The Chapel Hill Town Council received backlash from community members after hosting Israeli delegates Monday.
The town council received 93 emails and heard four speakers in opposition to the town hosting four members of the Israeli parliament or the Knesset.
Mayor Pam Hemminger defended the decision, saying she wanted to share the town’s values with the delegation.
“We are an inclusive community,” she said. “Although you may not like what someone has to say we welcome them the opportunity to say it.”
The U.S. State Department, along with a group called International Focus, asked the town to host the newly-elected delegates, who Hemminger said wanted to get a better understanding of how American government worked.
“They were in New York City, they were in Washington, D.C., they came over to Chapel Hill,” she said. “They spent the morning with us at the school of journalism and then they spent three hours with us this afternoon having discussion with us.”
Hemminger then took the delegation to see the Botanical Gardens.
Many community members spoke out against the decision to meet with the delegates due to Israel’s treatment of Palestinian citizens.
Part of a chain email sent to council members reads: “By hosting this delegation, you send a message that the town of Chapel Hill supports Israel’s well-documented and unjust human rights abuses as well as its illegal occupation of Palestinian land. The Occupation is brutal, and hinders any path to safety or peace.”
Citizens also expressed their displeasure by attending the meeting with the delegation and speaking at the town council meeting Monday night.
“You have a historical obligation to not allow this kind of greenwashing diplomacy tour to put a human face on an evil, and unhumanitarian and undemocratic regime in Israel,” said Roger Ehrlich, who spoke at the council meeting.
Councilwoman Maria Palmer said she was so upset during the meeting with the delegation that she walked out.
Palmer left after one of the delegates said something she though was inappropriate to a Chapel Hill resident.
The resident told the delegate their family farm was expropriated by the Israeli government and that the family couldn’t breathe.
“And the response was ‘you can’t breathe, but you can stab,” Palmer said. “And that I thought was such a horrible thing to say, that you all are criminals.”
Palmer said she didn’t have a problem walking out because of what was said and the fact that the council did not vote on whether or not to host the delegation.
She said she hoped in the future decisions like this would be made with the consent of the council.
“I know it was distressing to many members of the public that we had them here,” Hemminger said. “But we were asked to host and we wanted to hear what they had to say and we wanted to share our message of inclusivity with them.”
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