[News] Atlanta mayor rejects demand to end Israel police training

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/atlanta-mayor-rejects-demand-end-israel-police-training 



  Atlanta mayor rejects demand to end Israel police training

Rania Khalek <https://electronicintifada.net/people/rania-khalek> - 21 
July 2016

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed rejected a demand from groups affiliated with 
the movement for Black lives to halt Israel’s training relationship with 
local police departments.

Following a resurgence of street protests over the gruesome police 
slayings of Alton Sterling 
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/06/new-video-shows-alton-sterling-was-not-holding-a-gun-when-baton-rogue-police-killed-him.html> 
and Philando Castile 
<http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2016/07/07/graphic-video-minnesota-police-shooting-philando-castile-ryan-young-pkg-nd.cnn>, 
two Black men killed on film in Louisiana and Minnesota, Reed held a 
meeting with a collective of protesters calling themselves #ATLisREADY 
to discuss their list of demands <http://www.atlisready.black/demands/>.

The first demand calls for “a complete overhaul of Atlanta Police 
Department’s (APD) training institutions,” including “a termination to 
APD’s involvement in the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange 
(GILEE) program, that trains our officers in Apartheid Israel.”


    “The best counterterrorism techniques in the world”

“There was a demand that I stop allowing the Atlanta Police Department 
to train with the Israeli police department,” Mayor Reed acknowledged at 
a press conference (video above). “I’m not going to do that,” he told 
reporters.

“I happen to believe that the Israeli police department has some of the 
best counterterrorism techniques in the world,” Reed insisted. “And it 
benefits our police department from that longstanding relationship.”

It was an interesting choice of words considering that Israeli 
<http://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20151014_summary_execution_joint_statement>, 
Palestinian and international 
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/10/israeli-forces-must-end-pattern-of-unlawful-killings-in-west-bank/> 
human rights organizations, as well as the UN 
<http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=53571>, have repeatedly 
condemned Israeli forces, including the police, for a range of human 
rights violations, particularly for their frequent extrajudicial 
executions of Palestinians.

It was also recently revealed that Israeli police are authorized 
<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/israel-lethal-force-stone-throwers-report-160704134708993.html> 
to use lethal force as a first resort against Palestinians they suspect 
might throw rocks, including minors.

An internal police report exposed 
<http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.730325> by the Tel Aviv 
newspaper /Haaretz/ this month, revealed that Israeli Border Police in 
Jerusalem “deliberately provoke Palestinians” in order to get a violent 
response.

One such manufactured provocation in Issawiyeh 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/issawiyeh>, in January, led to a 
confrontation in which Israeli forces shot 12-year-old Ahmad Abu Hummus 
in the head, causing severe brain damage 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/israels-less-lethal-weapons-take-childrens-eyes-and-lives>.

Reed’s office did not respond to The Electronic Intifada’s inquiries 
about how Atlanta police benefit from training with forces who are 
effectively authorized to summarily execute children.


    Mimicking Israel

The Atlanta Police Department has been sending personnel to Israel since 
1992 <http://atlantaga.gov/index.aspx?page=672&recordid=2912>, as part 
of the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/police-training-programs-twin-us-israeli-racism/9834>.

GILEE, a project of Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of 
Policy Studies, sends high-ranking public safety officials to Israel for 
“counterterrorism” training every year.

It also brings Israeli police to Georgia to receive training from local 
police departments in drug war tactics that largely target and devastate 
poor Black and brown communities.

Atlanta’s deputy police chief Joseph Spillane participated in a two-week 
training mission to Israel in June 2015. The costs were paid by GILEE, 
according to records 
<https://www.muckrock.com/foi/atlanta-325/deputy-chief-spillanes-2015-training-trip-in-israel-25721/#file-87972> 
released under a freedom of information request.

After his return, Spillane told 
<http://news.wabe.org/post/atlanta-police-receive-counterterrorism-training-israel> 
WABE public radio that the Atlanta Police Leadership Institute is 
“modeled on the Israeli model.”

He also revealed that Atlanta’s system for 24-hour camera surveillance 
of neighborhoods and public spaces “mimicked” an operations center 
Israel has installed in Jerusalem. Spillane acknowledged that many 
Israeli cameras are set up to “secure the fence lines” – in other words 
an integral part of Israel’s occupation and system of forced segregation 
in the city.

The deputy chief implicitly compared Israel’s context of military 
occupation to policing Atlanta. “They have a very diverse population of 
Christians, Arabs and Jews living in the same space, and so they have 
similar problems with diversity as we have here,” Spillane said.

Notwithstanding the mountain of evidence to the contrary from human 
rights groups, Spillane praised his Israeli peers for being 
“self-restrained as far as how far they go in regards to human rights, 
and the rights of the people they may be investigating.”

GILEE was founded by Robert Friedmann, an Israeli-American academic and 
anti-Palestinian activist who uses his influence with US law enforcement 
to promote Israel’s discriminatory policing strategies.

Speaking at a recent American Jewish Committee event, he justified 
Islamophobia. According to /Mondoweiss/, he told 
<http://mondoweiss.net/2016/01/enforcement-training-terrorism/> the 
audience, “There is no Islamophobia. There is knife-o-phobia.”

Friedmann also equates 
<http://spme.org/9107/robbie-friedmann-academic-boycotts-terrorism-by-other-means> 
the nonviolent Palestinian-led boycott of Israeli institutions complicit 
in human rights violations against Palestinians with terrorism.


    Cheering Gaza attack

None of this seems to matter to Mayor Reed, a politician who has 
demonstrated more interest in advancing his own career than in promoting 
social justice.

As a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter, Reed published a column at CNN 
celebrating Clinton and hammering her rival for the Democratic 
presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders, on the issue of gun control.

/The Intercept’s/ Lee Fang later revealed 
<https://theintercept.com/2016/05/06/hillary-super-pac-draft-oped/> that 
Reed’s column was actually written by a corporate lobbyist with guidance 
from Correct the Record, a pro-Clinton super PAC 
<https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php>.

Reed is similarly supportive of Israel.

At an Atlanta rally in 2014, Reed joined Israeli government officials to 
cheer 
<http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/more-1000-rally-israel-atlanta/137412553> 
Israel’s massive military assault on the besieged Gaza Strip that 
summer, which killed at least 551 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/balance-un-gaza-report-cant-hide-massive-israeli-war-crimes> 
children.

Reed led 
<http://atlantajewishtimes.com/2015/04/israel-might-supply-streetcar-fare-system/> 
a cyber technology delegation to Israel in April 2015, where he 
championed closer business ties between Georgia and Israel’s technology 
sector.


    Law and order

Of course Georgia’s police are hardly alone in training with Israel.

Under the cover of counterterrorism training, hundreds of US police 
departments have sent high-ranking officials to Israel for lessons 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/us-cops-trained-use-lethal-israeli-tactics> 
in domination and population control.

These training programs have at least two objectives.

First, they seek to reframe Israel’s violent occupation and colonization 
of Palestinian land as a campaign of law and order that US law 
enforcement should emulate.

Such a narrative positions Palestinians not as an occupied, dispossessed 
and stateless people whose rights must be restored, but as a 
pathologically dangerous population that must be controlled and pacified 
with brute force. US police then take home “lessons” to apply in US cities.

No less important, the junkets serve as a marketing exercise 
<http://www.alternet.org/world/racist-policing-and-mass-incarceration-shared-values-america-and-israel> 
for Israel’s multi-billion dollar “homeland security” industry.

Though police militarization has been a topic of widespread debate since 
the Ferguson uprising in the summer of 2014, Israel’s influence on US 
law enforcement remains virtually ignored by US media outlets while 
some, like /Politifact/ 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/politifact-denies-israeli-ties-baltimore-police-despite-evidence>, 
even deny that a significant training relationship exists.

Former Israeli prison guard and writer for /The Atlantic/ Jeffrey 
Goldberg <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jeffrey-goldberg> 
suggested that those highlighting the issue are really just anti-Semites 
trying to pin the blame for US police violence on Jews.

    Did not realize that anti-Semites are blaming police violence
    against African-Americans on Jews: https://t.co/lznvC2ZOHZ

    — Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) July 19, 2016
    <https://twitter.com/JeffreyGoldberg/status/755353866770780161>

It is of course important not to claim that US police violence and 
institutional racism would not exist without Israel. Rather, the issue 
is that Israel sees opportunities to market and repackage its own 
repressive, racist and violent techniques tested and developed against 
Palestinians under occupation as “smart” and legitimate technologies for 
US authorities to use from inner cities to the US-Mexico border 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/gaza-laboratory-us-mexico-border-tunnel-warfare>.

And this Israeli pitch has been embraced by US leaders, from mayors like 
Reed to the administration of President Barack Obama 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israels-war-industry-profits-violent-us-immigration-reform/13283>.


    Bringing the repression home

And various movements against police brutality are taking notice of the 
relationship. After all, there are plenty of concrete examples of US 
police applying Israeli tactics to their own jurisdictions.

In Washington, DC, for instance, police adopted the Israeli tactic 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/11/AR2005061100648_2.html> 
of keeping the red and blue lights on their cruisers flashing at all 
times so that their presence is always felt, particularly in poor Black 
neighborhoods.

The NYPD’s Demographic Unit that used to systematically spy on Muslims, 
was modeled 
<http://www.ap.org/Content/AP-In-The-News/2011/With-CIA-help-NYPD-moves-covertly-in-Muslim-areas> 
in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the occupied West Bank.

Three months after the Ferguson uprising, the St. Louis Police 
Department, which has participated 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-trained-police-occupy-missouri-after-killing-black-youth> 
in training sessions in Israel, started stockpiling 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/st-louis-police-bought-israeli-skunk-spray-after-ferguson-uprising> 
skunk water <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/skunk-water>, a 
foul-smelling liquid developed by Israel to break up anti-occupation 
protests and harass Palestinian communities.

The substance emits a foul stench that has been described as a mix of 
rotting animal corpse, raw sewage and feces. The odor sticks to walls, 
clothing, hair and skin for days and is impossible to wash away – 
Israeli forces frequently spray it indiscriminately into Palestinian 
homes 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/patrick-strickland/israel-sprays-skunk-water-palestinian-homes>.

Skunk water hasn’t been used on US soil yet. But police departments 
around the country have expressed interest in acquiring it to quell 
demonstrations against police violence. Perhaps this is one of the 
counterterrorism tactics Reed had in mind when praising Israeli police.

/Additional research by Ali Abunimah/


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