Subsidising tyranny

Wendell Griffen

Did you know that police tactics in the US are being modelled after the tactics used by Israeli security operatives, the Israeli Defense Force, and Israeli police involved in the illegal occupation of Palestine and abuse of Palestinians? Consider the following information about the Israeli National Counter-Terrorism Seminar that one can find on the website of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

“Every year, American law enforcement executives travel to Israel with ADL to study first hand Israel’s tactics and strategies to combat terrorism. The National Counter-Terrorism Seminar (NCTS) is an intensive week long course led by senior commanders in the Israel National Police, experts from Israel’s intelligence and security services, and the Israel Defense Forces. More than 175 law enforcement executives have participated in 12 NCTS sessions since 2004, taking the lessons they learned in Israel back to the US.”

Do you remember seeing tear gas deployed against peaceful protestors in Ferguson, Missouri one night shortly after Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown Jr? Do you remember how the killers of Michael Brown Jr, Eric Garner, Rekia Boyd, Tamir Rice, Dillon Taylor and countless other victims of police homicides were exonerated, and treated by some in the media as being protectors of society?

I have seen the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) units deploy tear gas against the Palestinian youth during a recent visit to Israel and Palestine. What were the Palestinian youth doing? They were congregating on streets in their own neighbourhoods protesting Israeli occupation of Palestine, just as neighbours of Michael Brown Jr protested that he was shot and killed, and just as they were attacked by armoured police units, snipers, and tear gas while in their own neighbourhood.

I met and spoke with an IDF veteran and member of the Breaking the Silence veterans movement who told our group how IDF units treat Palestinians as likely terrorists even when Palestinians are minding their own business and tending their own olive groves. IDF personnel who abuse or kill Palestinians are not punished; they are protected and held up as heroic figures.

Our group immediately recognised that poor and communities of colour in the US are treated by the police the way Palestinians are treated by Israeli police and security forces – as if we are an occupied people. And we recognised that police in the US operate as if the laws that govern the use of force, including deadly force, for the rest of society do not apply to them. Police in the US behave the way I saw IDF personnel behave toward Palestinians, like an occupation force.

Members of an occupation force are not punished for oppressing (and even killing) indigenous people and dissenters. Oppression tactics, use of excessive force, deploying tear gas against people who are merely expressing opposition to mistreatment, and condoning those and other abusive practices go hand-in-hand with occupation force government, otherwise known as tyranny or fascism.

Many of the victims who were killed by the police or while they were in police custody were treated like suspected terrorists. Their killers did not behave like community police in a neighbourhood. They behaved like members of an occupation force in militarily occupied territory.

We are sending law enforcement leaders from communities across the US to learn occupation force tactics and strategies from security operatives affiliated with the illegal occupation of Palestine. US tax dollars have financed and supplied the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine since 1967. US tax dollars provide diplomatic cover for it in the UN.

US tax dollars are spent sending state and local law enforcement leaders to Israel where they learn to unjustly treat us like suspected terrorists, the same way Israeli security personnel are trained to unjustly treat Palestinian men, women, and youth.

We are subsidising tyranny and fascism by Israel against Palestinians. We are sending US state and local law enforcement leaders to Israel where they learn to use occupation force methods and tactics of tyranny and fascism against poor and communities of colour in the US. Politely speaking, that is ‘messed up’.

This article has been excerpted from: ‘We subsidise occupation force policing’.

Courtesy: Counterpunch.org