We are asking that San Antonio sever all ties with Tel Aviv as a "friendship city". We should be disgusted that our tax dollars are being utilized to fund brutality, genocide and the continued erasure of our Palestinian brothers and sisters. Open your heart to understanding that the oppression against all people of color and against all people are interwoven. To put up your fist in solidarity with BLM but to turn your back against the Palestinians is to engage in selective justice. None of us are free unless all of us are free.

A sister-city relationship with Tel-Aviv doesn’t keep San Antonians safer. As part of the broader conversation on police brutality and state violence, it is worth recognizing the work of the Deadly Exchange report: https://deadlyexchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Deadly-Exchange-Report.pdf

The Deadly Exchange report provides information on collaborative exchange programs in which American law enforcement and security, including police departments, ICE, FBI, and CIA train with the Israeli military to develop law enforcement and security tactics. This includes encouraging the militarization of police departments, specific tactical training in violence against mass protests, and, beyond brutish violence, the manipulation of legal language to justify unnecessary and disproportionate force. The Bexar County Sheriff’s Department is among several American police departments that participated in this training program. If the city of San Antonio were invested in protecting the lives of the Black, brown and poor members of its community, there would be investment in those communities, not in relationships that normalize and exacerbate the violence against these communities. We also know the deadly exchange is paid for by American tax dollars. 

Speaking of tax dollars, we are funding apartheid. According to the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, in their most recent study, we allocate 3.8 billion dollars to Israel for weapons. That could fund:

46,982 elementary school teachers

2,525,252 people receiving food assistance

653,482 students receiving Pell Grants

1,602,902 children receiving healthcare

51,300 clean jobs.

 

Additionally, we could have purchased 760 MILLION N-95 masks but instead we purchased tear gas for Israel. 

Let's divest and reinvest in our communities immediately. We must sever all ties with Tel Aviv as a friendship city today. 

Thank you.