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dir="ltr"> <font size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-police-teach-schoolchildren-how-shoot-palestinians">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-police-teach-schoolchildren-how-shoot-palestinians</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Israeli police teach schoolchildren how
to shoot Palestinians</h1>
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<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah">Ali
Abunimah</a></span> <span class="field field-blog">-</span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single"
content="2018-05-02T01:31:58+00:00">2 May 2018</span></span>
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<figure id="file-61006"><source media="(min-width:
72rem)"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
<p>Israeli police planned to teach children how to shoot
at Palestinians as part of a training exercise in a
school.</p>
<p>The incident in the Menashe Regional Council, near
Haifa in northern present-day Israel, was brought to
light in recent days when Palestinian citizens of
Israel took photos of what was happening.</p>
<p><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jamal-zahalka">Jamal
Zahalka</a>, a member of the Israeli parliament from
the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/joint-list">Joint
Arab List</a>, is <a
href="https://www.arab48.com/%D9%85%D8%AD%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%AA/%D8%A3%D8%AE%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B1-%D9%85%D8%AD%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9/2018/04/30/%D8%B2%D8%AD%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%A9-%D9%85%D8%A7-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%87%D8%AF%D9%81-%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%AA%D8%AF%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A8-%D8%B7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%A8-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%AA%D8%B5%D9%88%D9%8A%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%AF%D9%82-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%B5%D9%88%D8%B1-%D8%B9%D8%B1%D8%A8">demanding
an investigation</a> into the training sponsored by
the Israeli police and the education ministry, which
he said “prepares students psychologically to kill
Arabs.”</p>
<p>One photo shows a person – most of their body blurred
with a black marker – using a paintball gun to fire at
cutouts of men and women wearing checkered <em>kuffiyeh</em>
headscarves that are associated with Palestinians.</p>
<p>Zahalka made his demand in a letter to public
security minister <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/gilad-erdan">Gilad
Erdan</a>, according to the publication <em>Arab48</em>.</p>
<p>The activity in Menashe Regional Council is part of
widespread training of children by police in Israeli
schools, according to <em>Arab48.</em></p>
<p>In 2011, the newspaper <em>Haaretz</em> <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/1.5146107">reported</a>
on how a group of Israeli high school students from
Herzliya took part in a simulated shooting attack at a
military base “in which the targets were figures
decked out with the Arab <em>kuffiyeh</em>
headdress.”</p>
<p>One source told <em>Haaretz</em> that the exercise,
which was also supported by the education ministry,
was tantamount to “educating toward hatred of Arabs.”</p>
<p>The training in the Menashe Regional Council school
is also reminiscent of an <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/executing-palestinians-israeli-policy">incident
last year</a> in which Israeli police put on a
demonstration for a group of fifth-graders for how to
“confirm a kill” – in other words how to perpetrate an
extrajudicial execution.</p>
<p>And early this year, American comedian Jerry Seinfeld
visited a training center in an Israeli settlement in
the occupied West Bank where tourists are <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/seinfeld-boosts-israels-shoot-kill-fantasy-tours/23096">given
demonstrations on how to kill Arabs</a>.</p>
<p>And in a disturbing parallel in 2015, police in North
Miami Beach, Florida, were found to be <a
href="https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Family-Outraged-After-North-Miami-Beach-Police-Use-Criminal-Photos-as-Shooting-Targets-288739131.html">using
photos of African American men</a> for target
practice at a shooting range.</p>
<h2>Separate and unequal</h2>
<p>Zahalka noted that the incident occurred in Menashe
Regional Council, which bills itself as a paragon of
coexistence between Jewish and <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinians-israel">Palestinian
citizens of Israel</a>.</p>
<p>There are approximately 1.5 million Palestinian
citizens of Israel. They are the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/new-pappe-book-highlights-plight-forgotten-palestinians/10668">survivors
and their descendants</a> of the 1948 ethnic
cleansing of Palestine.</p>
<p>Unlike Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and
Gaza Strip, they hold Israeli citizenship and a right
to vote, but nonetheless live under <a
href="https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7771">dozens
of laws</a> that discriminate against them because
they are not Jewish.</p>
<p>Israel operates a <a
href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2001/12/04/israeli-schools-separate-not-equal">separate</a>
and <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-for-jews-and-arabs-israels-school-system-remains-separate-and-unequal-1.5406700">unequal</a>
school system for Jewish and Arab students.</p>
<p>Anti-Arab incitement and indoctrination is <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/book-review-how-israeli-school-textbooks-teach-kids-hate/11571">endemic
in schools</a> for Jewish children from the earliest
grades.</p>
<h2>Proud to kill</h2>
<p>The Israeli police <a
href="https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5245501,00.html">said</a>
that the targets in the Menashe Regional Council
school had been set up as part of an activity day to
teach children “about good citizenship” and that to
“engender interest among participants, a paint gun
station was erected.”</p>
<p>“Before the activity began, the activity’s commanders
and the school staff noticed the matter and hid the
images, and no children saw them during the activity
itself,” the police claimed.</p>
<p>The education ministry also called the use of the
targets, according to the publication <em>Ynet</em>,
a “serious mishap.”</p>
<p>Zahalka also wrote to Israeli education minister
Naftali Bennett calling for those responsible for
organizing the shooting training to be punished.</p>
<p>He stated that it was unacceptable for the ministry
to merely cancel the activity without seeking
accountability, and to try to shift the blame to the
police alone.</p>
<p>Zahalka quipped that had a similar activity taken
place in a school run by the Palestinian Authority,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “would have
demanded a meeting of the UN Security Council.”</p>
<p>Nadav Perez-Vaisvidovsky, an Israeli college
lecturer, expressed shock at the training, tweeting,
“This is the type of thing you see in history books
and wonder how it could be allowed to go on.”</p>
<div id="file-61016">
<div>
<blockquote data-width="550">
<p dir="rtl" lang="iw">מסוג הדברים שרואים אח"כ
בספרי ההיסטוריה, ואתה לא מצליח להבין איך נתנו
לדברים כאלה לעבור <a
href="https://t.co/XN936KZMwd">pic.twitter.com/XN936KZMwd</a></p>
— Nadav Perez-Vaisvidovsky (@NadavPerez) <a
href="https://twitter.com/NadavPerez/status/990681569730887683?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April
29, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
</div>
<p>Yet this is only a small part of what the so-called
international community is allowing Israel to do with
<a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/impunity">impunity</a>.</p>
<p>The European Union, for instance, which never ceases
to issue reminders of the importance of learning “<a
href="http://www.fra.europa.eu/en/news/2018/learning-holocaust-address-todays-refugee-situation">lessons
from the past</a>,” is currently <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/how-eu-pretends-not-see-israels-calculated-slaughter-gaza">pretending
not to see</a> how Israel is deliberately massacring
unarmed civilians besieged in the Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>And there is little chance of accountability, since
the incitement comes from the top, with Israeli
ministers regularly <a
href="https://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20151115_letter_to_pm_on_extrajudicial_killings">calling</a>
for or <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-leaders-celebrate-extrajudicial-execution">applauding</a>
extrajudicial executions.</p>
<p>Naftali Bennett, the education minister, himself <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/naftali-bennett-and-qana-massacre">notoriously
declared</a> in 2013, “I have killed lots of Arabs
in my life – and there is no problem with that.”</p>
<h2>Ending complicity</h2>
<p>Last December, Belgium’s KU Leuven university <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/belgian-university-end-partnership-israeli-torturers">announced</a>
that it would end its role in an EU-funded “research”
project carried out in partnership with Israeli
police.</p>
<p>“The participation of the Israeli public security
ministry indeed poses an ethical problem taking into
account the role which the strong arm of the Israeli
government plays in enforcing an unlawful occupation
of the Palestinian territories and the associated
repression of the Palestinian population,” university
rector Luc Sels explained.</p>
<p>In light of Israel’s ongoing <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/new-gaza-war-crimes-evidence-sent-icc">premeditated
killing and maiming</a> of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/great-march-return">unarmed
protesters</a> in Gaza, Palestinian activists
recently <a
href="https://bdsmovement.net/Gazalandday">renewed
their calls</a> for an international arms embargo on
Israel, including a ban on cooperation and joint
training with Israel’s police and military.</p>
<p>In a major victory for this <a
href="https://deadlyexchange.org">campaign</a>,
Durham, North Carolina, recently became the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/listen-how-durham-activists-led-city-ban-police-training-israel">first
city in the US to pass such a ban</a>.</p>
<p>“What the Israeli police did is not that unusual,
especially in the current atmosphere of racism against
Arabs,” Zahalka wrote.</p>
<p>“In any case, the Israeli police do not require such
an atmosphere as their record is full of disregard for
the lives of Arab citizens, whom they continue to
treat as enemies and not as citizens.”</p>
<p>Zahalka concluded that firing on cutouts of Arab
citizens “falls within the racist policies of
Netanyahu and his government, and therefore everyone
is called upon to confront this racism until it is
defeated.”</p>
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