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Forum Post: The israelification of US police tactics- Good read for Occupiers

Posted 12 years ago on March 13, 2012, 4:18 p.m. EST by ShubeLMorgan2 (1088) from New York, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/occupation-%E2%80%9Coccupy%E2%80%9D-israelification-american-domestic-security

From Occupation to “Occupy”: The Israelification of American Domestic Security

A University of California Davis police officer pepper-sprays students during their sit-in at an "Occupy UCD" demonstration in Davis, California in this 18 November 2011 file photo. (Photo: REUTERS - Brian Nguyen) By: Max Blumenthal Published Friday, December 2, 2011 New York - In October, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department turned parts of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley into an urban battlefield. The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual SWAT team exposition organized to promote “mutual response,” collaboration and competition between heavily militarized police strike forces representing law enforcement departments across the United States and foreign nations.

At the time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department was preparing for an imminent confrontation with the nascent “Occupy” movement that had set up camp in downtown Oakland, and would demonstrate the brunt of its repressive capacity against the demonstrators a month later when it attacked the encampment with teargas and rubber bullet rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in critical condition and dozens injured. According to Police Magazine, a law enforcement trade publication, “Law enforcement agencies responding to…Occupy protesters in northern California credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.”

Training alongside the American police departments at Urban Shield was the Yamam, an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in “counter-terror” operations but is better known for its extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders and long record of repression and abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Urban Shield also featured a unit from the military of Bahrain, which had just crushed a largely non-violent democratic uprising by opening fire on protest camps and arresting wounded demonstrators when they attempted to enter hospitals. While the involvement of Bahraini soldiers in the drills was a novel phenomenon, the presence of quasi-military Israeli police – whose participation in Urban Shield was not reported anywhere in US media – reflected a disturbing but all-too-common feature of the post-9/11 American security landscape.

The Israelification of America’s security apparatus, recently unleashed in full force against the Occupy Wall Street Movement, has taken place at every level of law enforcement, and in areas that have yet to be exposed. The phenomenon has been documented in bits and pieces, through occasional news reports that typically highlight Israel’s national security prowess without examining the problematic nature of working with a country accused of grave human rights abuses. But it has never been the subject of a national discussion. And collaboration between American and Israeli cops is just the tip of the iceberg.

Having been schooled in Israeli tactics perfected during a 63 year experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an indigenous population, local police forces have adapted them to monitor Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods in US cities. Meanwhile, former Israeli military officers have been hired to spearhead security operations at American airports and suburban shopping malls, leading to a wave of disturbing incidents of racial profiling, intimidation, and FBI interrogations of innocent, unsuspecting people. The New York Police Department’s disclosure that it deployed “counter-terror” measures against Occupy protesters encamped in downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park is just the latest example of the so-called War on Terror creeping into every day life. Revelations like these have raised serious questions about the extent to which Israeli-inspired tactics are being used to suppress the Occupy movement.

The process of Israelification began in the immediate wake of 9/11, when national panic led federal and municipal law enforcement officials to beseech Israeli security honchos for advice and training. America’s Israel lobby exploited the climate of hysteria, providing thousands of top cops with all-expenses paid trips to Israel and stateside training sessions with Israeli military and intelligence officials. By now, police chiefs of major American cities who have not been on junkets to Israel are the exception.

“Israel is the Harvard of antiterrorism,” said former US Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer, who now serves as the US Senate Sergeant-at-Arms. Cathy Lanier, the Chief of the Washington DC Metropolitan Police, remarked, “No experience in my life has had more of an impact on doing my job than going to Israel.” “One would say it is the front line,” Barnett Jones, the police chief of Ann Arbor, Michigan, said of Israel. “We're in a global war.”

Karen Greenberg, the director of Fordham School of Law’s Center on National Security and a leading expert on terror and civil liberties, said the Israeli influence on American law enforcement is so extensive it has bled into street-level police conduct. “After 9/11 we reached out to the Israelis on many fronts and one of those fronts was torture,” Greenberg told me. “The training in Iraq and Afghanistan on torture was Israeli training. There’s been a huge downside to taking our cue from the Israelis and now we’re going to spread that into the fabric of everyday American life? It’s counter-terrorism creep. And it’s exactly what you could have predicted would have happened.”...

http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/occupation-%E2%80%9Coccupy%E2%80%9D-israelification-american-domestic-security

17 Comments

17 Comments


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[-] 3 points by beautifulworld (23767) 12 years ago

Great post. Very interesting. Thanks.

[-] 1 points by jpmaddogdavis (5) from Cleveland, OH 12 years ago

Naomi Klein talks about this alot in 'The Shock Doctrine' chapter 21. she provides a ton of examples. For instance, any call made to the NYPD is recorded and and analyzed on technology by Nice Systems - an Isreali firm

[-] 1 points by ShubeLMorgan2 (1088) from New York, NY 12 years ago

There's a lot of Israeli technology being used in the US and worldwide. Yet, they "need" US foreign aid.

[-] 1 points by pewestlake (947) from Brooklyn, NY 12 years ago

Good post. Thanks for sharing.

[-] 1 points by pewestlake (947) from Brooklyn, NY 12 years ago

I think you have the wrong impression of me. I'm not a zionist by any stretch of the imagination. In the other thread, I was just pointing out that Chomsky doesn't have a lot of influence, despite what many people may think about him.

[-] 1 points by fiftyfourforty (1077) from New York, NY 12 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FGzNl4tgWg

Kevin: I just wanted to say thank you for the talk. Thanks so much for what you did. I also consider you a hero [along with] everybody that was on those ships. And I also feel like I shared so many of the sentiments that you expressed, which is why I’m prefacing [my question] this way, because I want to challenge some ideas as well.

It’s because so much of what you said resonated with me and my path in coming to places like this and working with other people, but what I’m wondering about is, if we’re really going to take this idea of questioning things as citizens, [well] also, let’s take that as activists…I’m still trying to figure out the BDS thing; whether or not I really want to be a part of that.

You mentioned Noam Chomsky and that’s one of the other things that I identified with because he’s probably the biggest reason for me being involved, and I know that he is probably one of the bigger voices that is against BDS. His reasoning is that A: to say that South Africa’s ending of apartheid was as a result of these kinds of BDS actions is a mistelling of history, and B: being that Israel is in some ways the 51st US state and that we are funding – as you said – their terror, wouldn’t that be akin to boycotting ourselves? Wouldn’t that be akin to boycotting America/American products? Wouldn’t that be akin to collective punishment of the sort that we see in Gaza? Because what you’re doing is maybe similar to sanctioning, where you’re affecting a population for what their government is doing.

So I would be interested – because you are so articulate, and because I do find that I agree with a lot of what you said – to hear what you have to say about that; about those critiques, specifically the ones that were given by Noam Chomsky that I mentioned.

Moderator: OK. Why don’t we take a couple more questions, we’ll let [Ken] come back for a little while, take a couple more, and then let [Ken] wrap up at the end…

[Edit point]

Moderator: …I think one of the other questions that was on the floor is this comparison between BDS [of Israel and BDS of] South Africa and that Noam Chomsky specifically disagrees because BDS didn’t end the situation in South Africa…

Ken: With regard to that, I certainly didn’t suggest that boycott and divestment is what ended apartheid, but it played a role, and I think it’s ridiculous to question whether or not it played any role. It played a role. We could argue about how much, I just think that Noam Chomsky’s view on this is illogical, quite frankly.

Like 9/11 [so] we’ll tie the two together. Noam Chomsky has said that, effectively, even if it was an inside job, what does it matter?

Audience members: (laughing and saying “Yeah”)

Ken: That is beyond illogical. He’s an intelligent man. I’ve met with him. He has actually endorsed two different actions including Human Shields that I have initiated. I’ve met with him personally. I love him, but I don’t understand. It’s beyond logical; what he says. And 9/11: this is really the perfect example of where you’ve lost your ability to critically think you can buy into what’s being told to us, because it flies in the face of all critical analysis. But I just think Noam Chomsky’s flat-out wrong, without having more time…

Kevin: And the hypocrisy [because of] us being the funders of the apartheid that’s going on in Israel? That second point I think is really important and I wanted to hear what you had to say.

Ken: What’s the point again?

Kevin: The point is that if we’re going to boycott Israel, why not boycott America? We’re the ones funding the apartheid.

Ken: Well, it’s kind of difficult. I mean you could grow your own food and I would encourage people to do that. Absolutely. Why not? And it’s totally valid, actually. I don’t know why there isn’t a boycott American products [campaign], there should be.

Audience member: Yeah

Ken: I fully agree. I’ve said it, actually, for years and years: Why do we not have a concerted boycott America campaign? There should be. I mean, the reasoning is not even disputable! We’re the ones that are invading other nations, who are flouting international law, supporting Israel. There should be a boycott America campaign. We deserve it! Unfortunately, the rest of the world is maybe a little too hooked on our products, I don’t know, but that’s not a sensical argument to say we shouldn’t boycott Israel, I don’t think.

And, you know, Noam Chomsky is a two-stater. I didn’t get into it. One state! One state, one rule, period. Two states is a disaster.

Audience: (clapping)

Ken: I disagree with him there too, and Norman Finkelstein, who’s become somewhat of a friend, I love him too, but he’s a two-stater and I disagree with him whole-heartedly. I love what he says on every other level, but that one I disagree with.

[Edit point]

Moderator: OK, we’re going to take a couple more comments or questions and then get back to Ken. The gentleman in the red hoodie?...Adam?

Audience/Ken/Moderator: (laughter)

Adam: If people don’t mind I actually wanted to just take a stab at this question that Kevin raised…

Kevin: You would!

Audience/Ken/Moderator: (laughter)

Adam: As a BDS activist, I think obviously [nobody] is saying the situation in Israel/Palestine is identical to South Africa. In particular, I think, South Africa had a large black working class that from inside the country was able to put a lot bigger pressure on the government than the Palestinians do because the Israelis have essentially treated them like we treated Native Americans, right? They want to push them off the land and not use their labor as much as possible. But I think that’s why the BDS movement, in a sense, is actually in some ways more important in the Israel/Palestine struggle because it gives us a way to organize an international campaign that’s necessarily, I think, larger and bigger than the South African BDS campaign.

And I think it’s important to acknowledge too that this isn’t just isn’t just a couple activists in Europe and the US. I mean, this was a massive call by hundreds of groups within Palestinian civil society for a BDS campaign against Israel, right? I mean it’s like Arizona, right? Do you call the boycott of Arizona “collective punishment” when it comes from the Latinos in that community who are saying we need to boycott Arizona because of this racist law that’s being passed: SB1070? No! You stand in solidarity with the Latinos in Arizona who are making that call.

And, so, you’re right: BDS alone is not going to be able to…end the conflict. We have to deal with the US empire that funds Israel, and we have to deal with the other governments within the middle east that are complicit – particularly the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt – so it’s going to take more than just BDS, but I think BDS is a crucial part of that international struggle that’s going to have to take place to shift those tectonic plates to win Palestinian liberation.

[Edit Point]

Moderator: OK, and I have [Hasan?] followed by Tyson.

Hasan(?): I want to comment on the BDS subject. It’s hard to predict or know how much effect the BDS will [have], but the most important part about it is that it’s a form of resistance. Like, in my religion, I believe God judges us for our decisions, even if they don’t do anything. The Palestinian kids, when they throw rocks at tanks, they’re doing nothing to the tank, but they say that we’re here, we resist, and we understand what’s going on. I think that’s the most important part about BDS...although we can’t predict [the outcome].


I'm harsher on Chomsky. I think his opposition to 911 truth has been very harmful as has his opposition to BDS with his vicious slanders against it. I think he is still fond of Israel and has a distorted image in his own mind of the Jewish community and Israel. I also know that his bread has been buttered by the pentagon. He says that doesn't influence his opinions and maybe believes that.

"— Chomsky described the Pentagon as “one of the most evil institutions in world history,” “the most hideous institution on this earth,” which “constitutes a menace to human life.”(7) And he has also made statements that the military has no business being on college campuses whether for recruiting, research, or helping students pay for college, and professors should fight racism, poverty and repression rather than working for the Pentagon.(8) However, Chomsky has been paid millions by the Department of Defense over the past forty years, mainly through his work at the Pentagon funded MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics which even offered perks that other departments in the school did not. Chomsky’s first books, Syntactic Structures, and Aspects of the Theory of Syntax were written with grants from the U.S. Army, the Air Force, and the Office of Naval Research. He worked with his wife who is also a linguist on a DoD-funded project called “Baseball,”(11) and helped to develop “command and control” computer systems used to “support our forces in Vietnam” through making it easier for commanders’ queries to be translated into a language that computers could deal with.(12)

— In 1967 Chomsky challenged follow professors to take moral responsibility for their actions, denounce the Pentagon, and admit they were compromised by advising the government, but then a Columbia Professor George Steiner wrote a letter published in the New York Review of Books asking Chomsky if he would then stop teaching at MIT, but Chomsky “balked at the suggestion” despite his having the option to teach at essentially any other university in the country of this choosing.

— When questioned about his associations with military funding, Chomsky surprisingly responded to Scweitzer— the author of the book Do As I Say, (Not As I Do)— with a clearly false rationalization of “I think we should be responsible for what we do, not for the bureaucratic question of who stamps the paycheck,” ... “Do you think you are not working for the Pentagon? Ask yourself about the origins of the computer and the Internet you are now using.”"

[-] 1 points by pewestlake (947) from Brooklyn, NY 12 years ago

If Noam Chomsky has a large influence in mainstream liberal circles, it's a resurgence I wasn't aware of. I don't base my opinions on who they come from but on whether or not they make sense and I think most left-of-center people do the same. There are kids who hang on everything spouted by Lyndon LaRouche and others who are religious devotees of Ron Paul. We can lead horses to water but I can't get worked up about intellectual cowards who hand their free will to others. And since I don't pay much attention to cults of personality, I'm not up to date on the flavors of the moment. I've read Chomsky but hadn't considered him relevant in decades and I didn't think that would ever change but anything is possible, I suppose.

I'm no fan of Israeli policy or American timidity with the constant double-speak from Israeli leadership. I would much prefer to give Israel ultimatums about their apartheid policies and call it a day but the corporate-military complex won't allow that to happen as long as they control American media and elections. And that's why the particulars of the situation concern me less than three things: one, fixing the American economy; two, enacting a strong response to CU v. FEC; three, preventing Israel from dragging us into another costly and pointless war in the Middle East.

The situation in Palestine has been going on for a very long time and this is a very difficult time to get Americans interested in foreign policy beyond getting out of Afghanistan and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Perhaps that's why my sense of Chomsky as a fringe character was reinforced. It's not really the hot issue in America right now. Anyway, I supported the boycott on SA and I'm not a regular consumer of anything from Israel as it is. I'm tacitly already supporting BDS. So feel free to be ticked off with me about my impression of Chomsky's role in American political life but there's no need to get on my case about the issue.

[-] 1 points by fiftyfourforty (1077) from New York, NY 12 years ago

I'm not trying to get on your case (any more). I largely agree with your take on things anyhow.

[-] 1 points by ShubeLMorgan2 (1088) from New York, NY 12 years ago

I find people defending Chomsky regarding BDS without looking at the issue and looking at what he has said annoying. Reminds me of a damned Mormon missionary evading questions about racism and polygamy from someone he's approached .

Chomsky has a lot of influence in left wing circles and frankly a lot is from slavish followers who refuse to exercise critical thinking.

[-] 1 points by pewestlake (947) from Brooklyn, NY 12 years ago

Please see above. Thanks. ;-)

[-] 1 points by ShubeLMorgan2 (1088) from New York, NY 12 years ago

'nuff of this

[-] 1 points by pewestlake (947) from Brooklyn, NY 12 years ago

Oh, well OK, boss. You're the one that butted in and I wasn't "defending" Chomsky in the first place. I find people who attack things that people never really said annoying. Enough of this is fine with me.

[-] -1 points by BlackSun (275) from Agua León, BC 12 years ago

And a lot of this is happening under liberal regimes. Why is that?

[-] 1 points by ShubeLMorgan2 (1088) from New York, NY 12 years ago

Because when push comes to shove the Democratic office holders like ex communist Quan of Oakland end up doing the bidding of the 1%, though they might say it's with heavy heart, and feelin' pain, etc.

http://socialistworker.org/2011/11/02/democrats-call-in-the-cops

[-] 1 points by ShubeLMorgan2 (1088) from New York, NY 12 years ago

Prolly you're right but they can talk that shit.

[-] 0 points by BlackSun (275) from Agua León, BC 12 years ago

It ain't with a heavy heart or pain.