# October 2024 Auditor's Office Israel Solidarity Operation The Peterson custodian production documents a coordinated, multi-channel public-facing Israel solidarity campaign mounted by the Arkansas Auditor's office in the first week of October 2024 to coincide with the first anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. The campaign predated Chief Deputy Jason Brady's 10/23/2024 formal outreach to ATRS and APERS executive directors by sixteen days. It establishes that the pension Israel Bonds proposal was layered onto an already-active religious-political solidarity operation rather than initiated as a standalone fiduciary investment proposal. This concept page documents the operation's components, its institutional channels, its religious-political framing, and its substantive consequence for the wiki's documentary picture of the Auditor's-office Israel Bonds work. ## Components and timeline **10/2/2024 3:02 PM**. Stacy Peterson (Director of Communications, APR) emails Wendy Spadoni a Word document "Israel Solidarity Letter 10.2.24.docx" to be put on the Auditor's formal letterhead. Peterson notes the letter "still needs approval from Jason" (Brady). The mailing address listed: "Embassy of Israel, 3514 International Dr NW, Washington, DC 20008." Peterson is the drafter; Brady is the approver; Spadoni handles letterhead and mailing logistics. **10/3/2024 3:48 PM**. Peterson emails Sen. Jason Rapert at [email protected] with the subject "Support for Israel Letter from Auditor Milligan." Milligan is BCC'd. Attached: the signed PDF "Letter to Israeli Ambassador 10.3.24.pdf" (598 KB). Peterson writes: "Mr. Rapert, Attached is a copy of the letter that Auditor Milligan mailed to Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog today. We look forward to seeing you on Monday." The "Monday" is October 7, the planned Capitol Rotunda event Rapert is convening. Rapert therefore had the Auditor's-office letter to the Israeli Ambassador in hand four days before the public press conference. **10/3/2024 2:36 PM**. Peterson emails Milligan a draft of the Capitol Rotunda speech ("Israel Speech for Monday"). The initial draft states Arkansas "purchased some $95 million in bonds supporting the State of Israel" during Milligan's Treasurer tenure. **10/4/2024 1:20 PM**. Milligan replies from his personal AOL account [email protected]: "Good job!! Sent from my iPhone." Peterson follows up at 1:25 PM: "Thank you! A copy is on your desk as well." **10/7/2024 8:06 AM**. Peterson sends Kurt Underwood (the Auditor's-office video producer) the day-of speech text under subject "speech." The dollar figure is revised down from $95 million to "$85 million," and "Sen. Rapert" becomes "former Sen. Jason Rapert," and "State of Israel" becomes "nation of Israel." Whether the revision corrected an error in the original draft or was made for other reasons is not documented. **10/7/2024 morning**. The Capitol Rotunda press conference takes place. Per Peterson's same-day emails describing the event: "Today, with the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, Christian and Jewish leaders came together for a press conference announcing unwavering support for Israel and our Jewish friends in America." Milligan delivers the speech Peterson drafted and Underwood records the video. **10/7/2024 2:56 PM**. Underwood shares a Google Drive folder "STAND WITH ISRAEL DRAFTS" with Peterson, inviting her to "contribute to" the folder. The folder houses the video drafts Underwood is producing. **10/7/2024 3:18 PM**. Peterson replies "Coming to chat in a minute" and attaches ACT644.pdf — the Act 644 of 2017 legislative text Milligan referenced in his speech. **10/7/2024 3:21 PM**. Peterson directs Underwood on video editing: "1:08 need to update this b-roll to the Act 644 doc I just sent you. Maybe use this photo in his reference toward his Jewish friends at 1:20ish: [NYT live blog link]. This could also be used as extra b-roll: [AP October 7 anniversary link]." Peterson is sourcing the news-photo b-roll for the video's Jewish-friends reference passage from the New York Times' October 7 anniversary live blog. **10/7/2024 3:44 PM**. Underwood emails Peterson the YouTube link to the finished "I stand with Israel" video: https://youtu.be/oPGl3ir_Bn4. The video is publicly posted on the Auditor's office YouTube channel within hours of the Capitol Rotunda event. **10/7/2024 3:48 PM**. Peterson emails Lawrence Berman ([email protected]) directly under the subject "A message from Arkansas Auditor Dennis Milligan." Milligan is BCC'd. "Arkansas Auditor of State Dennis Milligan wanted me to reach out on his behalf and express his support for Israel and her people – every day, but especially today on the anniversary of the atrocious attacks one year ago today... Auditor Milligan recorded a brief video, which you may watch here if you so desire." **10/7/2024 3:54 PM**. Peterson sends a substantially identical message to the Israeli Embassy consular address ([email protected]), addressed to Ambassador Herzog directly under the subject "Solidarity with Israel." **10/7/2024 4:50 PM**. Lawrence Berman replies to Peterson with the entire DCI senior leadership cc'd: Dani Naveh (DCI President & CEO), Stuart Garawitz, Shiri Stern, Ethan Behling, Bradley Young. Berman: "This is a wonderful message, Stacy. I will reach out to the Auditor directly, but please let him know how deeply we appreciate his support and friendship. He is truly one of a kind, and we are forever grateful to him and your whole team." **12/17/2024**. Peterson sends Underwood a re-distribution of the same speech text under the subject "israel" — for additional use beyond the original 10/7 event. ## The Christian-Zionist framing The substantive framing of the operation is explicitly religious. Milligan's 10/7 speech text (Peterson draft, Milligan approved): "As a Christian, I have supported Israel all my life. The Bible tells us that our Jewish friends are God's chosen people, and I believe that it's my Christian duty to support you all." The institutional venue is the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, an organization founded by former Sen. Jason Rapert under the christianlawmakers.com domain (see [[national-association-of-christian-lawmakers]] and [[jason-rapert]]). The Treasurer-era backstory Milligan publicly recounted in the 10/7 speech is the original Auditor-Rapert-DCI legislative collaboration in 2015-2017 that produced Act 644: "Soon after I took that office back in 2015, I was approached by an Israeli development corporation about the potential of bringing legislation to Arkansas that would allow the state to invest in bonds from Israel. I connected the developers with Sen. Rapert, and through that connection Act 644 was born. It was enacted in 2017, and during my tenure we purchased some $85 million in bonds supporting Israel." This is the Auditor's own public account of the policy-and-relationship origin of Arkansas state Israel Bonds investment. The Christian solidarity rationale and the financial-investment rationale appear in adjacent passages of the same speech, presented as compatible expressions of the same long-standing commitment. The framing is the same dual-rationale structure documented in the SFOF Stacy Garrity Pennsylvania case study distributed to Milligan in November 2024 ([[sfof-state-financial-officer-network]]): political-religious solidarity ("to show our support") alongside pecuniary justification ("pay above-market returns and they've never defaulted"). The 10/7 speech precedes the SFOF newsletter by 28 days and establishes that the dual-rationale framing was already operationally familiar to the Auditor's office before SFOF distributed the Garrity model. ## Operational consequence for the wiki's picture The October 2024 Israel Solidarity Operation reframes the documented chronology of the Auditor's-office Israel Bonds work. The prior wiki framing was that Brady's 10/23/2024 outreach to Fecher and White was the seed message; the Spadoni production added that Milligan had "purchased bonds of Israel" during his Treasurer tenure and had a personal working relationship with Berman since that time. The Peterson production now adds that: (1) The Auditor's-office had **active direct email contact with DCI senior leadership** on October 7, 2024 — sixteen days before the 10/23 pension outreach. Peterson's 10/7 message to Berman drew a same-day reply from Berman cc'ing the entire DCI senior team including the CEO. Berman's framing "support and friendship" and his deference "we are forever grateful to him and your whole team" indicate an established institutional relationship, not a first contact. (2) **The first documented public-facing action of the Auditor's-office October 2024 cycle was a Christian-Zionist solidarity operation, not a fiduciary investment recommendation**. The Capitol Rotunda speech was delivered at the National Association of Christian Lawmakers event. The mailed letter was to the Israeli Ambassador. The video was posted on the Auditor's-office YouTube channel as "I stand with Israel." The direct emails went to Israel Bonds' DCI senior leadership and to the Israeli Embassy consular section. None of these are pension fund channels. (3) **The pension Israel Bonds outreach (Brady's 10/23 email) followed the public solidarity operation by 16 days**. The chronological sequence indicates that Brady's pension outreach was operationally subsequent to and built upon Peterson's public solidarity campaign, not the other way around. (4) **The Treasurer-era legislative backstory is a Milligan-Rapert-DCI collaboration from 2015-2017**. Milligan's own public account (Peterson-drafted, Milligan-approved) places himself as the connector between an Israeli development corporation and a state legislator (Rapert) in 2015-2016, with Act 644 enacted in 2017 as the result. The "$85 million" figure (revised down from a $95 million draft) is the state's Treasurer-era purchase total Milligan attributed to his administration. (5) **Peterson's design role makes her a previously-undocumented operational principal in the Auditor's-office Israel Bonds and SFOF coordination**. She functions in functional parallel to Brady (policy substance and letter signing) and Spadoni (scheduling and logistics). See [[stacy-peterson]]. ## Connection to the SFOF state-financial-officer network The October 2024 Israel Solidarity Operation predates by four weeks the 11/4/2024 SFOF newsletter (Pre-Election Update from the States) that featured Stacy Garrity's Pennsylvania $20 million Israel Bonds investment as the conservative-state-financial-officer model. The Garrity case framing — political-religious solidarity in adjacent sentences with pecuniary justification — was already operationally familiar in Arkansas before SFOF distributed it as a national template. The Arkansas operation that followed (June 2025 Resolution 2025-22, $50 million at ATRS plus a parallel $25-50 million at APERS) is in this sequence the second state-level Israel Bonds adoption matching the Garrity template, with Peterson's 6/4/2025 follow-up offer to SFOF Director of Public Policy Adam Schwend operationalizing Milligan's office as a model-replication broker for additional SFOF member states. See [[sfof-state-financial-officer-network]] and [[stacy-peterson]]. ## What the materials do not establish The substantive content of the 10/3/2024 mailed letter to Ambassador Herzog ("Letter to Israeli Ambassador 10.3.24.pdf" attached to Peterson's email to Rapert) is held for a focused read; the rendered content is not separately extracted in this ingest. Whether the Israeli Embassy or Ambassador Herzog responded to the letter or to Peterson's 10/7 email is not in this batch. Whether the National Association of Christian Lawmakers has a formal institutional relationship with DCI or with SFOF is not documented in the materials. Whether the 10/7/2024 Capitol Rotunda event received local press coverage is a follow-up reference target. Whether DCI funded or otherwise supported the production of the Auditor's-office "I stand with Israel" video is not documented (the b-roll Peterson directed was from New York Times and Associated Press public reporting; the production was on Auditor's-office staff time using Auditor's-office infrastructure). ## Update from R2 residual sub-batches: auditor@ shared-mailbox cross-confirmation The [email protected] shared-mailbox in [[auditor-foia-r2-residual]] holds a parallel copy of Peterson's 10/3/2024 3:48 PM forward of the Israeli Ambassador letter to Rapert at [email protected]. The shared-mailbox copy is identical in content to the Peterson custodian version; the cross-custodian preservation establishes that the email was sent from Peterson's account and copied (BCC) to the auditor@ shared mailbox where it was retained in Inbox. The shared-mailbox cross-confirmation is documentary belt-and-suspenders evidence of the campaign's operational chain: Peterson drafts → Brady approves → Spadoni formats → Milligan signs (the physical mailing) → Peterson forwards to Rapert with the auditor@ alias on BCC. ## Update from R2 residual sub-batches: the December 2024 Brad Young handwritten card establishes the post-October ongoing-engagement pattern The Brad Young handwritten thank-you card on DCI letterhead in the R2 residual sub-batches (per [[auditor-foia-r2-residual]] Sub-batch 3) anchors a documented pattern continuing after the October 2024 Solidarity Operation. The card thanks Milligan for the November 5, 2024 Election Day trip Brady orchestrated, frames the personal relationship in explicitly continuing terms ("your support and passion for Israel and Israel Bonds is second to none... It is critical to our success and to Israel's future"), and anticipates the next trip ("Until next time (hopefully soon)") which becomes the April 14-15, 2025 Capitol tour. The card's combination of personal-relationship language and ongoing-reporting commitment ("We will keep you posted") establishes the October 2024 Solidarity Operation as part of a continuous DCI-Auditor-office relationship-cultivation pattern, not a standalone campaign moment. The dual-rationale framing the October operation introduced (Christian-Zionist solidarity + pecuniary justification, in adjacent passages) is operationalized in subsequent DCI senior-staff personal correspondence with Milligan. ## Evidence > [!evidence] Stacy Peterson to Wendy Spadoni, Letterhead.pdf p.1, 10/2/2024 > "Will you please put this on AM's formal letterhead? It still needs approval from Jason... Embassy of Israel, 3514 International Dr NW, Washington, DC 20008" > [!evidence] Stacy Peterson to Jason Rapert ([email protected]; BCC: Milligan), Support for Israel Letter from Auditor Milligan.pdf p.1, 10/3/2024 > "Attached is a copy of the letter that Auditor Milligan mailed to Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog today. We look forward to seeing you on Monday." > [!evidence] Milligan 10/7/2024 Capitol Rotunda speech (Peterson draft, Milligan-approved), Israel Speech for Monday.pdf p.1 > "As a Christian, I have supported Israel all my life. The Bible tells us that our Jewish friends are God's chosen people, and I believe that it's my Christian duty to support you all." > [!evidence] Milligan 10/7/2024 Capitol Rotunda speech (Peterson 10/7/2024 8:06 AM Underwood-distribution draft; 10/4 Milligan-approval draft said $95 million), speech.pdf p.1 > "Prior to being elected as State Auditor, I served as Treasurer of State for 8 years. Soon after I took that office back in 2015, I was approached by an Israeli development corporation about the potential of bringing legislation to Arkansas that would allow the state to invest in bonds from Israel. I connected the developers with Sen. Rapert, and through that connection Act 644 was born. It was enacted in 2017, and during my tenure we purchased some $85 million in bonds supporting Israel." > [!evidence] Milligan 10/7/2024 Capitol Rotunda speech opening, Israel Speech for Monday.pdf p.1 > "Thank you to former Senator Jason Rapert for putting this event together and asking me to come say a few words." > [!evidence] Stacy Peterson to Kurt Underwood (video editing direction), Re Folder shared with you STAND WITH ISRAEL DRAFTS_1.pdf p.1, 10/7/2024 3:21 PM > "1:08 need to update this b-roll to the Act 644 doc I just sent you. Maybe use this photo in his reference toward his Jewish friends at 1:20ish: [NYT October 7 link]. This could also be used as extra b-roll: [AP October 7 anniversary link]." > [!evidence] Kurt Underwood to Stacy Peterson (the Auditor's-office "I stand with Israel" YouTube video link), I stand with Israel Youtube.pdf p.1, 10/7/2024 3:44 PM > "https://youtu.be/oPGl3ir_Bn4" > [!evidence] Stacy Peterson to Lawrence Berman (BCC: Dennis Milligan), A message from Arkansas Auditor Dennis Milligan.pdf p.1, 10/7/2024 3:48 PM > "Arkansas Auditor of State Dennis Milligan wanted me to reach out on his behalf and express his support for Israel and her people – every day, but especially today on the anniversary of the atrocious attacks one year ago today." > [!evidence] Stacy Peterson to Israeli Embassy [email protected], Solidarity with Israel.pdf p.1, 10/7/2024 3:54 PM > "Today, with the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, Christian and Jewish leaders came together for a press conference announcing unwavering support for Israel and our Jewish friends in America." > [!evidence] Lawrence Berman to Stacy Peterson (CC: Dani Naveh, Stuart Garawitz, Shiri Stern, Ethan Behling, Bradley Young), RE A message from Arkansas Auditor Dennis Milligan.pdf p.1, 10/7/2024 4:50 PM > "This is a wonderful message, Stacy. I will reach out to the Auditor directly, but please let him know how deeply we appreciate his support and friendship. He is truly one of a kind, and we are forever grateful to him and your whole team." ## Tensions This concept page is the documentary surface for one open tension: - [[T040 - October 2024 Solidarity Operation Standalone Civic Advocacy vs Preparatory Operation]] — was the October 2-7 2024 Solidarity Operation an independent civic advocacy event on the first anniversary of the October 7 2023 attacks, or a preparatory operation for the pension Israel Bonds outreach Brady opened sixteen days later. Statement A reads the operation as anniversary-event civic-religious commemoration with parallel-track separation from the pension outreach; Statement B reads it as the first operational stage of a continuous Auditor's-office DCI-relationship-cultivation pattern through the June 2025 ATRS and APERS authorizations. Status: open. ## Cross-References [[stacy-peterson]] Auditor's-office Director of Communications; designer and operator of the campaign [[dennis-milligan]] State Auditor; speech deliverer; long-standing relationship with Berman dating from Treasurer-tenure Act 644 work [[jason-rapert]] former state senator; National Association of Christian Lawmakers founder; convener of the 10/7 Capitol Rotunda event; Act 644 sponsor per Milligan's public account [[national-association-of-christian-lawmakers]] institutional venue of the 10/7 event [[michael-herzog]] Israeli Ambassador recipient of the mailed letter and the same-day Peterson email [[lawrence-berman]] DCI National Managing Director who replied within an hour with the entire DCI senior leadership cc'd [[dani-naveh]] [[stuart-garawitz]] [[ethan-behling]] [[brad-young]] DCI senior leadership cc'd on Berman's 10/7 reply [[kurt-underwood]] Auditor's-office video producer Peterson directed [[jason-brady]] Chief Deputy Auditor; approval gate for the Israel Solidarity Letter [[wendy-spadoni]] Executive Assistant to the Auditor; letterhead and mailing logistics [[auditor-as-dci-channel]] companion concept page; the October 2024 campaign establishes the active pre-pension-outreach DCI relationship [[sfof-state-financial-officer-network]] companion concept page; the Christian-Zionist framing parallels the SFOF Garrity case study circulated four weeks later [[pecuniary-frame-act-498]] companion concept page on the fiduciary frame that Act 498 of 2023 superimposes on subsequent ATRS Board action [[auditor-foia-r2-stacy-peterson]] [[auditor-foia-r2-residual]] source pages