US city bans police training, exchange programmes with Israeli military

Civil society highlights brutal treatment of Palestinians by IDF

In a first, a United States city has successfully lobbied a ban on police training and exchange programme with the Israeli military.

Adopted on April 16 by the city council members of Durham city, the agreement explicitly opposed international exchanges with any country in which Durham's police officers receive military style training on the grounds that such training programmes were not required for policing of the city.

"The council opposes international exchanges with any country in which Durham officers receive military-style training since such exchanges do not support the kind of policing we want here in the City of Durham," reads the resolution.



Emphasising on the need to create a safe and healthy environment, the resolution highlighted concerns over the militarisation of police forces across the country which lead to incidents of abuse of power - further heightening racial and religious discrimination in the US.

Role of civil society actors
The resolution was pushed for social and civil society groups campaigning for multi-religion, multi-ethic and racial progress.  The campaigns narrowed down differences between the Israeli military's treatment of Palestinians and Durham Police's treatment of minorities. An activist from Black Youth Project compared the brutalities faced by Palestinians by the hands of Israeli Defense Forces with how black and brown skinned people communities were treated in Durham. "Israeli defence force brutalise and terrorise the people of Palestine and so does the Durham police department. Here they brutalise and terrorise black and brown communities," said activist Ajamu Dillahunt in video message.

The civil society fears an increase in the militarisation of US police and training programmes with Israeli military may hinder its mission to protect the community not control or police it.

“But Israel has created a dynamic to normalise counterinsurgency tactics with the US law enforcement community in order to win political favours and create political space for its agendas in the US," said Alex Vitale, a teacher at the department of sociology at Brooklyn College and author of the book The End of Policing.

Growing Israeli influence

More than 200 high-ranking American law enforcement officials have reportedly participated in counter-terrorism seminars in Israel, states the Anti-DdefamationLeaguee (ADL). It boasts training more than 1,500 law enforcement professionals on terrorism across the US - including New York and Chicago.



Referring to exchange programmes, the Jewish Voice for Peace's stressed that they would bring "worst practices that are shared to promote and extend discriminatory practices that include extrajudicial executions, shoot-to-kill policies, police murders, racial profiling, massive spying and surveillance, deportation and detention, and attacks on human rights defenders"

The story originally appeared in Al Jazeera