediate complicity as Louisianans brings it closer to home. It also demonstrates that as Louisianans, we have an imperative to act.
The Louisiana State Treasury currently holds $25 million in Israel Bonds, a type of bond which has next-to-no transparency, directly fuels Israeli military activities, and has volatile credit ratings (making it a poor investment as well as unethical).
The good news is that that number used to be $40 million. Then, in February 2025, it became $35 million. On May 1 of this year, the Treasury again chose to forego the reinvestment of $10 million of the bonds that had matured, bringing us down to the current amount.
How did we get these disinvestment wins? The short answer is education.
State and municipal investment in Israel Bonds is unfortunately widespread across the United States, as are local campaigns pressuring those same entities to divest. What makes Louisiana different is the fact that these bonds are purchased using investment money earmarked for our state education system. In other words, money that the treasury has a mandate to use towards investments that generate a revenue stream for our schools is instead being invested in unethical, unstable bonds for purely political purposes. Finding out how these education funds are being invested can be especially complicated and tedious, making the work of divestment more difficult. However, the fact that Israel Bonds are being purchased with education funds also strengthens our opposition coalition through giving Louisiana educators as well as students and their families a reason to join the fight.
Teachers and parents in Louisiana will be the first to tell you just how dysfunctional and underfunded our education system is; it needs every dollar we can muster. They want healthy investments that yield adequate funds for our schools, not the subpar returns from these bonds. In fact, an overwhelming majority of the people we’ve spoken to about Israel Bonds are compelled to question why we have them in the first place, and subsequently take action to oppose their reinvestment. Our pressure campaign, consisting of petition signature collection, postcards, and phone and email zaps demanding the Treasury not reinvest in these bonds when they come to maturity, has been successful thus far.
The state’s underfunding of schools here in Louisiana and the blank check it gives to scholasticide in Gaza share the same authoritarian root. It is something I see clearly as a graduate student at the University of New Orleans. UNO has suffered poor enrollment and budget shortfalls since Hurricane Katrina, racking up a $10 million deficit before the state legislature voted to absorb it back into the LSU system in 2025. The funding supplied for this transition has been meager. Programs are still being cut, union power undermined, and costs passed on to students through a tuition increase of 6%. Meanwhile, over twice the amount of UNO’s former deficit languishes in untransferrable, nontransparent Israel Bonds in the Louisiana State Treasury. While primary and secondary schools are the main beneficiaries of these investments, both the thinning of UNO and the investments in Israel Bonds reveal the same thing about our state government. A quality education sets up students to be thoughtful and engaged political changemakers. An education system with meager resources, underpaid and overstressed teachers, and censored materials does the opposite. Investing in Israel Bonds signals that our students and their futures are unimportant. To our state decision makers, schools here are a resource to be exploited, and schools in Palestine are an unacceptable source of self-determination and cultural pride.
In order to ensure ethical investments in our education system, we need to build grassroots pressure for the total elimination of Israel Bonds in the Treasury. Winning requires an organized coalition linking communities across Louisiana, centering educators and prioritizing our students’ futures. If you are an educator frustrated by Louisiana’s disastrous choice to invest in Israel’s atrocities rather than Louisiana’s children, join our campaign. A better future is not only possible, but by building solidarity across movements and by inviting in our neighbors wherever we are—from Lake Charles and Lafayette, Alexandria to Shreveport, Slidell, New Orleans, and everywhere in between—together, that future belongs to all of us.
Share your experience with unstable funding as an educator with us at btblouisiana@gmail.com. Reach out to JVP NOLA through our Instagram @jvpnola, or email neworleans@jewishvoiceforpeace.org to learn how you can become more involved.
Illustrations by Sadie Wiese
