The Demilitarize! Raleigh2Palestine coalition was formed with the goal of preventing any future police exchanges between the Raleigh Police Department (RPD) and Israeli Security Forces (military, police, and border patrol). We know of at least one instance in which Raleigh PD’s police chief, Cassandra Deck-Brown, went on a training program to Israel in 2017 which explicitly included “counterterrorism” training. These exchange programs hold up Israel’s military and policing practices as a model, despite widespread documentation of their use of lethal force, mass surveillance, and racial profiling against the Palestinian people as part of their illegal Occupation and apartheid system. In line with what our neighbors in Durham did in 2018, we seek to guarantee Raleigh PD never engages in such exchanges with Israel, any other foreign military, or any police force with a similarly abysmal human rights record.

While the institution of policing has a long history of racist and oppressive behavior, there has been a nationwide trend of US police departments visiting and learning from Israel’s tactics used in their Occupation of Palestine. In addition to learning from Israel, US police have also shared tactics from their history of terror and brutalization with Israli security forces. We see these exchanges as not being one sided but rather a relationship between two oppressive forces that must end. In order to achieve the task of ending these exchanges, we seek to adopt a diversity of tactics.

This is a multi-racial, multi-faith, and intergenerational coalition of organizations based in Raleigh and the broader Triangle area. We seek to join forces with the movement building a Raleigh free of racist and militarized policing and all forms of exploitation and oppression. While we are a local campaign, we see ourselves as internationalist and in support of the freedom of oppressed people across the world.