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A member of the Wake County Board of Commissioners is visiting Israel in a trip paid for by the Israeli government.
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Commissioner Vickie Adamson posted about the trip Monday on Facebook, saying she had arrived in Jerusalem.
Adamson, a Democrat running unopposed for re-election in November, told The News & Observer she is visiting as part of a cultural and economic exchange arranged by Israel.
Her post drew several dozen comments.
Many of the comments told Adamson to stay safe.
“I feel safer in the middle of Jerusalem than in Raleigh,” Adamson said.
But some comments criticized the trip, asking why Adamson chose to go given the conflicts that Israel has been involved in.
When Adamson posted about the trip again on Tuesday, it drew more criticism. Commenters asked her if she’s also visiting Gaza and questioned the political nature of the trip.
Adamson called some of the comments on her post misinformation.
Zainab Baloch, who has run unsuccessfully for Raleigh mayor and City Council, commented that over 100,000 Palestinians have been killed.
The United Nations, which relies on data from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, says over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and more than 170,000 injured between Oct. 7, 2023, and May 6, 2026. However, the October 7 attack, in which Hamas killed over 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250 people, was not the first conflict involving Israel and Palestinian groups.
Baloch also said in an interview with The N&O on Tuesday that the U.N.’s number is likely an undercount.
“Entire families wiped out,” Baloch wrote in her Facebook comments. “Children burned and buried under rubble. And our Wake County Commissioner is checking into Israel like it’s a girls trip.”
Adamson questioned Baloch’s credibility, pointing to Baloch’s 2023 convictions in Wake County Superior Court for stalking someone and also assaulting a government official.
Baloch harassed a Cary man and followed him in her car to a Raleigh police station and then to his home, according to arrest warrants for the stalking charge.
She was accused of “intentionally striking” the man’s vehicle twice at a traffic light with her vehicle, the N&O previously reported. The warrants aren’t clear on the sequence of events.
The assault charge stemmed from Baloch spitting on a police officer, she told The N&O.
Baloch told The N&O those events were part of a mental health crisis.
She described it as one of the most traumatic periods of her life and said “most people would find it disturbing for an elected official to use a survivor’s trauma as a political talking point.”
She said it is unacceptable for Adamson to visit Israel in the midst of a “genocide” perpetuated by Israel against Palestinians.
“There is no genocide of Christians or Muslims in Israel,” Adamson, who is Christian, responded.
A 2025 report by the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory states Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Al Rieder, manager of the Council of American-Islamic Relations North Carolina, said the trip is “deeply unfortunate” and Adamson needs to “explain why this trip is the right use of the voters’ trust here in Wake County.”
“Israel is engaged in genocide, mass starvation, and the illegal annexation of Palestinian land,” Rieder said.
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Adamson also described the trip as economic and cultural, not political.
Baloch contested that.
“To say this is not a political trip when you’re a politician engaging with a government … is completely tone deaf,” Baloch said.
Adamson said she’s visiting both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
“We’re doing a lot of touristy stuff,” she said, including visiting Jerusalem’s Old City.
She said there’s a lot of investment in Raleigh from Israel.
But she added that she wants to know what’s going on there. “I think we don’t really know” until visiting a place what it’s actually like, she said.
She added that she’s talked to Israeli people, who are “warm and friendly.”
She said that a government’s policies or views don’t always reflect the people’s views.
Adamson is not visiting the West Bank or Gaza, where the majority of the conflict has taken place.
She added that elected officials often visit other countries. Gov. Josh Stein visited Switzerland and Germany this month.
Raleigh has received visitors from countries such as Kosovo and South Korea at its City Council meetings.
Adamson said she’d also gotten an opinion from the county attorney that the trip didn’t represent a conflict of interest.
County spokesperson Kate Maroney confirmed that Adamson got an opinion from the county attorney.
The trip costs Israel between $150,000 and $200,000 per group, according to Eitan Weiss, consul general of Israel to the Southeastern United States. Each group has around 15 people, he said.
Weiss said he personally invited Adamson after meeting her a few weeks ago on a trip to Raleigh.
“She really impressed me with her charisma and capability,” he told The N&O on Tuesday.
Weiss said the purpose of trips like Adamson’s is to allow Americans to make up their own minds about Israel.
He said he’s inviting people of interest like clergy, elected officials, presidents of universities and school teachers. He said that list includes other North Carolina officials, as its one of the most important states in the Southeast, but he did not provide names.
He also invited The N&O on a trip to Israel. The N&O cannot accept gifts from sources and declined. Weiss said that he wants to give media outlets and other entities a chance to see what’s happening in the country for themselves and said he does not try to influence opinions or reporting.
Weiss added that he’s witnessed the deaths of Palestinians because of Hamas and “Islamic Jihad” and that Israel is often blamed for this. He said casualty numbers reported by the Gaza Health Ministry are unreliable because the ministry is controlled by Hamas.
The U.N. accepts the ministry’s numbers as generally reliable.
Previous activism around the Israel-Hamas war centered around calling for cities like Raleigh to adopt resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Raleigh City Council had a tie vote on one such resolution in 2024, meaning it wasn’t adopted, The N&O previously reported. The city has not considered one since
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Durham, however, passed a ceasefire resolution in 2024.
This story was originally published June 23, 2026 at 11:40 AM.