Durham, North Carolina, First To Ban Police Exchanges With Israel
Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — The City Council in Durham, North Carolina, has voted unanimously to bar the city’s police department from international exchanges in which the officers receive “military-style training” in a slap at such programs held with the Israeli army and police.
The resolution, which states that the council “opposes international exchanges with any country in which Durham officers receive military-style training,” was approved by the council in a 6-0 vote Monday night. It is the first city in the United States to officially ban such training, according to Jewish Voice for Peace, which actively worked to pass the resolution.
Born out of a petition created last fall by Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, the resolution brought together several partners under the banner of Demilitarize! From Durham2Palestine.
According to the petition, “The Israeli Defense Forces and the Israel Police have a long history of violence and harm against Palestinian people and Jews of Color.”
It called on the city to “immediately halt any partnerships that the Durham Police Department has or might enter into with the Israeli Defense Forces and/or the Israel Police.”
According to the City Council resolution, Police Chief C.J. Davis said in a memo to City Manager Tom Bonfield that “there has been no effort while I have served as Chief of Police to initiate or participate in any exchange to Israel.”
People on both sides of the resolution spoke before the vote, according to the local television station WRAL. Some speakers criticized the resolution as anti-Semitic. Others questioned why such a resolution was necessary, since no such exchanges were planned.
Former Police Chief Jose Lopez spent a week in Israel undergoing training during his tenure. He told the council that none of the training involved “militarization.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Dive In
-
Fast Forward Is ‘New Absolute Bagel’ real? A sign stirs fretful optimism on the Upper West Side.
-
Fast Forward Chicago man charged with hate crime for attack of two Jewish DePaul students
-
Fast Forward In the ashes of the governor’s mansion, clues to a mystery about Josh Shapiro’s Passover Seder
-
Fast Forward Itamar Ben-Gvir is coming to America, with stops at Yale and in New York City already set
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion My Jewish moms group ousted me because I work for J Street. Is this what communal life has come to?
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Is ‘New Absolute Bagel’ real? A sign stirs fretful optimism on the Upper West Side.
-
Opinion Yes, the attack on Gov. Shapiro was antisemitic. Here’s what the left should learn from it
-
News ‘Whose seat is now empty’: Remembering Hersh Goldberg-Polin at his family’s Passover retreat
-
Fast Forward Chicago man charged with hate crime for attack of two Jewish DePaul students
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.