LOOMING CRACKDOWN: Bringing Israeli Tools & Tactics Of Genocide To US Police
“What we see is that Black residents, as well as activists and organizers who are mobilizing, are increasingly treated as terrorists.”
Photo cartoon by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (1/12/25)
As the criminally inhumane US/Israel Gaza genocide grinds into its final brutal stages we need to also be looking at the tools and tactics of repression — and, yes, genocide — being laid here at home.
As the article from The Real News Network details below, US domestic and federal law enforcement agencies have been closely intertwined with Israeli police, military and surveillance industry for decades.
The laboratory for much of the Israeli surveillance, monitoring, crowd control and murder tools and techniques infiltrating American law enforcement have been field tested and honed in Gaza and the West Bank. From the neck compression technique used in the murder of George Floyd to street level face recognition to sniper drones, American law enforcement has been deeply polluted by the fascist Israeli Zionist state.
While the primary and most immediate target of this domestic abuse and control has been poor minority urban communities and neighborhoods, we have seen it expanding onto college campuses as protests against the US/Israeli genocide have been attacked and suppressed in grotesque violation of free speech and other Constitutional rights.
Instead of calling for reform of the inefficient, corrupt corporate healthcare system after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) proposed a special taxpayer-funded CEO hotline to report threats, or — perhaps — complaints about poor service at 5-star restaurants.
Quietly and away from public view, a network of police, political, social and community control is coming together. And while urban minority communities have been targeted first and immigrants on the schedule next with Trump taking office, make no mistake, such tyrannical monitoring and control will ooze outward to impact us all.
Resist
Persist
Don’t be complicit
‘Deadly Exchange’: US Sends Hundreds Of Law Enforcement To Israel To Learn ‘worst practices’ From Brutal IDF To Bring Home
Anti-imperialist advocates say the tactics being taught to US law enforcement were battle-tested on Palestinians and spread to the US to target Black and Brown communities through a training relationship that grants Israeli forces more power and profit, causing further harm to Palestinians.
By Victoria Valenzuela
The Real News Network (1/7/25)
It is not uncommon for police to drive around with their lights flashing in Black and working-class neighborhoods in Atlanta. This is a tactic used to intimidate and make their presence known; for residents of these neighborhoods, it can feel like psychological warfare. US law enforcement learned this strategy from Israeli forces.
Thousands of law enforcement officials have traveled to Israel to learn new repression strategies and surveillance techniques from the Israel National Police, Israel Defense Forces, and the Shin Bet, who inflict violence, crowd control, and surveillance onto Palestinians. Anti-imperialist advocates say the tactics being taught to US law enforcement were battle-tested on Palestinians and spread to the US to target Black and Brown communities through a training relationship that grants Israeli forces more power and profit, causing further harm to Palestinians.
Sharing worst practices
These programs are facilitated by the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, and the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange Program—the latter of which was started in 1996. US leaders sought Israel’s guidance to curb terrorism, and a ‘deadly exchange’ of worst practices between US and Israeli forces was born. Federal, state, county, and municipal law enforcement executives including local police departments, the FBI, and ICE have traveled to Israel, while thousands of officials have attended conferences with Israeli experts in the US. An inaugural “US-Israel Security Conference” by JINSA occurred last month, where a former Israel Defense Forces commander was included as a guest speaker.
The Origin of 'Georgia’s ‘COP City’
Out of Atlanta’s collaboration with Israeli forces comes their “Cop City” police training facility, which is based off Israel’s “Little Gaza,” a replica of the Gaza strip. At these facilities, police can battle test repressive techniques and surveillance. Steven H. said that the Cop City and Little Gaza are meant “to give the occupying forces a realistic training ground in which they can actually implement their counterinsurgency tactics on the occupied population.”
“Anybody who goes there will be participating in the skills development of counterinsurgency, of how to better practice kettling, how to better practice shutting down or brutalizing peaceful protests.”
“Within these programs, worst practices are shared to promote and extend discriminatory and repressive policing practices that already exist in both countries,” said Rania Salem, an organizer with the US Palestinian Community Network. “US forces take whatever is working in Israel and they bring it here and inflict it on Black and Brown people.”
Domestic militarization
Police departments in New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Atlanta, among others, have close ties with Israeli forces. Salem said that the increasing militarization of US police in recent decades is due in large part to the “funding and support of Israel’s brutal military occupation.” She said that in return for these trainings the state of Israel gets in good standing with the US for future support, and its forces learn new tactics in return—Salem said that Israel learned stop-and-frisk and racist traffic stop techniques from US law enforcement.
There is strong opposition. Palestinian solidarity, racial justice, and local organizations are calling for an end to this deadly exchange, saying that it perpetuates settler colonialism and violence against marginalized communities, and harms both people in the US and in Palestine. They say that investments should be made into the community, not policing.
“It essentially brings together all these violent systems that oppress our people here in the United States and oppress Palestinians and Palestine together,” Salem said. “Our communities need to come together to organize against these police exchange programs.”
The deadly exchange
After George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin in 2020, advocates said that the knee-to-neck choke-hold used was “used and perfected to torture Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces through 72 years of ethnic cleansing and dispossession.” Members of the Minneapolis Police Department have been trained by Israeli officials.
Following that, when thousands of protesters took to the streets in the Black Lives Matter uprisings, police used racial profiling, tear gas, and other repressive crowd control techniques to quell the protesters. Salem said many of those practices were exported from the violence of Israeli forces.
“When police started using different kinds of weaponry against protesters, Palestinians were already very, very familiar with that kind of confrontation,” Salem said.
Between 2002 to 2009, the Los Angeles Police Department’s chief and deputy chief traveled to Israel for training multiple times. …
Israeli Forces Trained Cops In ‘restraint techniques’ At Minneapolis Conference
“I remembered noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique of leaning in on our chest and necks when we were protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006.”
By Steve Sweeney
Morning Star (6/1/20)
Officers from the US police force responsible for the killing of George Floyd received training in anti-terror tactics from Israeli law-enforcement officers.
Mr Floyd’s death in custody last Monday, the latest in a succession of police killings of African Americans, has sparked continuing protests and rioting in US cities.
At least 100 Minnesota police officers attended a 2012 conference hosted by the Israeli consulate in Chicago, the second time such an event had been held.
There they learned the violent techniques used by Israeli forces as they terrorise the occupied Palestinian territories under the guise of security operations.
The so-called counterterrorism training conference in Minneapolis was jointly hosted by the FBI.
Israeli deputy consul Shahar Arieli claimed that the half-day session brought “top-notch professionals from the Israeli police” to share knowledge with their US counterparts.
It is unclear whether any of the officers involved in the incident in which Mr Floyd was killed attended the conference.
But in a chilling testimony, a Palestinian rights activist said that when she saw the image of Derek Chauvin kneeling on Mr Floyd’s neck, she was reminded of the Israeli forces’ policing of the occupied territories.
Breaking necks and fingers
Neta Golan, the co-founder of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) said: “When I saw the picture of killer cop Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd by leaning in on his neck with his knee as he cried for help and other cops watched, I remembered noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique of leaning in on our chest and necks when we were protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006.
“They started twisting and breaking fingers in a particular way around the same time. It was clear they had undergone training for this. They continue to use these tactics — two of my friends have had their necks broken but luckily survived — and it is clear that they [Israel] share these methods when they train police forces abroad in ‘crowd control’ in the US and other countries including Sudan and Brazil.”
The training of US police officials by Israeli forces is widespread.
Even Amnesty was compelled to report that hundreds of police from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state and Washington DC had been flown to Israeli for training.
Thousands more have been trained by Israeli forces who have come to the US to host similar events to the one held in Minneapolis. According to the somewhat selective rights organisation, many of these trips are taxpayer-funded, while others are privately funded.
Since 2002 the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have paid for police chiefs, assistant chiefs and captains to train in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), it said.
The Minneapolis Police Department was contacted for comment.
“When I saw the picture of killer cop Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd by leaning in on his neck with his knee as he cried for help and other cops watched, I remembered noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique of leaning in on our chest and necks when we were protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006.
“They started twisting and breaking fingers in a particular way around the same time. It was clear they had undergone training for this.”
American Citizens Uniting Against Poisoning Of Police Agencies With Israel’s Genocidal Tactics & Technology
Citizens across the country are coming together to oppose genocide training of American law enforcement by Israeli corporations and government. Here are three citizen activist groups readers can connect with for action and inspiration:
Eye on Surveillance
Black Alliance for Peace
US Palestinian Community Network
EXCELLENT INTERVIEW!!!
Oliver Stone & Peter Kuznick: War Profiteering, Nuclear Tech, NATO v. Russia, & War With Iran
Tucker Carlson (1/11/25)
America’s proxy war with Russia isn’t anything new. It’s been decades in the making. Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick explain what nuclear war would actually look like.
1-hour, 41-minute video
This is so chilling, Mark. I have believed from the beginning that if Israel, the USA and its allies get away with this genocide in Gaza, these techniques will be implemented in our countries too.
Yep. We're trapped😕 I saw this coming after the George Floyd protests. That really scared the ruling class🤣 Add the pro Palestinian protests and the removal of a CEO from the playing field really made them freak out. The ruling class also wants more war so the draft is coming. The tactics the CIA/Mossad et al use to destabilize other countries will now be turned on us. The economy is massive bubble. Climate collapse will make food more scarce and expensive. Do not comply in advance! Don't trust cops! If arrested, ask for an attorney, then tell them you're exercising your right to remain silent then shut the fuck up!