I discovered one lighter that no one will steal from me. They’ll give it back to me a week later when we run into each other. It’s a Toronto Maple Leafs lighter. I buy them whenever I see them now.
Following the killing of George Floyd, as US riot police fired rubber-coated bullets, tear gas canisters, pepper spray and stun grenades at protesters, Palestinians shared tips on social media on how to best deal with the assaults.
Many in the Palestinian territories are well experienced with such tactics by security forces while living under a decades-long occupation by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip.
According to the organisations Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Researching the American-Israeli Alliance (RAIA), one common theme shared between United States and Israel is the exchange of tactics and expertise in state violence, which has been ongoing for 18 years.
Months after the September 11 attacks, US law enforcement delegates attended their first official training expedition to Israel to exchange “best practices” in “counter-terrorism”.
Since then, thousands more from across the US – including agents from the FBI, CIA, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – have been schooled at these meetings in both Israel and the US, sponsored by far-right Israeli lobby organisations.
But instead of promoting effective security for communities, the programme facilitates an exchange of tactics used in police violence and control including mass surveillance, racial profiling and the suppression of protests and dissent, according to the JVP and RAIA’s 2018 report (PDF) titled Deadly Exchange, which details the extent of the cooperation.
Among the thousands of US law enforcement officers who have reportedly participated in the exchange over the years was Anoka County (North Minneapolis) Sherrif James Stuart, who travelled to Israel in December.
Eran Efrati – executive director of RAIA, who has studied the subject for the past decade – told Al Jazeera that when training with Israel, US police delegates witness “live demonstrations of repressive violence in real-time, in protests across the West Bank, patrols in East Jerusalem, and visits to the Gaza border”.
“Delegates meet with the Shin Bet and chief officers in Israeli military prisons to discuss investigation tactics, with Palestinian Authority agents and police, to learn about how Israel uses their collaboration in suppressing Palestinian dissent, and with representatives from the Department of Defense and others to learn about Israel’s security expertise,” Efrati said. ‘Anti-blackness’
Leila, a campaign organiser at JVP who asked that only her first name be used, told Al Jazeera the exchange programme is just one aspect of violent policing in the United States that has existed for decades.
“The violence that we’re seeing today in the US is 100 percent the result of white supremacy and anti-blackness and institutionalised racism in the US,” Leila said.
“The exchange programmes create the opportunity for US armed forces and Israeli armed forces to come together and swap tactics, and deepen the harmful practices and policies that already exist in both countries.”
Among the topics covered during these exchanges, delegates learn how to suppress and infiltrate demonstrations, and how to coordinate with the media over coverage, Deadly Exchange found.
The training also involved sales of “crowd-control” weapons exchanged between the two governments, including US-made tear gas canisters that were heavily used in protests in Oakland, California in 2011 and Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, as well as Israeli surveillance technologies.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is among those to have criticised police – including departments in Oakland, Baltimore, Ferguson and Boston – for contracting tech companies to use surveillance software to profile residents based on their religion, race and political affiliation, the report said.
‘Mosque crawlers’
Some US practices have been influenced by the infamous Israeli infiltration of Palestinian communities as well.
Lawrence Sanchez, a CIA officer who worked to establish the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) “Demographics Unit”, which consisted of informants known as “mosque crawlers” spying on Muslim communities, acknowledged the team drew inspiration from Israeli practices in the occupied Palestinian Territories, according to the report.
The NYPD has also sent undercover officers to infiltrate Black Lives Matter protests and collect multimedia records of protester identities, activities and text messages.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security justified their surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists by referring to them as “Black Identity Extremists” and “domestic terrorists”.
“These practices reflect the increasing use of security rhetoric to justify the surveillance and infringement of rights of US citizens and residents based on their race and political positions, a practice already fully institutionalised in Israel,” Deadly Exchange said.
“Like Palestinians who are arbitrarily defined as security threats and put on the Shin Bet’s list, people of colour and racial justice activists in the United States are subjected to systematic surveillance and can be placed on gang databases or government watch lists with little recourse or opportunities to hold the state accountable.”
‘Build a better world’
The campaign to end the “deadly exchange” started in 2017 and has so far seen a few successes.
In 2018, Durham, North Carolina became the first city in the US to ban police training with foreign militaries – including with Israel – after a coalition of community organisations successfully lobbied the city council.
Aman Aberra, a coalition member of the group Demilitarize From Durham2Palestine that spearheaded the campaign, told Al Jazeera it came together by combining the Palestine Solidarity Movement and Black organisers in Durham.
The key to the campaign, Aberra said, was to unite visions of divesting from Israeli “apartheid” and occupation, and to ensure public safety locally especially for marginalised, Black and poor communities often targeted by police.
“What Demilitarize is trying to do is build an internationalist movement to build a better world for everyone that’s safe, where we have structures that support us, where we have healthcare and housing, and where we’re not being threatened by state violence,” Aberra said.
In December 2018, Vermont state police also cancelled training in Israel after pressure from local organisers.
Leila said campaigns to end police exchanges with foreign forces and states with well-documented histories of human rights abuses are ongoing in Seattle and Washington, DC, as part of larger coalition efforts to defund and dismantle policing.
In the wake of mass protests against police brutality worldwide since Floyd’s killing, politicians have introduced legislation to reform police departments, while others believe that will not work and complete overhauls are necessary.
“There is a lot of power in communities and movements coming together, refusing to accept the structure and funding of police instead of their communities, refusing to accept that departments are trained and armed like the military, and the systemic and brutal violence they inflict on communities,” Erfati said.
“Organisers and movements are also coming together calling for investment in their communities instead of military industries. In this moment, we are seeing some amazing results of this long-standing organising.”
pretty directly connected, here’s just one example:
Atlanta law enforcement trained Israeli officers months before attack
For more than three decades, law enforcement leaders from around the metro have traveled to Israel to train officers there on best practices in community policing.
These are very direct connections. US police have very close ties to Israel police and military via trainings and seminars. Just because you don’t know about something doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
This is a Mandela Effect. In the movie he references his "strong hand" when taking Anna Faris' luggage, but when attempting to save David Cross he only says "take my hand" and "take my small hand".
Back in 2002 my manager was hosting his own little site on his home webserver. Shared it with all of us, and the company’s managers who were our sole source of income.
“So Jay, the Google search widget is pretty cool, but when I stary to type “a”, “Angelina Jolie porn” comes in the results. Who all you share this with?”
In recent years, Georgia has experienced troubling trends in fatal police shootings. As this has unfolded, the state continues to pursue a “police exchange” program with the state of Israel.
In recent years, Georgia has experienced troubling trends in fatal police shootings.
These incidents nearly doubled in the state, up 77 percent between 2017 to 2018. By May 2018, Georgia was already reportedly experiencing a more rapid rise in officer-involved shootings than the rest of the country. According to an investigation of deadly police shootings in Georgia, in the six years after 2010, 184 people were shot and killed by police; almost half of them unarmed or shot in the back.
In 2019, Georgia has already recorded twenty-two fatal police shootings, The Washington Post reports.
As this has unfolded, Georgia continues to pursue a “police exchange” program with the state of Israel. Run through Georgia State University, the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange arranges for American law enforcement officials, corporate security executives, and police officers to engage in trainings, briefings, and seminars with governments including that of China, Colombia, Egypt, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and the original and primary focus of the program, Israel.
For twenty-seven years, police departments in Georgia have received grants from the U.S. Department of Justice that subsidize these trainings. Since the program’s inception in 1992, it has trained at least 1,700 participants, including officers from the Atlanta Police Department.
Law enforcement from other U.S. states have participated in the program, including those from Tennessee, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Floria, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wahsington, D.C., and West Virginia.
Open records requests have forced program leaders to reveal some of its content topics, including border policing, community policing, and urban policing.
Activists in Georgia are pushing for an end to Atlanta’s police exchange program. Seventy local organizations and leaders—including our organizations, Jewish Voice for Peace-Atlanta and Project South—are demanding that Atlanta get out of these deadly police exchanges.
Among other objections, activists point to Israel’s clear record of human rights abuses and state violence toward Palestinians, Jews of color, and African refugees. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2018 brought a 69 percent increase over the previous year in Israeli settler violence toward Palestinians, and a rise in Palestinian deaths and injuries in Gaza. In the year since 2018 Great March of Return demonstrations began, more than 190 Palestinians were killed and 28,000 were injured by Israeli Forces.
Regardless of how the Israeli government coalition is shaped after its recent elections, its two largest parties show no indication of ending the fifty-two year Israeli military occupation of Palestine, nor its militarized tactics to control the Palestinian population.
This systematic repression of Palestinians by Israel warrants the U.S. public’s refusal to accept such training programs for their police departments. Racism and violence are endemic problems to police departments around the country, and the influence of Israeli military police trainings only threatens to exacerbates the problem.
Two examples of police violence in Atlanta bring this home. In 2006, one elderly Atlanta resident, Kathryn Johnston, was mistaken for a cocaine dealer and killed by SWAT team conducting a “No Knock” drug raid. In January 2019, twenty-one-year-old Jimmy Atchison was fatally shot in the face by Atlanta police—even though the robbery he was accused of may have never taken place.
In April 2018, the Durham, North Carolina city council voted unanimously to pass a policy barring Durham’s participation in militarized police exchange trainings with Israel and other foreign countries.
The initial petition, created by a coalition of ten Durham organizations states that “the Israeli Defense Forces and the Israel Police have a long history of violence and harm against Palestinian people and Jews of color.” One coalition member said, “training [with Israel] makes it worse in terms of racial profiling and use of force in crowd control.”
The victory in Durham highlights a national movement that seeks to disband military and police training exchanges with Israel.
In December 2018, grassroots organizing efforts succeeded in forcing the Vermont State Police and the Northampton, Massachusetts police chief to pull out of a police exchange program managed by the Anti-Defamation League.
Clearly, many in Atlanta feel it must do the same.
“As long as these programs exist,” says Dawn O’Neal of Us Protecting Us, formerly Black Lives Matter Atlanta, in an email, “as long as police are sent into war zones to train, there will continue to be Tamir Rices and Trayvon Martins. There will continue to be Kathryn Johnstons.”
gen x easily the worst music era (excluding hiphop/rnb which really came into it’s own during this generation)
Then: Vibrant creativity and authentic analog sound of the 60s-early 80s, all music was recorded with real instruments
Now: Availability and ease of use provided by computers/free software/internet meaning more music being made than ever before, plus algorithmic sorting providing exposure to only the best of the best the world has to offer.
In between: gen x oof i mean, Nickleback? really? come on
We Gen Xers also grew up during the peak of the popularity of metal.
I’d be the first to say right now metal is amazing but you have to look for it. The days of thrash metal bands filling stadiums are mostly gone except for Metallica.
People in my neighborhood put their Christmas lights up immediately after Halloween and might take them down before February.
Now I’m no mathetologist, but that’s 1/4 of the goddamned year! It’s not Christmas. It’s sad nostalgia for an aging generation, trying to recreate their own half remembered childhoods, and, like everything else in modern life, late stage capitalism is more than happy to take advantage and milk it for all that it’s worth.
On a serious note, doesn’t having a holiday season take up 1/4 of the year detract from its specialness and solemnity?
I usually put up my Christmas lights at the end of September if I can. Programmable RGB lights so I can use them for Halloween as well as Christmas. I turn them off between Halloween and Thanksgiving usually, but now I’m seeing tons of Christmas lights already on in my neighborhood and I didn’t actually put my lights up this year. Probably will just go without putting them up this year as I hate going up on the ladder, but I have some RGB spiral trees to put up in the yard at least that I’ll still put out probably after I get back from Thanksgiving break.
That is exactly what i mean. Alternatively you can just offer a good paying Position for when they retire from politics. As long as you dont write that down in a Contract you’r good
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