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<h1 id="reader-title">Atlanta mayor rejects demand to end Israel
police training</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-blog">-</span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2016-07-21T17:24:58+00:00">21 July 2016</span></span><br>
<br>
</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Following a resurgence of street protests over the
gruesome police slayings of <a
href="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">Alton
Sterling</a> and <a
href="http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2016/07/07/graphic-video-minnesota-police-shooting-philando-castile-ryan-young-pkg-nd.cnn">Philando
Castile</a>, 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 <a
href="http://www.atlisready.black/demands/">demands</a>.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<h2>“The best counterterrorism techniques in the world”</h2>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>It was an interesting choice of words considering that
<a
href="http://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20151014_summary_execution_joint_statement">Israeli</a>,
Palestinian and <a
href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/10/israeli-forces-must-end-pattern-of-unlawful-killings-in-west-bank/">international</a>
human rights organizations, <a
href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=53571">as
well as the UN</a>, have repeatedly condemned Israeli
forces, including the police, for a range of human
rights violations, particularly for their frequent
extrajudicial executions of Palestinians.</p>
<p>It was also recently revealed that Israeli police are <a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/israel-lethal-force-stone-throwers-report-160704134708993.html">authorized</a>
to use lethal force as a first resort against
Palestinians they suspect might throw rocks, including
minors.</p>
<p>An internal police report <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.730325">exposed</a>
by the Tel Aviv newspaper <em>Haaretz</em> this month,
revealed that Israeli Border Police in Jerusalem
“deliberately provoke Palestinians” in order to get a
violent response.</p>
<p>One such manufactured provocation in <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/issawiyeh">Issawiyeh</a>,
in January, led to a confrontation in which Israeli
forces shot 12-year-old Ahmad Abu Hummus in the head, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/israels-less-lethal-weapons-take-childrens-eyes-and-lives">causing
severe brain damage</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Mimicking Israel</h2>
<p>The Atlanta Police Department has been sending
personnel to Israel <a
href="http://atlantaga.gov/index.aspx?page=672&recordid=2912">since
1992</a>, as part of the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/police-training-programs-twin-us-israeli-racism/9834">Georgia
International Law Enforcement Exchange</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.muckrock.com/foi/atlanta-325/deputy-chief-spillanes-2015-training-trip-in-israel-25721/#file-87972">records</a>
released under a freedom of information request.</p>
<figure class="file file-image file-image-jpeg
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<p>After his return, Spillane <a
href="http://news.wabe.org/post/atlanta-police-receive-counterterrorism-training-israel">told</a>
WABE public radio that the Atlanta Police Leadership
Institute is “modeled on the Israeli model.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Speaking at a recent American Jewish Committee event,
he justified Islamophobia. According to <em>Mondoweiss</em>,
he <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2016/01/enforcement-training-terrorism/">told</a>
the audience, “There is no Islamophobia. There is
knife-o-phobia.”</p>
<p>Friedmann also <a
href="http://spme.org/9107/robbie-friedmann-academic-boycotts-terrorism-by-other-means">equates</a>
the nonviolent Palestinian-led boycott of Israeli
institutions complicit in human rights violations
against Palestinians with terrorism.</p>
<h2>Cheering Gaza attack</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em>The Intercept’s</em> Lee Fang later <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2016/05/06/hillary-super-pac-draft-oped/">revealed</a>
that
Reed’s column was actually written by a corporate
lobbyist with guidance from Correct the Record, a
pro-Clinton <a
href="https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php">super
PAC</a>.</p>
<p>Reed is similarly supportive of Israel.</p>
<p>At an Atlanta rally in 2014, Reed joined Israeli
government officials to <a
href="http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/more-1000-rally-israel-atlanta/137412553">cheer</a>
Israel’s massive military assault on the besieged Gaza
Strip that summer, which killed at least <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/balance-un-gaza-report-cant-hide-massive-israeli-war-crimes">551</a>
children.</p>
<p>Reed <a
href="http://atlantajewishtimes.com/2015/04/israel-might-supply-streetcar-fare-system/">led</a>
a cyber technology delegation to Israel in April 2015,
where he championed closer business ties between Georgia
and Israel’s technology sector.</p>
<h2>Law and order</h2>
<p>Of course Georgia’s police are hardly alone in training
with Israel.</p>
<p>Under the cover of counterterrorism training, hundreds
of US police departments have sent high-ranking
officials to Israel for <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/us-cops-trained-use-lethal-israeli-tactics">lessons</a>
in domination and population control.</p>
<p>These training programs have at least two objectives.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>No less important, the junkets serve as a <a
href="http://www.alternet.org/world/racist-policing-and-mass-incarceration-shared-values-america-and-israel">marketing
exercise</a> for Israel’s multi-billion dollar
“homeland security” industry.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/politifact-denies-israeli-ties-baltimore-police-despite-evidence"><em>Politifact</em></a>,
even deny that a significant training relationship
exists.</p>
<p>Former Israeli prison guard and writer for <em>The
Atlantic</em> <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jeffrey-goldberg">Jeffrey
Goldberg</a> suggested that those highlighting the
issue are really just anti-Semites trying to pin the
blame for US police violence on Jews.
</p>
<div class="file file-document file-text-oembed
oembed-rich oembed-default oembed-twitter"
id="file-39936">
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<blockquote data-width="550" class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Did not realize that
anti-Semites are blaming police violence against
African-Americans on Jews: <a
href="https://t.co/lznvC2ZOHZ">https://t.co/lznvC2ZOHZ</a></p>
— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) <a
href="https://twitter.com/JeffreyGoldberg/status/755353866770780161">July
19, 2016</a></blockquote>
</div>
</div>
<p>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 <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/gaza-laboratory-us-mexico-border-tunnel-warfare">US-Mexico
border</a>.</p>
<p>And this Israeli pitch has been embraced by US leaders,
from mayors like Reed <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israels-war-industry-profits-violent-us-immigration-reform/13283">to
the administration of President Barack Obama</a>.</p>
<h2>Bringing the repression home</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>In Washington, DC, for instance, police <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/11/AR2005061100648_2.html">adopted
the Israeli tactic</a> 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.</p>
<p>The NYPD’s Demographic Unit that used to systematically
spy on Muslims, was <a
href="http://www.ap.org/Content/AP-In-The-News/2011/With-CIA-help-NYPD-moves-covertly-in-Muslim-areas">modeled</a>
in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the
occupied West Bank.</p>
<p>Three months after the Ferguson uprising, the St. Louis
Police Department, which has <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-trained-police-occupy-missouri-after-killing-black-youth">participated</a>
in training sessions in Israel, started <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/st-louis-police-bought-israeli-skunk-spray-after-ferguson-uprising">stockpiling</a>
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/skunk-water">skunk
water</a>, a foul-smelling liquid developed by Israel
to break up anti-occupation protests and harass
Palestinian communities.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/patrick-strickland/israel-sprays-skunk-water-palestinian-homes">spray
it indiscriminately into Palestinian homes</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em>Additional research by Ali Abunimah</em></p>
<br>
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