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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Israeli-trained police invade
Baltimore in crackdown on Black Lives Matter </h1>
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<span property="dc:date dc:created"
content="2015-05-07T07:29:24+00:00"
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property="foaf:name" datatype="">Rania Khalek</span>
on Thu, 05/07/2015<br>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israeli-trained-police-invade-baltimore-crackdown-black-lives-matter">http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israeli-trained-police-invade-baltimore-crackdown-black-lives-matter</a></small></small></small></b><br>
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<p>For the second time in less than a year, an American
city was transformed into a hypermilitarized police
state to subdue growing resistance to anti-Black
police violence. </p>
<p>Eight months ago, paramilitary forces barreled down
the streets of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-trained-police-occupy-missouri-after-killing-Black-youth">Ferguson</a>,
Missouri, following the gruesome police killing of
unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown. </p>
<p>Last week, <a
href="http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/30602-don-t-call-it-a-curfew-martial-law-in-the-united-states#">martial
law</a> was imposed on the people of Baltimore,
Maryland, in yet another crackdown aimed at crushing
the Black Lives Matter uprising, galvanized this
time by the police murder of Freddie Gray, a
25-year-old Black man whose <a
href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-gray-injuries-20150420-story.html">spinal
cord was severed</a> while in police custody. </p>
<p>It was an occupation in the truest sense of the term.
However, for Baltimore’s poor Black neighborhoods, it
was a hypermilitarized version of the lower intensity
occupation they are subjected to on a regular basis. </p>
<p>Protests demanding justice for Gray had been largely
peaceful, until heavy-handed police tactics against
Baltimore high school students on 27 April <a
href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/how-baltimore-riots-began-mondawmin-purge%20%20http://fair.org/home/medias-baltimore-teen-purge-narrative-falling-apart/">incited</a>
a riot. </p>
<p>Some young people responded by throwing bottles and
rocks at police, prompting <a
href="https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/592825255388958720">comparisons</a>
<a
href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/shep-smith-on-baltimore-protests-seems-like-palestinians-and-the-israeli-army-fighting/">to
Palestine</a>, where children often toss stones at
Israeli occupation forces as a means of resistance and
self-defense. </p>
<p>Windows of police cruisers were smashed, stores were
looted and a CVS store was set ablaze, throwing white
America into a panicked frenzy that seemed to
prioritize broken windows over broken spines, as one
activist <a
href="http://www.rawstory.com/2015/04/activist-smacks-down-wolf-blitzer-you-are-suggesting-broken-windows-are-worse-than-broken-spines/">put
it</a>. </p>
<h2>Martial law</h2>
<p>Within hours of the riots, Baltimore city officials
declared a state of emergency and instituted a 10
pm curfew. </p>
<p>Practically overnight, Baltimore morphed into a
heavily militarized police state with machine-like
efficiency, demonstrating America’s frightening
capacity to successfully implement martial law in a
major US city in a matter of hours. </p>
<p>By Tuesday, 3,000 National Guard troops were deployed
to Baltimore.</p>
<p>With assault rifles in hand, bored US soldiers in
official military combat attire roamed the streets of
downtown Baltimore, patrolling the National Aquarium,
as well as the outlets of Forever 21, Cheesecake
Factory and Barnes & Noble that dot the trendy and
polished Inner Harbor. </p>
The soldiers were flanked by police from a collection of
law enforcement agencies from Maryland and across state
lines, all working in concert with Baltimore police to
crush the nascent uprising that erupted in the
city’s long neglected poor Black neighborhoods. For
these communities, martial law presented nothing more
than an added layer to the ferocious <a
href="http://http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/police-settlements/">police
violence</a> and intolerable <a
href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/04/28/3651951/baltimore-freddie-gray-economic">economic
deprivation</a> that inform their daily lives.
<h2>Breaking curfew</h2>
<p>On Friday 1 May, around eighty protesters held their
ground in the courtyard in front of City Hall. They
were in high spirits and determined to break the 10
pm curfew following news that six Baltimore police
officers were <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/05/01/the-list-of-charges-against-baltimore-officers/">charged</a>
in the killing of Freddie Gray.</p>
<p>The courtyard had become an unofficial media
headquarters since the state of emergency
began, saturated with TV news vans, cable news tents
and lighting crews. The area also served as a command
center for the National Guard and law enforcement. </p>
<p>As the curfew went into effect, a line of around a
hundred riot police filed into the quad opposite the
protesters, who had thinned out from a couple hundred
to a few dozen. The mood was tense, but calm. </p>
<p>Minutes later, hidden units of riot police thundered
into the crowd, charging at frightened protesters who
soon learned there was nowhere to run. Protesters
were woefully outnumbered and surrounded, with all
possible escape routes cut off by either riot squads,
officers on horseback, armored vehicles with rooftop
snipers or National Guard troops, reinforced by a
police helicopter circling overhead. </p>
<p>Police officers dressed like storm troopers attacked
one protester after the next completely unprovoked. I
watched as police all around me tackled civilians,
slamming them into the ground face first, piling on
top of them and blindly swinging their batons. It was
a police riot. </p>
Meanwhile, police closed in on the media, jostling
members of the press and repeatedly threatening them to
get back.
<big><b><big><br>
<br>
Mass arrests
</big></b></big>
<p>Among those arrested that night was 32-year-old
Chicago-based activist Danielle Villarreal, who was
knocked to the ground by officers while quietly
looking to see which of her comrades had been grabbed.</p>
<p>Her friend, Jackie Spreadbury, 26, instinctively
reached for Villareal’s arm to protect her from police
and was instantly thrown against a van and tossed to
the ground, her cheek pressed up against the curb.</p>
<p>“They hit me with their batons on the back of the
calf below the knee as I was already down on the
ground,” Spreadbury told me, recollecting her arrest.
“I didn’t realize at the time that I was getting hit.
I was just looking at Danielle to see if she was
okay.” </p>
<p>“A bunch of cops were yelling different things at me.
And then they started yelling at me for not listening
to all the different things they were demanding,”
Spreadbury recalled.</p>
<p>“I’ve been to lots of demonstrations over the years
and I’ve never seen this sort of pre-emptive
oppression — outside of NATO in Chicago — where they
lunged at us and chased us down without warning, and
just pre-emptively attacked people,” said Villarreal,
referring to the virtual police state during the NATO
summit in Chicago in 2012 that saw protesters <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/20/nato-summit-chicago-protesters_n_1530789.html">corralled,
abused and arrested</a>. </p>
<p>“If you want to see who wants a riot, look at who’s
dressed for it,” added Villarreal, noting that police
were the ones wearing body armor and carrying billy
clubs. </p>
<p>During their 22 hour stay in jail, the women met
countless Baltimore residents who were swept up by
police for breaking curfew while going about their
daily lives. “They were put in a cell with us — women,
mothers daughters — they got picked up because of this
police state. There was a 51–year-old woman who was
arrested on her way from work at 4:45 am during
curfew,” said Spreadbury.</p>
<p>At least <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/high-number-of-arrests-in-baltimore-leads-to-confusion-in-charging/2015/05/04/d71ad79c-f28e-11e4-bcc4-e8141e5eb0c9_story.html">486
people</a> have been arrested in Baltimore since 23
April, a fifth of whom were <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/about-80-people-arrested-in-baltimore-turmoil-freed-after-time-runs-out/2015/04/29/db85e064-eea7-11e4-8666-a1d756d0218e_story.html">held
for 48 hours</a> without explanation and released
without charge. </p>
<p>Others were given astronomically high bails. </p>
<p>Allen Bullock, 18, turned himself in at the behest of
his parents after a photo of him smashing a police
windshield with a traffic cone was plastered in news
reports across the country. Bullock is currently being
held on a <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/30/baltimore-rioters-parents-500000-bail-allen-bullock">half
a million dollar bail</a> that his family can’t
possibly afford. In stark contrast, the officers who
severed Freddie Gray’s spine received bails no greater
than <a
href="http://http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/blog/bs-md-ci-what-is-next-for-officers-20150501-story.html">$350,000</a>.</p>
<h2>Palestine contingent lends support</h2>
<p>Building on the deepening bond between the
Palestinian and Black liberation struggles,
Palestinian civil society organizations <a
href="http://palsolidarity.org/2015/05/solidarity-from-palestine-to-baltimore/">issued</a>
a declaration of support for those struggling against
racial injustice in Baltimore. </p>
<p>“We send our condolences to the family of Freddie
Gray and all those murdered in police custody,” says
the statement. “We stand in solidarity with those
whose homes have been foreclosed, with those who live
under the constant watch of surveillance cameras and
under the constant threat of being stopped, harassed,
arrested and assaulted by a militarized police force
in their own streets. Your struggle for justice,
equality and freedom is our struggle.”</p>
<p>A contingent of Palestine solidarity activists
affiliated with Students for Justice with Palestine
(SJP) at American University and Students Against
Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) at George Mason University
turned those words into action.</p>
<p>Wearing their <em>kufiyehs</em> — Palestinian
checkered scarves — to remain easily visible to one
another amid the likely chaos, the group shuffled back
and forth between Washington DC and Baltimore to lend
their support as legal observers and medics.</p>
<p>“Oftentimes we struggle with wanting to participate
because we don’t know if it’s our place and we don’t
want to be co-opting,” said Ntebo Maya Mokuena, a
19-year-old member of SJP at AU. “But I think it’s
important for people in DC to show solidarity in
Baltimore because we’re so close.”</p>
<p>Mokuena gravitated toward Palestine solidarity work
due to her father’s activism against apartheid in
South Africa. “I saw the connections between his
experiences in South Africa and what happens in
Palestine. I thought it was really important to carry
on the family legacy,” she told The Electronic
Intifada. </p>
<p>“From Palestine to Baltimore, there are parallels
with militarization of police and the tactics they use
to take over space in other people’s land. They’re
occupying people’s neighborhoods where they live. It’s
like the second wave for Baltimore because
it’s already economically occupied,” said Mokuena. </p>
<p>The group managed to avoid arrest during Friday
night’s melee, though some told The Electronic
Intifada that they were more frightened of police in
Baltimore than Israeli forces at protests they had
attended in Palestine. </p>
<p>“Even though I’ve been to protests in Palestine, I
saw more physical abuse in Baltimore,” said Tareq
Radi, a Palestinian American organizer and founding
member of SAIA. Still, what he witnessed in Baltimore
reminded him of Israeli crowd control in Palestine. “I
went to the ‘day of rage’ protests in the Negev
[Naqab] and I saw people getting slammed on the
ground, hogtied, police grabbing their arms and legs
and throwing them in the paddy wagon — the exact same
imagery as Baltimore.”</p>
<p>“If Baltimore was a Middle Eastern country, we would
be calling it a dictatorship,” Radi added. </p>
<h2>Echoes of Israeli tactics in Baltimore</h2>
<p>The similarities in suppression tactics employed by
Baltimore and Israeli security forces are
no coincidence.</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, including many of the agencies active in
Baltimore last week. </p>
<p>In 2002, Baltimore city police officers went to
Israel on a junket organized by the
neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs (JINSA), where they studied Israeli occupation
tactics used against Palestinians, including “crowd
control, and coordination with the media,” according
to a JINSA <a
href="http://www.jinsa.org/events-programs/law-enforcement-exchange-program-leep/jinsa-launches-law-enforcement-exchange">press
release</a>. “Participants resolved to begin the
process of sharing ‘lessons learned’ in Israel with
their law enforcement colleagues in the United
States,” boasted JINSA. </p>
<p>Baltimore city police returned to Israel for more
occupation training in a 2009 <a
href="http://projectinterchange.org/?seminar_id=4536">trip</a>
arranged by the American Jewish Committee’s Project
Interchange. </p>
<p>On a 2007 training session in Israel, Baltimore
County police reportedly “<a
href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2007-06-28/news/0706280115_1_tel-aviv-police-departments-baltimore-county">received
valued lessons</a> from Israeli officials…about
gathering human and electronic intelligence” that can
“apply to investigations into organized crime and
gangs.”</p>
<p>The Montgomery County Police Department, which sent <a
href="http://www.gazette.net/article/20150501/NEWS/150509843/1225&source=RSS&template=gazette">dozens</a> of
police officers to assist in the Baltimore crackdown,
has attended several training sessions in Israel,
including one in <a
href="http://projectinterchange.org/?p=5229">2010</a>
and another in <a
href="http://projectinterchange.org/?p=6794">2012</a>,
both hosted by Project Interchange. </p>
<p>New Jersey State Police, which <a
href="http://www.app.com/story/news/politics/new-jersey/2015/04/28/nj-state-police-baltimore-riots/26515131/">donated
around 150 </a>of its officers to Baltimore’s
police state, learned lessons in occupation
enforcement on trips to Israel arranged by the
Anti-Defamation League in <a
href="http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/israel-middle-east/top-us-law-enforcement.html">2011</a> and
<a
href="http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/israel-middle-east/adl-mission-brings-us-law-enforcement.html#.VUo6p6aN72g">2013</a>, and JINSA
in <a
href="http://www.jinsa.org/events-programs/law-enforcement-exchange-program-leep/top-cops-return-jinsa-sponsored-anti-terror-st">2004</a>.</p>
<p>Pennsylvania State Police, which <a
href="http://6abc.com/news/300-pennsylvania-state-police-personnel-to-aid-in-baltimore/686877/">contributed
300 state troopers</a> to Baltimore, studied
counterterrorism in Israel in <a
href="http://www.jinsa.org/events-programs/law-enforcement-exchange-program-leep/top-cops-return-jinsa-sponsored-anti-terror-st">2004</a>.</p>
<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. Instead, the issue is virtually
ignored or flat out <a
href="http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/29/nation-islam-research-group/nation-islam-group-says-israeli-security-trained-b/">denied</a>,
despite the troubling implications of emulating an
apartheid regime actively engaged in ethnic cleansing
and war crimes.</p>
<h2>Armed with cameras</h2>
<p>There is something eerily consistent about
occupation, whether in the ghettos of Palestine or the
United States, including one of the most widely used
means of resistance to it.</p>
<p>“A camera is the most trusted witness and the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israeli-soldier-becomes-overnight-hero-pointing-loaded-gun-palestinian-youths">best
protection tool</a>,” Issa Amro, the founder and
director of Youth Against Settlements, told me last
year after his organization faced violent retaliation
for recording Israeli soldiers pointing assault rifles
at Palestinian teens in a video that went <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israeli-soldier-becomes-overnight-hero-pointing-loaded-gun-palestinian-youths">viral</a>.</p>
<p>Kevin Moore, who filmed the video of Freddie Gray’s
brutal arrest, sees the camera in a similar light.</p>
<p>“The most powerful weapon that we have against the
police right now is a camcorder or any type of record
that you can get against them performing those police
brutal events,” <a
href="http://wtop.com/baltimore/2015/05/man-who-filmed-freddie-gray-arrest-says-hell-keep-the-camera-rolling/">argued</a> Moore
after his video of Gray went viral. After speaking out
about Gray’s killing, Moore complained that police
were intimidating him. He was later <a
href="http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2015/05/man-who-recorded-freddie-gray-video-arrested-after-voicing-fears-that-police-were-trying-to-intimidate-him/">arrested</a>
with two activists from Copwatch, the police
accountability organization he is a member of
and released two hours later without charge. </p>
<p>Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed the chokehold killing
of Eric Garner by NYPD officers in Staten Island last
year, met an even worse fate. He was <a
href="http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/4/13/ramsey_orta_man_who_filmed_nypd">arrested</a>
along with his mother, brother and wife in what he
contends is a campaign of vengeful harassment by the
NYPD.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, not one of the officers who killed Garner
on video will face charges; Video evidence of deadly
police violence <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/patrick-strickland/israel-clears-police-videotaped-killing-palestinian-galilee-village?utm_medium=email&utm_source=transactional&utm_campaign=info%40electronicintifada.net">rarely
results in accountability</a>. </p>
<p>Under such intolerable conditions, where even video
evidence of their murders isn’t enough to hold their
killers accountable, it is no wonder that
the oppressed are fighting back, from Baltimore to
Ferguson to Palestine. </p>
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