Police departments start to reject Israhell

[yankeedoodle]

Durham, North Carolina, has fired the first shot in the resistance to the zio-militarization of American policing.

DURHAM UNANIMOUSLY VOTES FOR NATION'S FIRST BAN ON POLICE EXCHANGES WITH ISRAEL 
https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/durham-votes-for-nations-first-ban-on-police-exchanges-with-israel/

DURHAM CITY COUNCIL PREVENTS THE MILITARIZATION OF ITS POLICE FOLLOWING A COMMUNITY-LED EFFORT, IN FIRST WIN FOR JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE'S DEADLY EXCHANGE CAMPAIGN.
DURHAM, NC: Late Monday evening, Durham voted unanimously to become the first city in the U.S. to prohibit police exchanges with Israel, after broad community pressure and popular petition by the Demilitarize! Durham2Palestine coalition, an affiliate of the Deadly Exchange Campaign. The policy, which states that, "the Council opposes international exchanges with any country in which Durham officers receive military-style training," was voted into official policy of the City of Durham during heated debate at City Council.

In a time of increasing concern about policing and police violence, in particular for communities of color, the city of Durham is leading the way in declaring that safety for all means de-militarizing the police force. From traffic stops that target Black drivers, to checkpoints that target immigrant communities, to police murders of Black, Brown, and disabled people, police forces cause daily harm. Police exchanges between the U.S. and Israel explicitly offer U.S. police officers exposure to methods used against Palestinians that numerous international human rights groups say are discriminatory and lead to human rights violations.

"This is an important step towards divesting from militarization and over-policing, and investing in Black and Brown futures," stated Laila Nur of Durham For All, one of the coalition members. "I am proud to see Durham leading the way; it's a huge victory towards a vision of safety and sanctuary for all."

"The Demilitarize Durham2Palestine Coalition is leading the way as a model of how to build communities that value safety for all people. We are thrilled by this first win of the Deadly Exchange campaign, which is especially meaningful as a response to the ongoing targeting of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza and the call from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction Movement in response to end U.S./Israel police exchanges," stated Jewish Voice for Peace Executive Director Rebecca Vilkomerson.

Ending police training exchanges between U.S. law enforcement and Israeli security forces, according to the Deadly Exchange campaign, works towards reducing state violence and discrimination. Since the early 2000s, thousands of U.S. police officers, sheriffs, border patrol agents, ICE officers and FBI agents have trained with Israeli military and police forces. Through one of these programs, the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) National Counter-Terrorism Seminar (NCTS), U.S. law enforcement agents visit checkpoints and prisons and meet with Israeli officials at other sites of violence and racial profiling, such as Hebron's settler-controlled areas and Ben Gurion airport.

Lee Mortimer, a member of the Coalition for Peace with Justice, pointed out that, "There are many countries with human rights abuses; Israel is the only one on which the US government lavishes monetary and financial support."

"This policy is a powerful affirmation of the solidarity many of us feel with Palestinians in Gaza, who continue to march for land and freedom despite IDF massacres, and it is an important step towards a demilitarized Durham, where all people can be truly safe and free," added Noah Rubin-Blose of Jewish Voice for Peace – Triangle NC, another coalition member.

Ajamu Amiri Dillahunt, of coalition member Black Youth Project 100-Durham Chapter, said, "BYP100 is part of this campaign because we are against expropriation and genocidal occupations. We recognize how our struggles correspond as we fight against police violence in the U.S. and unarmed Palestinians fight against violence from the IDF."

In recent decades, the U.S. has witnessed a shift in policing, a post-9/11 trend bringing counter-terrorism logics, technology and tactics into domestic policing and immigration policy. This militarization of the police has led to the increased police violence against  communities of color, intrusive surveillance particularly in Muslim communities, and the violent repression of Indigenous-led movements, compounded with increased police targeting of people of color, including in the city of Durham. Law enforcement exchange programs, under the banner of Israeli counterterrorism expertise, contribute to these deadly trends by encouraging an even deeper application of counterterror and counter-insurgency models into domestic policing, immigration and surveillance policies and practices.

Durham City Councillor Javiera Caballero stated: "I am an immigrant because of military influence and a foreign power [...] At some point we need to move away from militarization, period... To the immigrant community: You are loved, and your fight is our fight."

"In my own experience, having spent my winter break in the West Bank, the tear gas that clouded the vision of my eyes and those of the few hundred protesters around me served as an eye opener to the unjust, militaristic practices the Israel Defense Forces uses against peaceful protesters," said Ahmad Amireh of Duke Students for Justice in Palestine. "No police department needs any exposure to the IDF's racist practices, and Durham will be a safer city by committing to ending police exchanges with Israel."

In order to raise their concerns over possible police exchanges with Israel, the Demilitarize! Durham2Palestine coalition of ten local organizations, including the Jewish Voice for Peace-Triangle, NC chapter, led a petition drive that gathered over 1,200 signatures of Durham residents in opposition to such exchanges with Israel. The coalition was galvanized as Durham's current Police Chief, Cerelyn Davis, previously organized police exchanges between Atlanta and Israel through the Atlanta Police Leadership Institute International Exchange Program. Moreover, Durham's past Police Chief Jose Lopez, while in office, participated in the American Defense League's National Counter-Terrorism Seminar with the Israeli Defense Force in 2008; the ADL lists the Durham Police Department as one of many law enforcement agencies trained through NCTS.

Pastor Mark Davidson of the Church of Reconciliation and Miriam Thompson, co-conveners of the Abrahamic Initiative on the Middle East, said in a statement: "As faith leaders and human rights advocates, AIME is honored to support the D2P campaign and gratified at the (recommended) vote of the Durham City Council that establishes and secures a just and peaceful environment and a police-community partnership, by prohibiting foreign military training of Durham police, especially from countries that practice human rights violations."

A letter of support to the City of Durham by an interfaith movement of rabbis, Christian clergy and imams, sponsored by American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Friends of Sabeel – North America (FOSNA) and JVP, which was read on Monday evening, states: "As clergy, we wholeheartedly endorse the amazing work of Demilitarize! Durham2Palestine to halt any future police exchange partnerships between the Durham Police Department and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)... We believe it is our religious and moral duty to champion human rights, and we respect this courageous statement that seeks to protect all communities from harm—in Durham, Israel/Palestine, and around the world."

###

Jewish Voice for Peace is a national, grassroots organization inspired by Jewish tradition to work for a just and lasting peace according to principles of human rights, equality and international law for all the people of Israel and Palestine. JVP has over 200,000 online supporters, over 70 chapters, a youth wing, a Rabbinic Council, an Artist Council, an Academic Advisory Council, and an Advisory Board made up of leading U.S. intellectuals and artists.

Demilitarize! Durham2Palestine coalition is made up of ten local organizations in Durham: AIME (Abrahamic Initiative on the Middle East), Black Youth Project 100 – Durham Chapter, Durham for All, Inside Outside Alliance, Jewish Voice for Peace – Triangle Chapter, Muslim American Public Affairs Council, Muslims for Social Justice, SpiritHouse, Students for Justice in Palestine – Duke, and Students for Justice in Palestine – UNC-CH.

Deadly Exchange is a Jewish Voice for Peace-anchored national campaign seeking to end U.S.-Israel police exchanges and reimagine community safety, beyond policing and militarization.

RELATED JVP POSTS
Co-founder of Birthright Israel Gives Middle Finger to Jewish College Students
Jewish Voice for Peace Horrified by Israel's Disproportionate Violent Response to Peaceful Protest
Jewish Voice for Peace Horrified By Israeli Response to the #GreatReturnMarch

Jewish Voice for Peace is a national member-driven organization dedicated to a U.S. foreign policy based on peace, human rights, and respect for international law.

[maz]

This is an interesting development and certainly good publicity in helping to expose the absurdity of sending US police forces to Israel for holocaust brainwashing and to learn how to get away with killing citizens.

Jewish Voices For Peace apparently only cares about blacks an brown people being abused by the police.

I did some looking and came across this article - https://www.rt.com/usa/424376-durham-bans-exchanges-israel/

Exchanges between US and Israeli law enforcement are common training practice, organized by governmental bodies as well as NGOs and private companies. It appears that each city can make its own decision on the matter.

However, the mayor of Durham, Steve Schewel, said that people were given "completely false information" and that the city's police force has not been engaged in training with the Israeli army. Earlier, Police Chief Cerelyn "CJ" Davis echoed the statement, saying that since she has been in office there has been "no effort... to initiate or participate in any exchange to Israel, nor do I have any intention to do so."

There is also a broader campaign calling on the US government to halt such partnerships with Israel to challenge "state violence and discrimination in both countries."

As the city council passed the motion, the activist groups which were campaigning for the move praised the decision. However, some also criticized the measure as inciting "anti-Israel" sentiment and possibly encouraging other American cities to do the same, Bob Gutman, a co-chair of Voice for Israel, said, as cited by local media.

Prior to the decision, activists gathered in front of City Hall, calling for "demilitarization from Durham to Gaza." The organizers of the rally cited the recent events in Gaza and police brutality against black people as examples of "state violence."

[yankeedoodle]

How Durham, NC became the first U.S. city to ban police exchanges with Israel
read here to find links in article:  http://mondoweiss.net/2018/05/durham-became-exchanges/

Durham, North Carolina became the first city in the country to ban local police exchanges with Israel on April 16, when the city council unanimously passed a resolution opposing any international "military-style" training for police officers.

During a heated discussion at City Hall, opponents of the resolutions expressed confusion over the policy's relevance to Durham, or said they opposed what they saw as unfair targeting of Israel.

"There are real problems facing this city, and the Palestinian situation is not one of them," Richard Ford of Durham's "Friends of Durham" political action committee said during the public comment period. Durham Mayor Steve Schewel also expressed dismay at what he said were false rumors that Durham had plans to send its police to Israel for training.

But Southern solidarity with Palestine has deep precedent. Three years after the famous student Freedom Summer actions in Mississippi in 1964, in the aftermath of the 1967 war that began the longest standing military occupation in history, Stokely Carmichael (who later changed his name to Kwame Ture) and fellow Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee member Ethel Minor published a two-page article in the SNCC newsletter, "Third World Round-up: The Palestine Problem." In this controversial article, they described Zionism as a form of settler colonialism, a global injustice that necessitated solidarity with displaced Palestinians. They argued that the occupation of Palestine wasn't a far away tragedy disconnected from their political realities in the South. Rather, SNCC members believed oppressive policies in Palestine had a direct connection to the lived experiences of Black and Brown people all over the world. In a 2012 interview with Democracy Now! the poet and novelist Alice Walker, born the daughter of sharecroppers in Eatonton, Georgia, compared systemic oppression in Palestine to that of Jim Crow. "Wherever you see people who are being humiliated it is our duty as human beings...to speak."

In 2014 Southern organizers celebrated the 50th anniversary of SNCC's Freedom Summer. The anniversary coincided with a bloody Israeli military operation in Gaza, "Operation Protective Edge," that led to the deaths of over 2,000 Palestinians. "The same summer I watched the documentary about Freedom Summer in Mississippi, I learned about the struggles of Palestine," said Ajamu Amiri Dillahunt, a member of Black Youth Project 100 and a student at North Carolina Central University, a historically Black university in Durham.

Dillahunt was one of many organizers who helped build the "Demilitarize Durham2Palestine" campaign, urging city officials to ban police exchanges between Durham and Israel. He cited SNCC's 1967 solidarity statement as part of his inspiration. "[What] brought me to the campaign is being grounded in history and being inspired by SNCC, as a young Black student organizer in the South."

He also cites a deep legacy of intersectional and internationalist solidarity coming out of the South. "There's a photo from 2010 where I'm 12 years old and I'm pushing my great-grandfather in a wheelchair at a rally, and I later learned that my grandparents had brought me to a Palestine liberation rally in Durham. As I've been raised into the movement, solidarity with the struggles of oppressed peoples across the world has always been the story taught to me, that we can't get free without each other."

The Durham2Palestine Campaign also did not emerge overnight. Beth Bruch, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and an organizer with the campaign said that in the wake of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the high profile murders of Black people across the country, the coalition chose to highlight the intensifying entanglements between militarized Israeli and U.S. police practices. "We saw these police exchanges with Israel as an opportunity to oppose militarization of police in Durham and to oppose brutality happening in Palestine," she said. "We know police officers in St. Louis/Ferguson, Chicago, and other cities have participated in these exchanges which translate into horrible surveillance practices and violent police tactics."

A coalition of 10 local organizations built and coordinated the campaign over the past two years, and presented a petition with nearly 1,400 signatures to Durham City Council on April 16. Their proposed policy resolution that "the Council opposes international exchanges with any country in which Durham officers receive military-style training," passed 6-0.

Organizers had good reason to wonder if Durham would pursue similar training. Durham's last police chief, Jose Lopez, participated in a police exchange program in Israel through the Anti-Defamation League, and the current Durham police chief, C.J. Davis helped establish and run an exchange program with Israel through the Atlanta Police Leadership Institute as a high-ranking officer in Atlanta. Thousands of U.S. police and border patrol officers, including ICE and FBI agents, have traveled to Israel to be trained by Israeli police and military forces since the early 2000s.

In 2003 the Anti-Defamation League began to invite American law enforcement executives to Israel to participate in a week-long counter-terrorism seminar. Since the beginning of the exchange program, according to the ADL, "more than 200 law enforcement executives have participated... representing close to 100 different federal, state and local agencies across the country."

Critics of police exchanges argue that they encourage racially biased and violent policing.

Durham has previously taken explicit stances on issues of international justice. In 1981 the city council issued a boycott resolution in opposition to South African Apartheid, stating: "Whereas the Durham City Council recognizes the equality of all humanity, the inherent right to human dignity, and the entitlement of all persons to equal treatment under the law."

Many today consider the military occupation in Palestine a contemporary form of apartheid, and one that might be possible to defeat by employing similar tactics of mass nonviolent resistance, such as "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions." As part of the BDS movement, in 2014 Durham activists with Jewish Voice for Peace won an agreement from Durham County to end its contract with G4S, a British security company that was involved in prison and military equipment operations in Israel.

The Demilitarize Durham2Palestine Campaign frames militarized policing as an intersectional issue affecting many local communities, says organizer Ihab Mikati. "We have in our coalition people who are prison abolitionists and Muslim social justice groups and folks who are advocating for Black lives," he said, echoing the earlier international solidarity sentiments of Walker and Carmichael. "Everyone feels like we have the same self-interest when these struggles are connected to each other."

Some at the council meeting expressed a fear that Durham's resolution may be perceived as anti-Semitic. But members of Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the anchoring organizations for the campaign in Durham, say it's because of their Jewish faith that they feel a sense of obligation to Palestinian solidarity.

"I have Jewish family members who were displaced from Germany right before World War II," Bruch said. "It is because of this history that I do this solidarity organizing... I have to speak out and fight this brutality as a way of honoring my ancestors who resisted oppression in order to be true to my conscience."

In a world where capital moves more rapidly and freely than ever before, while technologies of security and border militarization have become more advanced and more entrenched, local conditions cannot be extracted from the global matrix of power and racialized violence. In 2017, Elta North America, an Israeli-owned defense manufacturer, was one of four corporations chosen to help build a prototype for the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The future of challenging racially stratified police practices at home and abroad will depend on the ability of community members to tell compelling stories about why our fates across borders are intertwined.

"I return often to Nelson Mandela saying 'our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestine.'" Dillahunt said. "I like to uplift those revolutionary Black leaders who supported Palestine as a tool to help mobilize Black people to speak up, for all of us."]   Durham, North Carolina became the first city in the country to ban local police exchanges with Israel on April 16, when the city council unanimously passed a resolution opposing any international "military-style" training for police officers.

During a heated discussion at City Hall, opponents of the resolutions expressed confusion over the policy's relevance to Durham, or said they opposed what they saw as unfair targeting of Israel.

"There are real problems facing this city, and the Palestinian situation is not one of them," Richard Ford of Durham's "Friends of Durham" political action committee said during the public comment period. Durham Mayor Steve Schewel also expressed dismay at what he said were false rumors that Durham had plans to send its police to Israel for training.

But Southern solidarity with Palestine has deep precedent. Three years after the famous student Freedom Summer actions in Mississippi in 1964, in the aftermath of the 1967 war that began the longest standing military occupation in history, Stokely Carmichael (who later changed his name to Kwame Ture) and fellow Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee member Ethel Minor published a two-page article in the SNCC newsletter, "Third World Round-up: The Palestine Problem." In this controversial article, they described Zionism as a form of settler colonialism, a global injustice that necessitated solidarity with displaced Palestinians. They argued that the occupation of Palestine wasn't a far away tragedy disconnected from their political realities in the South. Rather, SNCC members believed oppressive policies in Palestine had a direct connection to the lived experiences of Black and Brown people all over the world. In a 2012 interview with Democracy Now! the poet and novelist Alice Walker, born the daughter of sharecroppers in Eatonton, Georgia, compared systemic oppression in Palestine to that of Jim Crow. "Wherever you see people who are being humiliated it is our duty as human beings...to speak."

In 2014 Southern organizers celebrated the 50th anniversary of SNCC's Freedom Summer. The anniversary coincided with a bloody Israeli military operation in Gaza, "Operation Protective Edge," that led to the deaths of over 2,000 Palestinians. "The same summer I watched the documentary about Freedom Summer in Mississippi, I learned about the struggles of Palestine," said Ajamu Amiri Dillahunt, a member of Black Youth Project 100 and a student at North Carolina Central University, a historically Black university in Durham.

Dillahunt was one of many organizers who helped build the "Demilitarize Durham2Palestine" campaign, urging city officials to ban police exchanges between Durham and Israel. He cited SNCC's 1967 solidarity statement as part of his inspiration. "[What] brought me to the campaign is being grounded in history and being inspired by SNCC, as a young Black student organizer in the South."

He also cites a deep legacy of intersectional and internationalist solidarity coming out of the South. "There's a photo from 2010 where I'm 12 years old and I'm pushing my great-grandfather in a wheelchair at a rally, and I later learned that my grandparents had brought me to a Palestine liberation rally in Durham. As I've been raised into the movement, solidarity with the struggles of oppressed peoples across the world has always been the story taught to me, that we can't get free without each other."

The Durham2Palestine Campaign also did not emerge overnight. Beth Bruch, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and an organizer with the campaign said that in the wake of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the high profile murders of Black people across the country, the coalition chose to highlight the intensifying entanglements between militarized Israeli and U.S. police practices. "We saw these police exchanges with Israel as an opportunity to oppose militarization of police in Durham and to oppose brutality happening in Palestine," she said. "We know police officers in St. Louis/Ferguson, Chicago, and other cities have participated in these exchanges which translate into horrible surveillance practices and violent police tactics."

A coalition of 10 local organizations built and coordinated the campaign over the past two years, and presented a petition with nearly 1,400 signatures to Durham City Council on April 16. Their proposed policy resolution that "the Council opposes international exchanges with any country in which Durham officers receive military-style training," passed 6-0.

Organizers had good reason to wonder if Durham would pursue similar training. Durham's last police chief, Jose Lopez, participated in a police exchange program in Israel through the Anti-Defamation League, and the current Durham police chief, C.J. Davis helped establish and run an exchange program with Israel through the Atlanta Police Leadership Institute as a high-ranking officer in Atlanta. Thousands of U.S. police and border patrol officers, including ICE and FBI agents, have traveled to Israel to be trained by Israeli police and military forces since the early 2000s.

In 2003 the Anti-Defamation League began to invite American law enforcement executives to Israel to participate in a week-long counter-terrorism seminar. Since the beginning of the exchange program, according to the ADL, "more than 200 law enforcement executives have participated... representing close to 100 different federal, state and local agencies across the country."

Critics of police exchanges argue that they encourage racially biased and violent policing.

Durham has previously taken explicit stances on issues of international justice. In 1981 the city council issued a boycott resolution in opposition to South African Apartheid, stating: "Whereas the Durham City Council recognizes the equality of all humanity, the inherent right to human dignity, and the entitlement of all persons to equal treatment under the law."

Many today consider the military occupation in Palestine a contemporary form of apartheid, and one that might be possible to defeat by employing similar tactics of mass nonviolent resistance, such as "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions." As part of the BDS movement, in 2014 Durham activists with Jewish Voice for Peace won an agreement from Durham County to end its contract with G4S, a British security company that was involved in prison and military equipment operations in Israel.

The Demilitarize Durham2Palestine Campaign frames militarized policing as an intersectional issue affecting many local communities, says organizer Ihab Mikati. "We have in our coalition people who are prison abolitionists and Muslim social justice groups and folks who are advocating for Black lives," he said, echoing the earlier international solidarity sentiments of Walker and Carmichael. "Everyone feels like we have the same self-interest when these struggles are connected to each other."

Some at the council meeting expressed a fear that Durham's resolution may be perceived as anti-Semitic. But members of Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the anchoring organizations for the campaign in Durham, say it's because of their Jewish faith that they feel a sense of obligation to Palestinian solidarity.

"I have Jewish family members who were displaced from Germany right before World War II," Bruch said. "It is because of this history that I do this solidarity organizing... I have to speak out and fight this brutality as a way of honoring my ancestors who resisted oppression in order to be true to my conscience."

In a world where capital moves more rapidly and freely than ever before, while technologies of security and border militarization have become more advanced and more entrenched, local conditions cannot be extracted from the global matrix of power and racialized violence. In 2017, Elta North America, an Israeli-owned defense manufacturer, was one of four corporations chosen to help build a prototype for the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The future of challenging racially stratified police practices at home and abroad will depend on the ability of community members to tell compelling stories about why our fates across borders are intertwined.

"I return often to Nelson Mandela saying 'our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestine.'" Dillahunt said. "I like to uplift those revolutionary Black leaders who supported Palestine as a tool to help mobilize Black people to speak up, for all of us."]Durham, North Carolina became the first city in the country to ban local police exchanges with Israel on April 16, when the city council unanimously passed a resolution opposing any international "military-style" training for police officers.

During a heated discussion at City Hall, opponents of the resolutions expressed confusion over the policy's relevance to Durham, or said they opposed what they saw as unfair targeting of Israel.

"There are real problems facing this city, and the Palestinian situation is not one of them," Richard Ford of Durham's "Friends of Durham" political action committee said during the public comment period. Durham Mayor Steve Schewel also expressed dismay at what he said were false rumors that Durham had plans to send its police to Israel for training.

But Southern solidarity with Palestine has deep precedent. Three years after the famous student Freedom Summer actions in Mississippi in 1964, in the aftermath of the 1967 war that began the longest standing military occupation in history, Stokely Carmichael (who later changed his name to Kwame Ture) and fellow Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee member Ethel Minor published a two-page article in the SNCC newsletter, "Third World Round-up: The Palestine Problem." In this controversial article, they described Zionism as a form of settler colonialism, a global injustice that necessitated solidarity with displaced Palestinians. They argued that the occupation of Palestine wasn't a far away tragedy disconnected from their political realities in the South. Rather, SNCC members believed oppressive policies in Palestine had a direct connection to the lived experiences of Black and Brown people all over the world. In a 2012 interview with Democracy Now! the poet and novelist Alice Walker, born the daughter of sharecroppers in Eatonton, Georgia, compared systemic oppression in Palestine to that of Jim Crow. "Wherever you see people who are being humiliated it is our duty as human beings...to speak."

In 2014 Southern organizers celebrated the 50th anniversary of SNCC's Freedom Summer. The anniversary coincided with a bloody Israeli military operation in Gaza, "Operation Protective Edge," that led to the deaths of over 2,000 Palestinians. "The same summer I watched the documentary about Freedom Summer in Mississippi, I learned about the struggles of Palestine," said Ajamu Amiri Dillahunt, a member of Black Youth Project 100 and a student at North Carolina Central University, a historically Black university in Durham.

Dillahunt was one of many organizers who helped build the "Demilitarize Durham2Palestine" campaign, urging city officials to ban police exchanges between Durham and Israel. He cited SNCC's 1967 solidarity statement as part of his inspiration. "[What] brought me to the campaign is being grounded in history and being inspired by SNCC, as a young Black student organizer in the South."

He also cites a deep legacy of intersectional and internationalist solidarity coming out of the South. "There's a photo from 2010 where I'm 12 years old and I'm pushing my great-grandfather in a wheelchair at a rally, and I later learned that my grandparents had brought me to a Palestine liberation rally in Durham. As I've been raised into the movement, solidarity with the struggles of oppressed peoples across the world has always been the story taught to me, that we can't get free without each other."

The Durham2Palestine Campaign also did not emerge overnight. Beth Bruch, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and an organizer with the campaign said that in the wake of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the high profile murders of Black people across the country, the coalition chose to highlight the intensifying entanglements between militarized Israeli and U.S. police practices. "We saw these police exchanges with Israel as an opportunity to oppose militarization of police in Durham and to oppose brutality happening in Palestine," she said. "We know police officers in St. Louis/Ferguson, Chicago, and other cities have participated in these exchanges which translate into horrible surveillance practices and violent police tactics."

A coalition of 10 local organizations built and coordinated the campaign over the past two years, and presented a petition with nearly 1,400 signatures to Durham City Council on April 16. Their proposed policy resolution that "the Council opposes international exchanges with any country in which Durham officers receive military-style training," passed 6-0.

Organizers had good reason to wonder if Durham would pursue similar training. Durham's last police chief, Jose Lopez, participated in a police exchange program in Israel through the Anti-Defamation League, and the current Durham police chief, C.J. Davis helped establish and run an exchange program with Israel through the Atlanta Police Leadership Institute as a high-ranking officer in Atlanta. Thousands of U.S. police and border patrol officers, including ICE and FBI agents, have traveled to Israel to be trained by Israeli police and military forces since the early 2000s.

In 2003 the Anti-Defamation League began to invite American law enforcement executives to Israel to participate in a week-long counter-terrorism seminar. Since the beginning of the exchange program, according to the ADL, "more than 200 law enforcement executives have participated... representing close to 100 different federal, state and local agencies across the country."

Critics of police exchanges argue that they encourage racially biased and violent policing.

Durham has previously taken explicit stances on issues of international justice. In 1981 the city council issued a boycott resolution in opposition to South African Apartheid, stating: "Whereas the Durham City Council recognizes the equality of all humanity, the inherent right to human dignity, and the entitlement of all persons to equal treatment under the law."

Many today consider the military occupation in Palestine a contemporary form of apartheid, and one that might be possible to defeat by employing similar tactics of mass nonviolent resistance, such as "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions." As part of the BDS movement, in 2014 Durham activists with Jewish Voice for Peace won an agreement from Durham County to end its contract with G4S, a British security company that was involved in prison and military equipment operations in Israel.

The Demilitarize Durham2Palestine Campaign frames militarized policing as an intersectional issue affecting many local communities, says organizer Ihab Mikati. "We have in our coalition people who are prison abolitionists and Muslim social justice groups and folks who are advocating for Black lives," he said, echoing the earlier international solidarity sentiments of Walker and Carmichael. "Everyone feels like we have the same self-interest when these struggles are connected to each other."

Some at the council meeting expressed a fear that Durham's resolution may be perceived as anti-Semitic. But members of Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the anchoring organizations for the campaign in Durham, say it's because of their Jewish faith that they feel a sense of obligation to Palestinian solidarity.

"I have Jewish family members who were displaced from Germany right before World War II," Bruch said. "It is because of this history that I do this solidarity organizing... I have to speak out and fight this brutality as a way of honoring my ancestors who resisted oppression in order to be true to my conscience."

In a world where capital moves more rapidly and freely than ever before, while technologies of security and border militarization have become more advanced and more entrenched, local conditions cannot be extracted from the global matrix of power and racialized violence. In 2017, Elta North America, an Israeli-owned defense manufacturer, was one of four corporations chosen to help build a prototype for the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The future of challenging racially stratified police practices at home and abroad will depend on the ability of community members to tell compelling stories about why our fates across borders are intertwined.

"I return often to Nelson Mandela saying 'our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestine.'" Dillahunt said. "I like to uplift those revolutionary Black leaders who supported Palestine as a tool to help mobilize Black people to speak up, for all of us."]   Durham, North Carolina became the first city in the country to ban local police exchanges with Israel on April 16, when the city council unanimously passed a resolution opposing any international "military-style" training for police officers.

During a heated discussion at City Hall, opponents of the resolutions expressed confusion over the policy's relevance to Durham, or said they opposed what they saw as unfair targeting of Israel.

"There are real problems facing this city, and the Palestinian situation is not one of them," Richard Ford of Durham's "Friends of Durham" political action committee said during the public comment period. Durham Mayor Steve Schewel also expressed dismay at what he said were false rumors that Durham had plans to send its police to Israel for training.

But Southern solidarity with Palestine has deep precedent. Three years after the famous student Freedom Summer actions in Mississippi in 1964, in the aftermath of the 1967 war that began the longest standing military occupation in history, Stokely Carmichael (who later changed his name to Kwame Ture) and fellow Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee member Ethel Minor published a two-page article in the SNCC newsletter, "Third World Round-up: The Palestine Problem." In this controversial article, they described Zionism as a form of settler colonialism, a global injustice that necessitated solidarity with displaced Palestinians. They argued that the occupation of Palestine wasn't a far away tragedy disconnected from their political realities in the South. Rather, SNCC members believed oppressive policies in Palestine had a direct connection to the lived experiences of Black and Brown people all over the world. In a 2012 interview with Democracy Now! the poet and novelist Alice Walker, born the daughter of sharecroppers in Eatonton, Georgia, compared systemic oppression in Palestine to that of Jim Crow. "Wherever you see people who are being humiliated it is our duty as human beings...to speak."

In 2014 Southern organizers celebrated the 50th anniversary of SNCC's Freedom Summer. The anniversary coincided with a bloody Israeli military operation in Gaza, "Operation Protective Edge," that led to the deaths of over 2,000 Palestinians. "The same summer I watched the documentary about Freedom Summer in Mississippi, I learned about the struggles of Palestine," said Ajamu Amiri Dillahunt, a member of Black Youth Project 100 and a student at North Carolina Central University, a historically Black university in Durham.

Dillahunt was one of many organizers who helped build the "Demilitarize Durham2Palestine" campaign, urging city officials to ban police exchanges between Durham and Israel. He cited SNCC's 1967 solidarity statement as part of his inspiration. "[What] brought me to the campaign is being grounded in history and being inspired by SNCC, as a young Black student organizer in the South."

He also cites a deep legacy of intersectional and internationalist solidarity coming out of the South. "There's a photo from 2010 where I'm 12 years old and I'm pushing my great-grandfather in a wheelchair at a rally, and I later learned that my grandparents had brought me to a Palestine liberation rally in Durham. As I've been raised into the movement, solidarity with the struggles of oppressed peoples across the world has always been the story taught to me, that we can't get free without each other."

The Durham2Palestine Campaign also did not emerge overnight. Beth Bruch, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and an organizer with the campaign said that in the wake of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the high profile murders of Black people across the country, the coalition chose to highlight the intensifying entanglements between militarized Israeli and U.S. police practices. "We saw these police exchanges with Israel as an opportunity to oppose militarization of police in Durham and to oppose brutality happening in Palestine," she said. "We know police officers in St. Louis/Ferguson, Chicago, and other cities have participated in these exchanges which translate into horrible surveillance practices and violent police tactics."

A coalition of 10 local organizations built and coordinated the campaign over the past two years, and presented a petition with nearly 1,400 signatures to Durham City Council on April 16. Their proposed policy resolution that "the Council opposes international exchanges with any country in which Durham officers receive military-style training," passed 6-0.

Organizers had good reason to wonder if Durham would pursue similar training. Durham's last police chief, Jose Lopez, participated in a police exchange program in Israel through the Anti-Defamation League, and the current Durham police chief, C.J. Davis helped establish and run an exchange program with Israel through the Atlanta Police Leadership Institute as a high-ranking officer in Atlanta. Thousands of U.S. police and border patrol officers, including ICE and FBI agents, have traveled to Israel to be trained by Israeli police and military forces since the early 2000s.

In 2003 the Anti-Defamation League began to invite American law enforcement executives to Israel to participate in a week-long counter-terrorism seminar. Since the beginning of the exchange program, according to the ADL, "more than 200 law enforcement executives have participated... representing close to 100 different federal, state and local agencies across the country."

Critics of police exchanges argue that they encourage racially biased and violent policing.

Durham has previously taken explicit stances on issues of international justice. In 1981 the city council issued a boycott resolution in opposition to South African Apartheid, stating: "Whereas the Durham City Council recognizes the equality of all humanity, the inherent right to human dignity, and the entitlement of all persons to equal treatment under the law."

Many today consider the military occupation in Palestine a contemporary form of apartheid, and one that might be possible to defeat by employing similar tactics of mass nonviolent resistance, such as "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions." As part of the BDS movement, in 2014 Durham activists with Jewish Voice for Peace won an agreement from Durham County to end its contract with G4S, a British security company that was involved in prison and military equipment operations in Israel.

The Demilitarize Durham2Palestine Campaign frames militarized policing as an intersectional issue affecting many local communities, says organizer Ihab Mikati. "We have in our coalition people who are prison abolitionists and Muslim social justice groups and folks who are advocating for Black lives," he said, echoing the earlier international solidarity sentiments of Walker and Carmichael. "Everyone feels like we have the same self-interest when these struggles are connected to each other."

Some at the council meeting expressed a fear that Durham's resolution may be perceived as anti-Semitic. But members of Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the anchoring organizations for the campaign in Durham, say it's because of their Jewish faith that they feel a sense of obligation to Palestinian solidarity.

"I have Jewish family members who were displaced from Germany right before World War II," Bruch said. "It is because of this history that I do this solidarity organizing... I have to speak out and fight this brutality as a way of honoring my ancestors who resisted oppression in order to be true to my conscience."

In a world where capital moves more rapidly and freely than ever before, while technologies of security and border militarization have become more advanced and more entrenched, local conditions cannot be extracted from the global matrix of power and racialized violence. In 2017, Elta North America, an Israeli-owned defense manufacturer, was one of four corporations chosen to help build a prototype for the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The future of challenging racially stratified police practices at home and abroad will depend on the ability of community members to tell compelling stories about why our fates across borders are intertwined.

"I return often to Nelson Mandela saying 'our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestine.'" Dillahunt said. "I like to uplift those revolutionary Black leaders who supported Palestine as a tool to help mobilize Black people to speak up, for all of us."

[yankeedoodle]

BDS success means that two more police departments are following Durham, North Carolina's lead. 

Two U.S. Police Departments Cancel Training with Israel
https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-police-cancel-israel/252469/

Two police departments in the New England region of the United States canceled their annual visit to Israeli police forces and engagement in training, amid pressure from organisations affiliated with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The Vermont State Police and the Northampton Police Department in Massachusetts both canceled their planned trip to Israel for a training program just days before it was supposed to start.

A number of groups in opposition to the program, including some affiliated with the BDS movement, mounted pressure on the local police forces to back out of the trip over increasing concerns about US law enforcement's treatment of asylum seekers in the country.

A coalition of organisations, including the Vermont National Lawyers Guild, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Vermonters for Justice in Palestine, announced in a press release Thursday that Vermont State Police Director Colonel Birmingham canceled the trip in response to a petition created against it.

"After a meeting with concerned Pioneer Valley residents, Northampton Mayor Narkewicz withdrew Police Commissioner Kasper from the same trip," the press release said.

The program, called Resilience and Counter-Terrorism, was first created in 2002 and entails a week-long seminar in Israel where local US law enforcement trains with Israeli military, police, and secret service.

It is funded and organised by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and the decision marks the first time police departments decided to cancel their trip in the program's nearly 20 years.

Previous participants to the program include the former Deputy Director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), along with other top ranking law enforcement officials, according to JVP.

The ADL told the Haaretz newspaper on Friday that the program did not provide tactical training to US officers, but would train them to "enhance their effectiveness in preventing and responding to extremism and terrorist threats and violence."

Organizers declared the decision a victory against the ADL-funded program, and then sent a letter to the Boston Police Department to follow suit.

"The tactics taught are inhumane and are used in the continued killing and oppression of communities of color across the nation and the globe. Law enforcement and elected officials should understand that we as a community are watching and will hold them accountable for their actions," Mark Hughes, director of the group Justice for All, said on JVP's website.

[yankeedoodle]

Great quote:

No private organization with a political mission should be allowed to play a role in training those agencies that are authorized to use force to enforce the law.  As has been understood since the dawn of modern political theory, the power of the state, which consists in its maintaining a monopoly on force, though necessary to ensure domestic tranquility (of course anarchists disagree), must be tightly constrained by democratic control.  Allowing police forces to go off and train at the expense of a private organization that acts outside democratic control is antithetical to that idea and a very dangerous precedent. 

ADL invites police forces to train in Israel, and Northampton says, No thanks
https://mondoweiss.net/2018/12/invites-police-northampton/

This past week something unprecedented occurred in two locations in the Northeast.  Both the Vermont State police and the Northampton, MA police department pulled out of an Anti-Defamation League-sponsored "counter-terrorism seminar" to be held in Israel from December 2 through December 12.  After initially agreeing to participate, both police departments were lobbied by local social justice activists, with the Western Massachusetts chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace taking the lead in Northampton, and in response decided to withdraw from the 15-member New England delegation.  This is the first case of withdrawal from the program in its 20-year history.

(For more on what happened see Ha'aretz, the JVP blog, and the first 22 minutes of this radio show, a talk show in Northampton.  The latter features the lead JVP local organizer on this, Rachel Weber, and also the renowned scholar and activist Vijay Prashad.)

For the last couple of years, Jewish Voice for Peace has been running a national campaign they call "End the Deadly Exchange".  For the past 20 years or so, law enforcement agencies from the US – municipal and state police forces, as well as federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE – have been traveling to Israel to learn from Israeli security agencies how they deal with the threat of terrorism.  Of course since so much of what Israel considers "counter-terrorism" consists of the mechanics of oppression and repression – tactics also employed in our inner cities by local police departments – no good can come of such "exchanges".

What is especially insidious about this partnership between Israeli security agencies and American law enforcement agencies is that much of it is financed by private mainstream Jewish organizations that take lobbying on behalf of Israel as essential to their mission.  In particular, this New England junket has been organized by the ADL and they are paying all the officers' expenses.  This is quite an inducement for cash-strapped municipalities – free training.

It's interesting to see how this political moment unfolded.  I know more about what happened in Northampton than Vermont as I am a member of JVP Western Mass (though I personally had little to do with the organizing on this).  We had been talking in our meetings for some time about how we might be involved in the Deadly Exchange program and decided we needed to find out whether or not there was local involvement.  Blessed with two attorneys in the group, we filed public records requests with some 25 or 30 agencies.  You see, most of these trips are kept secret, and you have to dig to find out about them.

Early on in our endeavor we discovered that the Hampden County Sheriff's Department (the county Springfield, MA is in) was invited by the ADL to join an upcoming trip in December and had declined.  This was the first news that the national JVP had that there even was a New England-centered trip being planned.  Even the University of Massachusetts Amherst Police Department was invited (I am a faculty member there), but they declined.  The only local agency we discovered that agreed to go was the Northampton Police Department. Their chief, Jody Kasper, was given leave by the mayor, David Narkewicz, to go.

As soon as this was discovered, an action plan was formulated, contacts were made with other social justice groups in the area and with sympathetic city councilors, and a meeting with the mayor and police chief was quickly arranged.  After the initial meeting with the mayor and police chief, which went quite well, thirty or so individuals from the area, many quite prominent, wrote personal emails to the mayor urging him to withdraw.

The plan was to follow up with public pressure if they didn't agree to withdraw, putting an ad in the local paper and organizing a large protest outside their offices.  However,in response to this well-orchestrated community outcry against the trip the mayor and police chief quite graciously agreed not to go.  This was democratic (with a small "d", for sure) politics working exactly as it should.  Note that the ADL worked hard behind the scenes to undermine us, and continues to misrepresent the purpose of the trip and to demonize those of us who insist on democratic control over our policing agencies.  Our victory represents another chink in "the Lobby's" armor.

Of course if I weren't a pro-Palestinian activist, relations between US agencies and Israel wouldn't be that salient to me and I might not be so outraged by the program.  Knowing as I do that racial profiling, suppression of dissent, and abuses such as torture, collective punishment, and unlimited administrative detention are standard tools of the Israeli occupation, it is especially appalling to think of our own police forces – which already have too much of a repressive character in many places – learning from such trainers.

Furthermore, while the ostensible target of this training for US police forces are so-called "lone wolf" terrorists, which are almost all connected to white supremacist groups, it's especially ironic that they should be receiving training from Israel, which by and large can only see threats from the left, especially if they support Palestinians in any way.  Notice that when Trump went to Pittsburgh after the Tree of Life massacre, the only official to meet him was the Israeli ambassador.

Israeli government spokespeople went to great lengths to exonerate Trump from any responsibility for the rise in anti-Semitic incidents, including the horrific shooting in Pittsburgh, and just blamed pro-Palestinian activists.  (Of course British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was maligned again.  Neo-Nazis shoot Jews and so who else to blame but left-wing social justice activists?). Are these the people that should be training our police forces in how to respond to domestic white supremacist violence?

But even if one abstracts from the concern about Israeli practices of repression, I find it odd, to say the least, that more people aren't concerned just about the idea that private, well-funded interest groups in the US should have any role in training public law enforcement agencies.  Of course part of what made this seem so benign to many was the involvement of the ADL, since it is an organization set up to promote human rights and fight bigotry of all kinds, but especially anti-Semitism.  So why not have a human rights organization provide training to our police – isn't this what we want more of?

But the ADL isn't Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch.  While they do still speak out against and fight genuine hate and bigotry, a good part of their mission is to promote the interests of Israel and fight organizations that are critical of Israeli policy.  For instance, they prominently highlight their fight against BDS (the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign) on their web page.  BDS advocates target the State of Israel, not Jews, and so to treat BDS advocates as just another hate group is a deeply political act (not to mention completely unfounded and disgusting). How can one allow one side of a political debate, one that demonizes the other side, to then influence law enforcement agencies that could very well be called upon to back up this demonization with force?

No private organization with a political mission should be allowed to play a role in training those agencies that are authorized to use force to enforce the law.  As has been understood since the dawn of modern political theory, the power of the state, which consists in its maintaining a monopoly on force, though necessary to ensure domestic tranquility (of course anarchists disagree), must be tightly constrained by democratic control.  Allowing police forces to go off and train at the expense of a private organization that acts outside democratic control is antithetical to that idea and a very dangerous precedent.