<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Israel-trained police "occupy"
Missouri after killing of black youth</h1>
<div class="submitted">
<span property="dc:date dc:created"
content="2014-08-15T10:21:00+00:00" datatype="xsd:dateTime"
rel="sioc:has_creator">Submitted by <span class="username"
xml:lang="" about="/users/rania-khalek"
typeof="sioc:UserAccount" property="foaf:name" datatype="">Rania
Khalek</span> on Fri, 08/15/2014<br>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-trained-police-occupy-missouri-after-killing-black-youth">http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-trained-police-occupy-missouri-after-killing-black-youth</a></small></small></small></b><br>
</span> </div>
<div id="file-28455" class="file file-image file-image-jpeg
media-element file-full" style="width:618px;"><br>
</div>
<p>Since the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson police
in Missouri last weekend, the people of Ferguson have been
subjected to a military-style crackdown by a squadron of local
police departments dressed like combat soldiers, prompting
residents to liken the conditions on the ground in Ferguson to the
Israeli military occupation of Palestine. </p>
<p>And who can blame them? </p>
<p>The dystopian scenes of paramilitary units in camouflage
rampaging through the streets of Ferguson, pointing assault rifles
at unarmed residents and launching tear gas into people’s front
yards from behind armored personnel carriers (APCs), could easily
be mistaken for a Tuesday afternoon in the occupied West Bank. </p>
<p>And it’s no coincidence. </p>
<p>At least two of the <a
href="http://www.vox.com/2014/8/14/6002291/ferguson-police-st-louis-county-in-charge-jay-nixon-tear-gas-officer-fired">four
law enforcement agencies</a> that were deployed in Ferguson up
until Thursday evening — the St. Louis County Police Department
and the St. Louis Police Department — received training from
Israeli security forces in recent years. </p>
<h2>Brute force</h2>
<p>It all started when a yet to be named Ferguson police officer
killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. According to
witnesses, Brown was attempting to surrender with his hands up
when a Ferguson police officer <a
href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/11/what-you-gonna-do-kill-us-all-protesters-ask-ferguson-police.html">emptied
his clip</a> into Brown’s body, shooting the teen up to ten
times. </p>
<p>For hours police left Brown’s lifeless body sprawled in the
street uncovered as a growing number of residents gathered nearby
demanding answers from authorities. Police responded by deploying
K-9 units and riot squads to crush the crowd, predictably inciting
a riot, which police used to justify more brute force. </p>
<p>But the people of Ferguson refuse to submit and have mobilized
every single day to demand justice for Brown and an end to the <a
href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/10-insane-numbers-ferguson-killing">racist
undemocratic regime</a> they live under. </p>
<p>“<a
href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hands-up-20140813-story.html">Hands
up, don’t shoot</a>” has become their rallying cry, a symbol of
Brown in his last moments and what it means to be black in
America, where <a
href="http://mxgm.org/operation-ghetto-storm-2012-annual-report-on-the-extrajudicial-killing-of-313-black-people/">every
28 hours</a> an African-American is killed by a self-styled
vigilante, security guard or police officer. </p>
<p>Still, police did not relent, prompting one Ferguson protester to
shout at a row of military-style tactical vehicles, “You gonna
shoot us? <a href="http://instagram.com/p/rn68uHEQUM/">Is this
the Gaza Strip</a>?” </p>
<p>“Will we as a people rise up like the people of Gaza? Will our
community be bombed like last night with tear gas? That was a
terrorist attack,” <a
href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/12/michael-brown-s-hometown-is-under-occupation.html">remarked</a>
another Ferguson protester to <em>The Daily Beast</em>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, journalists were <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/huffington-post-reporter-arrested-ferguson_n_5676829.html?cl33r">manhandled
and detained</a>. Police were caught on video <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/14/al-jazeera-ferguson-tear-gas-journalists_n_5678081.html">deliberately
firing tear gas</a> at an Al Jazeera America film crew as they
were setting up their equipment.</p>
<p>Even elected officials weren’t spared. Missouri state Senator
Maria Chappelle-Nadal was <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/state-senator-ferguson_n_5676766.html">tear
gassed</a> and St. Louis Alderman Antonio French, who had been
documenting the unfolding police repression in Ferguson on social
media since just after Brown’s murder, was <a
href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/antonio-french-alderman-arrest-ferguson-missouri/14042391/">arrested</a>.</p>
<p>As the situation spiraled further out of control, Palestinians
began <a
href="https://twitter.com/MariamBarghouti/status/499754015983681536">tweeting</a>
<a
href="https://twitter.com/Rajaiabukhalil/status/499754907579473920">advice</a>
on dealing with tear gas to the people of Ferguson. </p>
<h2>Cops become soldiers</h2>
<p>Domestic policing in the US has a long and sordid history rooted
in the violent control and subjugation of communities of color, so
the police violence directed at the predominantly black residents
of Ferguson is nothing new. </p>
<p>But the widespread militarization on display in Ferguson is part
of a more recent <a
href="http://www.alternet.org/story/153147/pepper-spraying_protesters_is_just_the_beginning%3A_here_are_more_hypermilitarized_weapons_your_local_police_force_could_employ">trend</a>
that began three decades ago with the introduction of the
disastrous “war on drugs” and dramatically escalated with the “war
on terror” — leading directly to the counterinsurgency-like
tactics deployed against the people of Ferguson by civilian police
officers who more closely resemble combat soldiers in Afghanistan
than domestic cops</p>
<p>This <a
href="https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/jus14-warcomeshome-report-web-rel1.pdf">cop-to-soldier
transformation</a> has been facilitated by the US government
through mechanisms like the Pentagon’s 1033 or military surplus
program, which funnels excess military gear to law enforcement
agencies across the country. The program’s motto: ”From warfighter
to crimefighter.”</p>
<p>In 2013 alone, the program showered US police departments with
nearly <a
href="http://www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/leso/Pages/default.aspx">$450
million</a> worth of military equipment. </p>
<p>St. Louis County law enforcement agencies, including the Ferguson
Police Department, <a
href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/08/13/ferguson-police-michael-brown-militarization-column/14006383/">participate
</a>in this program and have received military-grade rifles,
pistols and night vision equipment in recent years, though it’s
unclear if the equipment is being used in Ferguson now. </p>
<p>As <em>The New York Times</em> <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.html?_r=1">reported</a>
in June, the scaling down of US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan means
“former tools of combat — M-16 rifles, grenade launchers,
silencers and more — are ending up in local police departments,
often with little public notice.” </p>
<p>“During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data,
police departments have received tens of thousands of machine
guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of
camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers,
armored cars and aircraft,” the newspaper added. </p>
<p>Ferguson police also receive money from the Department of
Homeland Security as part of a grant program that has doled out
billions to US law enforcement agencies to purchase military-style
equipment, like the armored personnel carriers (APCS) charging
through the streets of Ferguson. </p>
<p>In the last five years alone, Missouri has received nearly <a
href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119081/militarized-police-response-michael-brown-protests-911-legacy">$70
million in DHS money</a> for law enforcement related programs.</p>
<h2>Emulating apartheid</h2>
<p>While there is a wealth of scholarship on police militarization
in the US, there has been little to no examination of the ways
Israel’s security apparatus facilitates it. </p>
<p>Decades of testing and perfecting methods of domination and
control on a captive and disenfranchised Palestinian population
has given rise to a booming “homeland security industry” in
Israel, that refashions occupation-style repression for use on
marginalized populations in other parts of the world, including
St. Louis.</p>
<p>Under the cover of counterterrorism training, nearly every major
police agency in the United States has traveled to Israel for
lessons in occupation enforcement, a phenomenon that journalist
Max Blumenthal dubbed “the <a
href="http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/2178">Israelification</a>
of America’s security apparatus.” Israeli forces and US police
departments are so entrenched that the New York City Police
Department (NYPD) has opened a <a
href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/01/09/nypd-kfar-saba-branch-new-york-p.html">branch
in Tel Aviv</a>.</p>
<p>In 2011, then St. Louis County Police Department chief <a
href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BF1s_dc8pVsJ:https://ww5.stlouisco.com/scripts/PD/press/view.cfm%3FViewMe%3D16635+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari">Timothy
Fitch</a> attended the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) <a
href="http://dc.adl.org/national-counter-terrorism-seminar-in-israel/">National
Counter-Terrorism Seminar</a>, an annual week-long Israeli
training camp where US law enforcement executives “study first
hand Israel’s tactics and strategies” directly from “senior
commanders in the Israel National Police, experts from Israel’s
intelligence and security services, and the Israel Defense
Forces,” according to the ADL’s website.</p>
<p>Until Thursday night, the St. Louis County Police Department
appeared to be the largest most militarized and brutish force
operating in Ferguson. “St. Louis County Police” was scrawled
across the side of most of the <a
href="http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/news_and_politics/photography/2014/08/ferguson/140814_POL_Ferguson_07.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg">tactical
unit vehicles</a> and appeared on the combat-style <a
href="http://a.abcnews.com/images/US/gty_police_ferguson_weapon_jc_140814_4x3_992.jpg">uniforms</a>
of officers aiming assault rifles at peaceful protesters</p>
<p>The ADL boasts of sending over 175 senior US law enforcement
officials from 100 different agencies to the seminar since 2004,
which are “taking the lessons they learned in Israel back to the
United States.”</p>
<p>The ADL is just one of several pro-Israel groups forging close
ties between US cops and Israel’s security and intelligence
apparatus.</p>
<p>Another is the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs (JINSA), a neoconservative think tank that claims to have
hosted some <a
href="http://www.jinsa.org/files/leepConferences.pdf">9,500</a>
law enforcement officials in its <a
href="http://www.jinsa.org/events-programs/law-enforcement-exchange-program-leep/all">Law
Enforcement Exchange Program</a> (LEEP) since 2004. </p>
<p>LEEP “takes delegations of senior law enforcement executives to
Israel to study methods and observe techniques used in preventing
and reacting to acts of terrorism” and “sponsors conferences
within the United States, bringing Israeli experts before much
larger groups of law enforcement leaders,” according to JINSA’s <a
href="http://www.jinsa.org/files/LEEPbookletforweb.pdf">brochure</a>.</p>
<p>Former St. Louis Police Department police chief Joseph Mokwa is
listed as having <a
href="http://www.jinsa.org/files/leepParticipants.pdf">traveled
to Israel</a> as part of a LEEP conference in <a
href="http://www.jinsa.org/files/LEEPbookletforweb.pdf">February
2008</a>. </p>
<p>Following nationwide outrage and embarrassment, Missouri Governor
Jay Nixon pulled St. Louis County Police forces out of Ferguson
and placed the Missouri Highway Patrol in charge of policing
demonstrators. The St. Louis Police Department voluntarily removed
its officers from Ferguson. </p>
<p>As a result, Ferguson no longer looks like <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/14/ferguson-protest-contrast_n_5680639.html">occupied
territory</a>, though the underlying issue, Michael Brown’s
murder, has yet to be addressed.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the scope of Israel’s influence on US law enforcement
remains virtually ignored by the media despite the troubling
implications of emulating an apartheid regime actively engaged in
ethnic cleansing and war crimes.</p>
<p>The culture of racism and impunity that has long plagued American
policing is deadly enough as it is. Adding Israeli-style
repression to an already dangerous mix guarantees disaster.</p>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>