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<h1 class="page__title title balance-text" id="page-title">Will
Israel’s “whiff from hell” weapon be used to crush US protests? </h1>
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<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/rania-khalek"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Rania Khalek</a></span> <span class="field
field-publication-date"><span class="date-display-single"
property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2015-06-12T20:46:55+00:00">12 June 2015<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/will-israels-whiff-hell-weapon-be-used-crush-us-protests">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/will-israels-whiff-hell-weapon-be-used-crush-us-protests</a></small></small></b><br>
</span></span> </p>
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<p>US police departments are interested in procuring the
foul-smelling skunk water that Israeli forces routinely use on
Palestinians, according to <em>The Economist</em>.</p>
<p><em>The Economist</em>, which refers to skunk water as “a whiff
from hell,” <a
href="http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21653624-skunk-high-tech-israeli-weapon-against-stone-throwers-whiff-hell">reports</a>
that the weapon “has attracted the interest of law-enforcement
agencies in America which, after riots in Ferguson and Baltimore,
crave better ways to scatter rioters without killing or injuring
them.”</p>
<p>Developed by Odortec, an Israeli company that specializes in
scent-based weapons for law enforcement, in collaboration with the
Israeli police, skunk water emits a stench that has been described
as a cross between a rotting animal corpse, raw sewage and human
excrement. The smell is so strong that Israeli police <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/making-a-stink-1.253207">refuse</a>
to store the substance inside their stations. </p>
<p>Released at high pressure from a water cannon attached to the top
of a military truck, the skunk odor sticks to walls, clothing,
hair and skin for days and is impossible to wash away.
Ramallah-based activist and writer Mariam Barghouti once <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/patrick-strickland/israel-sprays-skunk-water-palestinian-homes">told</a>
The Electronic Intifada’s Patrick Strickland that “the water
lingers on your skin to a point when you want to rip your skin
off.” </p>
<p>First used by Israeli border police officers in 2008, skunk water
has become a fixture in villages that engage in weekly
demonstrations against the Israeli wall in the occupied West Bank.
It’s also frequently deployed <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/video-palestinians-cheer-israeli-skunk-truck-crashes-ravine">against</a>
Palestinian neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem, where there
is a concerted effort by the Israeli government to remove and
replace Palestinian residents with Jewish settlers. </p>
<p>While Odortec insists skunk spray is non-toxic and even
drinkable, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) <a
href="http://www.acri.org.il/en/2014/08/10/skunk-ej/">warns</a>
that it “can cause pain and redness if it comes into contact with
eyes, irritation if it comes into contact with skin and if
swallowed can cause abdominal pain requiring medical treatment.” </p>
<h2>Environmental terrorism </h2>
<p>Israeli police have argued that skunk water is strictly used for
crowd dispersal, but this claim is <a
href="http://whoprofits.org/sites/default/files/weapons_report-8.pdf">easily
refuted.</a> </p>
<p>Israeli forces regularly douse <a
href="http://972mag.com/watch-police-spray-putrid-water-on-palestinian-homes-schools/98840/">entire
Palestinians neighborhoods</a> in skunk water, deliberately
spraying it <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/patrick-strickland/israel-sprays-skunk-water-palestinian-homes">into
private homes</a>, businesses and <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/palestinian-parents-tell-israeli-police-stop-harassing-jerusalem-children/14267">schools</a> in
what the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem calls “<a
href="http://www.btselem.org/publications/2012_alfa/skunk">a
collective punitive measure</a>” against Palestinian villages
that engage in protest against Israel’s colonial violence.</p>
<p>Just last month, Israeli forces were photographed chasing
five-year-old Muhammad Riyad with a skunk truck at a
demonstration in the West Bank town of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/kafr-qaddum">Kafr
Qaddum</a>. The <a
href="https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=765453">photos</a>
show Muhammad running and tripping over a pile of rocks, which
sends his tiny body plunging face first into the ground, as he’s
drenched in skunk water. </p>
<p>No Palestinian is safe from the skunk truck, not children, not
their homes, not even the dead.</p>
<p>In 2012, Israeli forces <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adhGYqdjIsg">showered a
funeral procession</a> in Hebron with skunk water, soaking
mourners and the body of the deceased. </p>
<p>The substance is being marketed as a safe alternative to more
lethal means of crowd dispersal. But since its introduction into
the Israeli arsenal, Israeli forces have continued to
indiscriminately injure and kill Palestinian protesters and
non-protesters alike with the traditional assortment of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/tear-gas">tear gas</a>,
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/patrick-strickland/palestinian-child-loses-eye-rubber-coated-bullet-fired-israel">rubber-coated
steel bullets</a>, <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.652239">sponge-tipped
bullets</a> and <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/human-rights-defender-among-three-palestinians-killed-live-fire-west">live
fire</a>. </p>
<p>If anything, skunk water has added a new humiliating dimension to
the terror Israel inflicts on Palestinians. After all, what better
way to strip the subjugated and colonized of their dignity than to
poison them and their surroundings with a feces-like stench so
intolerable it makes someone want to rip off his or her own skin?</p>
<h2>Exporting repression </h2>
<p>It’s no accident that Odortec was founded by a management team at
the Israeli company <a
href="http://www.fly-buster.com/About%2Dus.html">Flybuster</a>, a
firm that develops scent-based chemicals to repel and kill
insects. Odortec simply applied Flybuster’s pesticide logic to
Palestinians, who Israeli leaders have long viewed as subhuman
contaminants <a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/07/29/israel-s-foes-as-beasts-and-insects/">comparable
to insects</a>. </p>
<p>And like most Israeli weapons, skunk water is advertised as
having been “field-tested,” which almost always means that
Palestinians were used as human test subjects during the
development process.</p>
<p>According to Odortec’s <a
href="http://www.skunk-skunk.com/121755/The%2DProduct">website</a>, “skunk
has been field-tested and proven to disperse even the most
determined of violent protests” effectively “breaking adversarial
resistance.” </p>
<p>While Gaza serves as a <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/sixty-percent-global-drone-exports-come-israel-new-data">playground</a> for
larger <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-firing-experimental-weapons-gazas-civilians-say-doctors">weapons</a>,
the West Bank is Israel’s preferred laboratory for <a
href="http://whoprofits.org/sites/default/files/weapons_report-8.pdf%20http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/1639">testing</a>
and refining crowd control technology. </p>
<p>David Ben Harosh, head of the Israeli police’s department
for technological development — which partnered with Odortec to
develop skunk water — stated in 2008 that skunk water was tested
in “<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/making-a-stink-1.253207">monitored
exercises</a>” in the Palestinian villages of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/bilin">Bilin</a> and <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/nilin">Nilin</a>,
which he referred to as an “experiment.” </p>
<p>“After each spraying an observation of the area was conducted, to
check if there were casualties, to see how the demonstrators
reacted,” Ben Harosh stated. </p>
<p>So far there has been no reported use of skunk spray outside
of Palestine. But Israeli police and Odortec have been marketing
the product to law enforcement agencies around the globe since its
inception.</p>
<p>As the BBC <a
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7646894.stm">reported</a>
in 2008, “The Israeli police force has high hopes of turning skunk
into a commercial venture and selling it to law-enforcement
agencies overseas.” </p>
<p><em>The Economist</em> states, “A report this week that skunk is
now being sold to American local police departments was initially
confirmed by a Maryland-based company claiming to be the
vendor, but then swiftly retracted. The company’s website, which
offered the stuff in various-sized canisters, has since gone
offline.” </p>
<p>Though <em>The Economist</em> does not identify the company, it
is likely <a href="http://www.mistralsecurityinc.com">Mistral
Security</a>, a subsidiary of <a
href="http://http://www.mrg.rs/en/programs/drugs-and-explosives-detection/mistral/">Mistral
Group</a>, a US company based in Bethesda, Maryland, that deals
in the production and sale of military and law enforcement
equipment.</p>
<p>The only crowd control weapon Mistral Security currently markets
to US law enforcement is skunk spray, which is <a
href="http://www.mistralsecurityinc.com/Our-Products/Crowd-Control-Skunk">featured</a>
on its website in a variety of delivery systems, including
canisters, grenades and bulk containers for water
cannons. Mistral’s product <a
href="http://www.mistralinc.com/portals/mistralinc/Images/product-photos/Final%20-%20Skunk%20Product%20Brochure%204.13.2015.pdf">brochure</a>
advertises skunk as ideal for controlling crowds and individuals
at “border crossings, correctional facilities, demonstrations and
sit-ins.” </p>
<p>Mistral did not to respond to inquiries about which police
agencies have expressed interest in purchasing skunk water.
Neither did Odortec.</p>
<p>However, US police departments taking repression cues from
Israel is not a new phenomenon.</p>
<p>Under the cover of counterterrorism training, senior commanders
from nearly every major American police department, including <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israeli-trained-police-invade-baltimore-crackdown-black-lives-matter">Baltimore</a> and
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-trained-police-occupy-missouri-after-killing-black-youth">St.
Louis</a>, have traveled to Israel for lessons in occupation
enforcement. Such trips provide Israeli companies like Odortec
with the opportunity to <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/lapd-goes-israel-falls-love-drones-and-mass-surveillance">market
their technology</a> directly to US law enforcement executives. </p>
<p>With the Black Lives Matter uprising challenging and
exposing America’s corrupt and racist system of policing, it makes
sense that US police would look to their Israeli counterparts for
“field-tested” methods in breaking resistance. In this instance,
the weapon in question is as rotten as it smells.</p>
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