U.S. police are training in Israel,
and that’s something every American should be concerned about.
As protests sweep across the U.S.,
it’s becoming increasingly clear that
law enforcement has become more militarized,
treating the people they’re supposed to “serve and protect”
as a hostile foreign population.
Part of the reason why is that since the ‘90s,
and especially after 9/11,
U.S. law enforcement,
including police departments, the FBI, CIA and immigration officials,
have been trained by Israeli agents.
These exchange programs are exacerbating the violence in both places
and lifting up the Israeli occupation as a global gold standard for policing.
And communities of color in the U.S. are disproportionately paying the price.
- Police since its origins have been a racist and brutalizing body,
but through time, their efforts and brutalization
have taken on a new character.
That new character is police exchanges.
Hey everyone, I’m Dena,
and as a Palestinian American journalist
who's reported from the occupied West Bank -
Put the camera down.
OK, OK!
- I’ve witnessed firsthand how Israel routinely targets
unarmed Palestinians with force as part of its
decades-long illegal military occupation of Palestinian land.
I’ve also seen the militarized U.S. response to peaceful protesters
in places like Standing Rock.
And in this historic moment of uprisings in the U.S.,
the parallels between how American and Israeli forces crack down on civilians
are more glaring than ever.
So why is U.S. law enforcement receiving training from Israel,
a flagrant human rights offender?
And what does it mean for people on the ground?
Now, it’s important to keep in mind that the U.S. police and military
have historically brutalized communities of color
and repressed movements for justice well before the existence of Israel.
But now they’re building on that by learning from a state
that has mastered racial profiling, crowd control and surveillance.
To understand why these trainings are so problematic,
you first need some background about how Israel systematically
dehumanizes the Palestinian population it completely controls.
Israel’s creation in 1948 enshrined a nationalist policy
of Jewish-Israeli supremacy at the expense of
the native Palestinian population, most of whom were forced to
flee their homes, becoming permanent refugees.
In 1967, Israel began its repressive military occupation of
what remained of Palestinian land,
subjugating the entire Palestinian population,
denying them the rights of citizenship
and crushing any dissent against its policies.
Since then, Israeli forces have routinely fired tear gas,
skunk water, rubber-coated steel bullets
and even live ammunition at unarmed protesters.
So this is a state that violently controls and
suppresses the rights of an occupied people.
And U.S. police are learning its tactics to use against American citizens.
Thousands of law enforcement officials from all corners of the country
have traveled to Israel to learn police strategies and exchange tactics.
These trips became increasingly common after 9/11,
as pro-Israel groups used the so-called “war on terror” as an opportunity
to push for a closer, unconditional alliance with Israel,
which had marketed itself as the world’s leading counterterrorism expert.
On these trips, high-ranking U.S. officials are visiting
Israeli checkpoints and prisons,
places where human rights groups all over the world have documented
Israeli discrimination and repression and torture and killing of Palestinians.
- I spoke to Stefanie Fox from the Jewish Voice for Peace.
Her organization was part of a campaign called Deadly Exchange,
which outlines the dangerous consequences of U.S. police trainings in Israel.
Why do you think Israel is so attractive to U.S. law enforcement agencies?
U.S. policing has always been both about enacting a war
on Black and Brown communities in the U.S. and around the world.
So I think that the two being both rooted in racism and state violence,
there is a real natural attraction and a desire to trade tactics.
So who runs these exchanges?
They’re organized by pro-Israel groups like the Anti-Defamation League,
which calls itself "the world’s leading anti-hate organization."
The trips are funded privately as well as through grants
from the Israeli and U.S. governments, including the Justice Department.
The ADL boasts that they’ve trained more than
15,000 law enforcement professionals,
and have sent more than 200 high-ranking U.S. officials to Israel.
And some officers fresh off these trips have high praise:
This was an outstanding experience,
something that I'll remember for the rest of my life.
You’ve obviously given us a lot to think about, a lot of best practices.
This is in fact the finest training initiative
that I’ve ever been a participant in.
But we’ve seen the ramifications of these trainings here in U.S.,
with police departments treating American citizens
who are exercising their constitutional right to protest
as though they’re under occupation –
especially communities of color.
Take Ferguson, Missouri, for example.
After the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown,
the officers’ response to protesters mirrored some of the tactics
used by Israeli forces against Palestinians,
which civil rights icon Angela Davis has drawn attention to.
The tear gas that was being used in occupied Palestine
was the same tear gas that was being used in Ferguson.
And she’s right.
Officers in Ferguson used the same U.S.-manufactured tear gas
and flash-bang devices to disperse crowds
that Israeli forces regularly use against Palestinians.
But that’s not all.
In 2011, the sheriff of St. Louis County, where Ferguson is located,
traveled to Israel on one of the ADL- sponsored police exchange trips.
And then, three years after the Ferguson uprisings,
which catapulted the Black Lives Matter movement to the international stage,
the city’s police chief also traveled to Israel for training.
He said he was “blessed” to be part of the exchange.
And throughout all of this, Palestinians have recognized the shared struggle,
even tweeting support and tips to American protesters.
But Ferguson is just one example.
Other cities and counties where officers have received Israeli training
later became the sites of high-profile police killings.
That includes Hennepin County, home to Minneapolis,
where George Floyd was killed by police,
and Atlanta, where Rayshard Brooks was fatally shot by an officer.
And who could forget the militarized response
to protesters in Washington, DC, after the death of George Floyd?
Officers from several agencies, including the U.S. Park Police,
fired on protesters with tear gas and flash-bangs.
And it turns out that many officers from DC
traveled to Israel for training,
including the U.S. Park Police chief and a police commander.
And then there’s surveillance.
Israel’s massive surveillance system has inspired U.S. officials,
so much so that after a former police chief visited Israel in 2008,
his city adopted its techniques.
Our video integration center in downtown Atlanta
is modeled after the command and control center
I saw in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Atlanta has installed over 10,000 surveillance cameras,
which have raised serious privacy concerns.
But to really get a sense of Israeli inspiration,
look no further than New York City.
After 9/11, the NYPD and the CIA created a sprawling,
covert spying operation that surveilled
and infiltrated mosques and Muslim neighborhoods in the New York City area.
This led to widespread and unprecedented profiling
of the region’s Muslim communities.
A police official told the Associated Press that the program
was modeled in part off of how
Israelis spy on Palestinians in the West Bank.
That program was heavily scrutinized in the U.S.,
but widespread surveillance of citizens continues today.
During recent protests, U.S. officials surveilled
demonstrations in 15 cities using drones and helicopters.
They’ve recorded almost 300 hours of footage,
which federal agencies and local police departments
across the country can access.
But it’s not just the U.S. that’s learning and implementing new strategies at home.
In 2016, Israel copied New York City’s highly controversial
and racist police policy of “stop and frisk.”
The Israeli version primarily targeted young Palestinian men,
who were detained and searched without probable cause.
All that said, a few communities have stood up to these police exchanges –
and won.
In 2018, Durham, North Carolina, became the first U.S. city to
ban its police from training in Israel.
I spoke to Ajamu Dillahunt,
a student and activist with Black Youth Project 100,
who campaigned to make this happen.
I saw the interconnectedness between Black and Palestinian struggles.
Because United States and the state of Israel continue
to strengthen their relationship, I think oppressed people
within both of those places must also strengthen our relationship.
In 2014, the NAACP had called the Durham police department
a “broken system in need of repair,”
due to a troubling pattern of racial profiling and police brutality.
And, guess what?
The department also had a history of training in Israel.
The current police chief had previously headed
Atlanta’s Israel police exchange program during her time with that department.
So activists wanted to stop her from doing the same thing in Durham.
Other communities have also successfully put an end to these trainings,
including Northampton, Massachusetts, and the state of Vermont.
But Ajamu says, even though the win in Durham was exciting,
racist policing isn’t over:
- So while we got a major victory
we really have to look at the struggle to end the exchanges
as part of a large struggle
to build a society where police are no longer necessary.
And I hope this current period of rebellion
represents a new era of Black and Palestinian solidarity.
Israel's occupation is illegal under international law,
and is premised on denying basic rights to the millions of Palestinians
that Israeli forces control.
Is that who we want American police -
who are already in need of so much improvement -
to be learning from?
What do you guys think about U.S. police being trained in Israel?
Let me know in the comments and be sure to check out
AJ+’s continuing coverage of Black Lives Matter protests
and the uprisings against police brutality.