At a time when incidents of antisemitism in the United States have reached record levels, and activists are calling for divestment from Israel across college campuses, JLens has been focused on combating anti-Israel shareholder proposals with hateful rhetoric. Following a JLens campaign urging investors to reject Proposal 7 at RTX (Raytheon–the corporation behind Israel’s Iron Dome defense), JLens is pleased to announce that the proposal received only 5.48% of votes cast in favor.
The proposal called for RTX to conduct a human rights impact assessment, in particular as to how its arms sales to Israel are “used to maintain the system of apartheid” in Israel. In March, JLens filed a Notice of Exempt Solicitation with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, urging investors to vote against the proposal because it included false and misleading language, could embolden antisemitism in society, and we believe it seeks to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.
JLens reviewed the shareholder proposals submitted to six US public defense companies- Boeing, General Dynamics, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX- between 2021 and 2024. In total, seven shareholder proposals containing anti-Israel language were submitted to a shareholder vote with average support of 19%. In other words, the RTX vote of 5.48% in support of the proposal, represents a particularly low vote.
In addition to JLens’ advocacy campaign at RTX, we have also filed a Notice of Exempt Solicitation connection with Amazon’s upcoming annual meeting, where we are urging shareholders to vote against Shareholder Proposal 6 on the ballot. While Proposal 6 ostensibly aims to uphold human rights, it uses egregious and hateful language that claims that Israel uses AWS “to support the apartheid system under which Palestinians are surveilled, unlawfully detained, and tortured” and “plans to use AWS as it expands illegal settlements and enforces segregation.” The proposal seeks to end the company's involvement in Project Nimbus—a $1.2 billion cloud computing agreement with the Israeli government- that would unjustly deprive Israel's essential social services and the Israel Defense Forces of crucial technologies.
Please join human rights and shareholder advocacy experts at the JLens Investor Network Webinar on Thursday, May 9th from 12-12:45pm EDT / 9-9:45am PDT to learn more about the importance of combating anti-Israel shareholder proposals, and to discuss the upcoming May 22nd vote at Amazon.
