"Deadly Exchange" — the documented US–Israel police-training programs, and the discipline needed to name them without antisemitism

Original source: https://deadlyexchange.org/ Additional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadly_Exchange · https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2018/09/12/deadlyexchangereport/ · https://www.amnestyusa.org/blog/with-whom-are-many-u-s-police-departments-training-with-a-chronic-human-rights-violator-israel/ · critique: https://www.ajc.org/translatehate/deadly-exchange · https://fathomjournal.org/israel-and-the-left-three-studies-of-the-crisis-2-jewish-voice-for-peaces-antisemitic-deadly-exchange-campaign/ Retrieved: 2026-07-05

What the campaign documents (DOCUMENTED FACT)

Jewish Voice for Peace launched "Deadly Exchange" in June 2017. Since 2002, thousands of US law-enforcement officials have travelled to Israel to train with Israeli police, military and the Shin Bet, and thousands more attended US-based conferences/workshops with Israeli security officials. The programs are run/funded by the Anti-Defamation League (since 2002), the American Jewish Committee's Project Interchange, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA); some are taxpayer-funded. The trainings cover crowd control, use of force, surveillance, and counter-terror doctrine. Case study: the Boston police commissioner toured Ben Gurion Airport's behavioural-profiling screening; Boston Logan then piloted the Israeli-inspired SPOT ("Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques") program. Campaign outcome (DOCUMENTED): Durham, North Carolina became the first US city to bar police training in Israel (April 2018). A March 2020 leaked ADL memo stated the ADL had facilitated no police exchanges since 2019.

The critique of the framing — and how we handle it (ESSENTIAL DISCIPLINE)

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Fathom journal argue the campaign trades in an antisemitic trope: that "Israel is responsible for American police brutality" — a "false equivalence" that scapegoats a Jewish state for a US-made problem. This critique must be taken seriously and it shapes our discipline. Crucially, JVP itself accepted a version of this critique. In its 2020 update the campaign wrote: "Suggesting that Israel is the start or source of American police violence or racism shifts the blame from the United States to Israel. This obscures the fundamental responsibility and nature of the U.S., and harms Black people and Black-led struggle." The campaign reframed from "Israel exports racism" to shared and mutually reinforcing repression between two states with their own home-grown carceral systems. Our rule, downstream of this: the argument is NEVER "Israel/Zionists control North American police." It is that two settler-carceral states share doctrine, hardware, and training, each already brutal on its own terms, and that the exchange launders and hardens practices in both directions. Criticism is of STATES, militaries, police institutions and arms firms — never ethnicity or religion. The material facts (who trained where, which firm sold what) carry the weight; the causal-puppeteering frame is exactly what we refuse.