Meet the Harvard lawyer who is suing the biggest Israeli financier

It’s David versus the Goliath of Zionism.

Through a lawsuit of a rare kind filed on behalf of three anonymous US citizens of Palestinian origin, a Harvard-trained independent lawyer David Pina is demanding that an elected official in a Florida county face a jury trial for his “highly unusual” investment of $700 million in Israeli bonds.

With a population of 1.5 million people, Palm Beach County in the southern US state is the single-largest worldwide buyer of debt issued by Israel Bonds—a corporation that raises money globally for the Zionist government that’s been on a borrowing spree to fund its $67 billion war in Gaza since last October.

Pina says in the lawsuit that the investment by Joseph Abruzzo—elected comptroller for Palm Beach County who’s parked $700 million of the $4.6 billion portfolio in Israel Bonds—violates public trust and multiple Florida state statutes.

He adds that the plaintiffs are protecting their identities because revealing their names would endanger their lives and livelihoods.

“There’s no parallel, nothing to compare our situation to, in the United States. We’re suing the world’s biggest investor in Israel Bonds. And they make a big deal out of that,” he tells TRT World.

“He's (Abruzzo) not investing money for some cowboy-Donald-Trump-billionaire who just wants to make a big-risk, big-return type of thing. This is money for the people, this is money for a government. Florida has several statutes that actually control the type of investment that we can have with our money,” Pina says.

US investors have been ploughing their funds into Israel Bonds since the onset of the Gaza war, which has so far killed nearly 37,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

One-quarter of all foreign debt that Israel raised in 2023 was mobilised through Israel Bonds.

“This is trying to take away $700 million from the Israeli military. There’s no parallel to the level of danger that our plaintiffs would face if they came out with their names,” he says.

The marketing material of the corporation appeals to the Zionist sentiments of potential investors: “Israel is at war. We stand with Israel. Make a statement, Invest in Israel Bonds,” the website’s banner screams in bold letters.

Since October, the corporation has sold bonds worth $3 billion, about three times higher than its annual average.

Analysts have attributed the unusually high level of borrowing to Israel’s increased military spending, which has widened the gap between its revenue and expenditures to seven percent of GDP, higher than the 6.6 percent target.

Unlike most other dollar-denominated debt instruments, which can easily be sold at any time, Israel Bonds aren’t traded in a secondary market and must be held to maturity—a feature that makes them more suitable for the needs of the Jewish retail clientele.

That’s why it’s common practice for family elders in Jewish households in the US to buy long-term Israel Bonds for their young family members as gifts for Bar and Bat Mitzvah—the coming-of-age ceremony for Jewish boys and girls when they reach 12 or 13.

But war hysteria created by Israel has led at least 35 US states and many small municipalities to invest more than $1.7 billion since October into the debt instrument that, according to Pina, is neither safe nor lucrative.

The investment figure by US state and local governments is unusual as big investors typically view held-to-maturity bonds unfavourably. The absence of a secondary market means their funds remain stuck in low-yield bonds for years on end—even if better investment options emerge later on.

Legitimacy in question

According to a report in Financial Times, states and municipalities across the US are piling up on Israel Bonds because of three reasons: permissibility under state and county laws, perceived low risk coupled with returns higher than those of US treasuries, and a show of solidarity with Israel in its war on Gaza.

Pina rejects each of the three criteria. He says investing municipal funds in support of a country at war is a political, non-financial decision that violates Florida statutes in no uncertain terms.

Buying $700 million of Israel Bonds while the war in Gaza continues poses an “economic threat” to Palm Beach County’s taxpayers, he says.

Israel Bonds is one of the few international investment avenues in which US laws allow local governments to take exposure. However, the permissibility rests strictly on the local government's decision to make investment decisions based on financial factors alone.

In fact, Florida law explicitly prohibits its municipalities from investing public money for any social or political reason.

But Abruzzo—a non-Jewish, Democratic overseer of Palm Beach County investments—has said repeatedly from public platforms that he considers Israel to be America’s “greatest ally” that needs “our full support”.

“I am proud to show solidarity with the people of Israel and make Palm Beach County the first county in the nation to increase its investment in Israel Bonds following their declaration of war against Hamas,” Abruzzo was quoted as saying after the start of the Gaza war last year.

Pina says Abruzzo has gone out of his way to show that he is acting illegally. “All these statements are only further evidence that he’s broken the law, that these investments are illegal,” he says.

Palm Beach County held $40 million—or one percent of its portfolio of $3.8 billion at the time—in Israel Bonds at the end of September 2023.

However, the county made 14 bond purchases in quick succession to grow its holdings of Israel Bonds to $700 million—a net increase of 17.5 times in just six months, according to the documents submitted to the court.

The amount and the speed at which the funds were sent to Israel after the war is probably unprecedented in the history of municipality fund management. It accounts for approximately one-fourth of all Israel Bonds purchased since October 7.

Currently at 15 percent of Palm Beach County’s portfolio of $4.6 billion, the law doesn’t allow Abruzzo to buy more Israel Bonds.

In the lawsuit, Pina has quoted municipal finance experts to establish that such a high concentration of portfolio in a single debt instrument, that too of a country at war, is highly risky.

For example, the lawsuit quotes Justin Marlowe, a research professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and director of the university’s Center for Municipal Finance, as saying that he isn’t aware of any other jurisdiction that has 15 percent of its holdings in one type of investment.

“[This represents] a greater concentration of risk in any portfolio for a public entity than I’ve seen in a long time.”

Returns on bonds, riskier and worse

A big part of the lawsuit consists of Pina’s argument that Palm Beach County's $700 million investment makes little sense in view of Israel’s credit worthiness, which has suffered immensely under the prevailing political, economic, and fiscal conditions.

For example, Israel’s real GDP growth rate slowed down significantly from 9.3 percent in 2021 to 6.5 percent in 2022 and then to just two percent in 2023. Pina argues that a slowdown in the economic growth rate can hurt tax revenue collection which, in turn, will affect the country’s debt repayment capacity.

The county released an investment report on October 31 that showed the yield on Israel Bonds was lower than inflation. In fact, these bonds were the lowest-yielding investment in the portfolio.

The same report showed money-market funds outperformed Israel Bonds by as much as 2.64 percent.

Inflation in October was 3.7 percent, while Israel Bonds yielded a 2.87 percent return, reflecting a negative real return of 0.83 percent.

Still, the county followed its fresh investment of $25 million in October with two separate purchases in November totaling $135 million.

According to Pina, the lawsuit treats each bond purchase in the six-month period as an “individual event, individual conduct on behalf of the comptroller.”

“Our position is that each one of those was illegal. But even if the fact-finder in this trial eventually decides that perhaps the first one was purely fiscal… the second one wasn't, and the third one wasn't.”

In other words, Pina says the comptroller has violated the Florida law even if he gets all of $700 million back plus interest.

“What the law says is that on the day of investment, did it look like there could’ve been a default… did it look like a reasonable person should not have invested?”

Investment reports show the comptroller took funds out of the money-market funds and invested them in Israel Bonds instead. The money-market funds ended up earning higher returns, yet Abruzzo doubled down on Israeli investments while making political statements.

“So on every account with every date of investment he made, it was very unreasonable, and that alone violates the law.”

State of community

According to Lydia, a local community organiser who asked TRT World not to use her full name for safety reasons, such unprecedented investments in Israeli debt show a “stark misuse of funds” by Palm Beach County’s comptroller.

“The county had a $732 million deficit in their budget (in 2023). They had to cancel different projects, like updating bridges, improving roads, building animal shelters, and building community centres. After this deficit was announced, the comptroller still invested $600 million more (in Israel Bonds),” she says.

Commenting on Abruzzo’s statement about how he received “full-room applauses and standing ovations” from the community for investing their tax dollars in Israeli bonds, Lydia says the comptroller spoke in a room with people who were politically aligned with him.

“Part of our community-organising tactic is doing teach-ins and actually talking to the community. Everyone we've talked to so far has vastly disagreed with $700 million of their tax dollars going to Israeli bonds,” she says.

In a statement released to the media, Abruzzo said he was confident that the “frivolous” lawsuit would be quickly dismissed. “The county’s investment in Israel Bonds will generate significant returns for Palm Beach County while safeguarding taxpayer money,” he said.

The case is scheduled to go to trial in November 2025. But Pina says he hopes Abruzzo will “see the error of his ways before that” and withdraw the $700 million investment.

Lydia says a number of her fellow community organisers have paid a steep price for their activism in Palm Beach County and beyond.

“For showing up to protest, for just walking through downtown holding a sign, they've lost their jobs, their kids have been suspended from school because they posted a political view online,” she says.

“Several attorneys in different jurisdictions” have reached out to Pina as they prepare to mount legal battles against their local governments for investing taxpayer money in Israel Bonds.

Some of Pina’s clients have been threatened with death for their pro-Palestine views on Israel’s war in Gaza. He’s had clients who were arrested for defending themselves against Zionists who tried to physically hurt them.

“The case ended up being dismissed because the police officer turned off their body-worn camera audio while talking to the Zionist who threatened my client, did not arrest the Zionist, then lied about the Zionist disappearing on their sworn affidavit and arrested my client,” he said, about an incident from a few months ago.