A string of speakers during Alexandria’s Saturday public comment period urged city council to divest municipal investments, pension funds and related financial ties from corporations they said profit from Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, and several asked the council to support state‑level efforts to dismantle the Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB).

Speakers — including residents who identified as Jewish, Arab American and as descendants of people who fled past genocides — asked council to take immediate public action in support of a ceasefire and to pass a divestment resolution. Several speakers connected local investment decisions (pension, reserve and retirement investments) to companies they said profit from weapons and surveillance technologies used in Gaza and argued that local divestment would be both symbolic and materially consequential.

Caitlin Cotton warned that technologies of repression developed overseas are brought home and used against U.S. communities and urged the council to consider divestment as a measure of “protecting our rights.” Cameron White described civilian deaths and a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and said local tax dollars and defense contracts have economic links to Israel’s military suppliers; he urged the council to support disbanding the VIAB and to back a divestment resolution that Alexandria’s Human Rights Commission recommended.

Other speakers framed divestment as historically effective, referencing anti‑apartheid campaigns in South Africa, and urged the council to replicate that tactic. Several said they had already written the council and that they felt the matter had been stalled. One Jewish speaker told the council that “opposing a genocide and criticizing genociders is the most philo‑Semitic thing a person can do,” while others tied the request to municipal values and human rights obligations.

Mayor Gaskins and council members took public comment but did not enter into back‑and‑forth Q&A during the public hearing; no council motion or vote on divestment or a ceasefire resolution occurred during the meeting. Several commenters said they plan to continue advocacy in the coming weeks and asked the council to take the issue up as part of city and state legislative advocacy.