Military-Style Training Of U.S. Police By Israel
Comes Under Criticism
Allan C. Brownfeld, Editor
Special Interest Report
August 2020
In the wake of the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police
officers, and similar police killings in various parts of the country,
criticism is growing of the manner in which U.S. police departments are
being trained by Israel.
The Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Health Advisory Council declared in June
that, “In this moment, as we share the fight on police violence we have in
the U.S., we also cannot fail to reaffirm our opposition to the actions of
the Israeli police and military, which often act jointly as the agents of
social control in Palestine. The U.S. provides $3.8 billion of military aid
to Israel each year. Additionally, many police departments from cities
across the U.S. contract for military-style training from the Israeli
military. It is hard to comprehend the level of dis-investment in human
potential that this choice of funding allocation produces.”
JVP points out that the latest indiscriminate shooting by the Israeli police
occurred on May 30, causing the death of Eyad Halaq. Halaq, a young man with
autism, was walking through his East Jerusalem neighborhood toward school
and was killed when police accused him of carrying a weapon, which he did
not have. According to JVP, “Eyad Halaq’s death is just the latest in a
number of Israeli police or military shootings of Palestinians with physical
or mental health disabilities.”
Like U.S. police, Israeli military policing of Palestinians is characterized
by use of lethal force and dangerous, less than lethal munitions such as
tear gas and other chemical weapons, rubber bullets and sound projectiles.
The 2016 report from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem states that,
“Israel’s military law enforcement system is a whitewash mechanism. Most
cases continue to be closed with no measures taken.”
In recent years police officers from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
California, New York, Arizona and other states have been sent to Israel for
military-style training. Others are trained by Israelis within the U.S. Even
the U.S. Capitol Police have been trained by Israelis. Since 2002, the Anti-
Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Institute
for National Security Affairs have paid for police officers to train in
Israel and the occupied territories. This has taken place despite the fact
that Amnesty International and the U.S. Department of State have cited
Israeli police for carrying out extra-judicial executions and other unlawful
killings, using ill-treatment and torture, even against children, and
suppression of freedom of speech.
JVP declares: “one of the most dangerous places where the regimes of Trump
and Netanyahu converge are in exchange programs that bring together police,
ICE, Border Patrol and FBI from the U.S. with soldiers, police, border
agents, etc. from Israel. In these programs ‘worst practices’ are shared to
promote and extend discriminatory and repressive policing practices that
already exist in both countries, including extrajudicial executions, shoot-
to-kill policies...racial profiling, massive spying and deportation and
detention and attacks on human rights defenders. **
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