[RestorativeJustice] Time to End US Police Training in Israel

Sat May 30 22:01:25 CDT 2020

It is time for the US to end its deadly exchangeprogrammes with Israel

May 28, 2020 at 4:57 pm | Published in: Article, Asia & Americas, Israel, Middle East, Opinion, Palestine, US

    Nasim Ahmed

Yet another brutal killing of a black American bylaw enforcement officers has hit the headlines, especially on social media.George Floyd, 46, was unarmed when a Minneapolis police officer killed him onMonday by handcuffing him and then pinning him to the ground with his knee onhis victim’s neck.

The white police officer ignored Floyd’s pleas thathe could not breathe, which can be heard clearly on a video of the incidentwhich has gone viral. In the aftermath of the killing, protests have ragedacross the city.

Such shocking images of police brutality havebecome one of the defining features of American society. Getting killed by thepolice is a leading cause of death for young black men in America, a recent report found.
A protester holds a sign, showing an image from the video of GeorgeFloyd’s arrest, outside the Third Precinct Police Station on May 27, 2020 inMinneapolis,Minnesota. [Stephen Maturen/Getty Images]

About 1 in 1,000 black men and boys in the US — astatistic that is higher than the number of deaths resulting from diabetes —can expect to lose their lives as a direct result of police brutality. In otherwords, if you are black, your chance of being killed by a law enforcementofficer is 2.5 times greater than if you are white.

America has a long history of casual andinstitutional racism. This should come as no surprise in a country built uponthe genocide of the indigenous population and slavery. For a number of humanrights groups and activists there is, however, a more immediate concern which,they claim, is fuelling the use of lethal force — often for petty violations,or even none at all — by white police officers against black Americans: thetraining of US law enforcement officers by Israeli security officials.

READ:Whydoes Israel celebrate its terrorists: Ben Uliel and the murder of the DawabshehFamily 

According to Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), policebrutality of the kind that led to the death of George Floyd is a consequence ofthe “best practices” and expertise in counterterrorism techniques taught to USlaw enforcement officials during their training in Israel. Thousands of theseofficials from across the US have been sent to Israel for training, andthousands more have participated in conferences and workshops with Israelipersonnel. JVP has documented this in its report Deadly Exchange which highlights the “the dangerousconsequences of American law enforcement training in Israel.”

These “deadly” exchange programmes were boostedfollowing the 9/11 terrorists attack. Dozens of US states, as well as the FBIand CIA, now send recruits and senior officials to be schooled in Israel’sparamilitary approach to law enforcement by the likes of internal securityagency Shin Bet and the Ministry of Defence. US law enforcement exchangeprogrammes with Israel are now standard and sometimes take place led by Israelipersonnel in America.

JVP argues that many of the draconian measuresadopted by US law enforcement agencies, including police forces, have beenrefined through such exchange programmes. The inherent racism of Israelisociety, in which every Palestinian is viewed as a potential threat to Israel’sJewish citizens, is replicated by white law enforcement officers in their viewsabout black Americans, Muslims and other minority groups. In such a mindset,they are turned from citizens with civil and other rights into threats fromwhich white Americans must be protected at any cost.

A similar report by Amnesty International investigated the“widespread constitutional violations, discriminatory enforcement and cultureof retaliation” within the Baltimore Police Department. The human rights groupargued that training received by the police officers in Israel accounted fortheir misconduct.

The report was published on the back of a 2016 investigation by the US Department of Justice intothe misconduct of the police in Baltimore. This said that it had “foundreasonable cause to believe that the Baltimore City Police Department engagesin a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the First and FourthAmendments of the Constitution as well as federal anti-discrimination laws.”

Amnesty suggested that there was a clear omissionin the US Department of Justice’s report: that of the role of Israel intraining the very police officers reprimanded in the investigation. The groupargued that Israel is a “chronic human rights violator” which exports itssuppression techniques and that Baltimore law enforcement officials, along withhundreds of others from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona,Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington stateas well as Washington DC go to Israel for training, making them prone to thekind of practices denounced by the US Department of Justice.

Amnesty urged Baltimore’s and other US policeforces to find partners capable of training their officers in appropriatede-escalation techniques and responses for dealing with non-violentindividuals, and to allow the latter to express their opinions. “Israel is notsuch a partner,” insisted Amnesty.

READ:Settlers attackIsraeli soldiers with Molotov cocktails

The state of Minnesota, where Floyd was killed,trains its police officers in the best that Israel has to offer in the art ofsuppression. At least 100 of its law enforcement officers attended acounterterrorism conference with their Israeli counterparts in 2012. Concernsthat law enforcement operations could violate civil rights were apparentlydiscussed during the conference.

Looking at the riots in Minneapolis over the pastfew days it is hard not to agree with Israeli author and peace activist JeffHalper when he claims that people around the world are being “Palestinianised”while their governments and law enforcement agencies are “Israelised” when citizensexercise their democratic right to challenge injustice. With over 70 years ofexperience suppressing millions of Palestinians who happen to be the “wrong”ethnicity, Israel has developed a culture of militarism that has become theenvy of authoritarian regimes around the world, including some which claim tobe democracies.

George Floyd’s killing is the latest, but probablynot the last, example of Israel’s “best law enforcement practice” being put todeadly use on the streets of America. If black lives really do matter in 21stcentury America, then the “deadly exchange programmes” with Israel should bebrought to an end without delay.
The views expressed in this article belong tothe author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle EastMonitor.
It is time for the US to end its deadly exchange programmes with Israel
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It is time for the US to end its deadly exchange programmes with Israel

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