[Peace-discuss] Israel-trained police 'occupy' Missouri after killing of Black youth

[David Johnson]

<http://sfbayview.com/2014/08/israel-trained-police-occupy-missouri-after-ki
lling-of-black-youth/> Israel-trained police 'occupy' Missouri after killing
of Black youth

August 15, 2014

 
<http://sfbayview.com/2014/08/israel-trained-police-occupy-missouri-after-ki
lling-of-black-youth/> 56 

by Rania Khalek

Since the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson police in
Missouri last weekend, the people of Ferguson have been subjected to a
military-style crackdown by a squadron of local police departments dressed
like combat soldiers. This has prompted residents to liken the conditions on
the ground in Ferguson to the Israeli military occupation of Palestine.

And who can blame them?

 
<http://sfbayview.com/2014/08/israel-trained-police-occupy-missouri-after-ki
lling-of-black-youth/michael-brown-woman-protester-we-need-answers-backed-by
-militarized-police-081314-by-j-b-forbes-st-louis-post-dispatch-ap-web/>
Description: A woman demanding answers turns away from a line of militarized
police and toward the crowd of protesters. - Photo: J.B. Forbes, St. Louis
Post-Dispatch/AP

A woman demanding answers turns away from a line of militarized police and
toward the crowd of protesters. - Photo: J.B. Forbes, St. Louis
Post-Dispatch/AP

The dystopian scenes of paramilitary units in camouflage rampaging through
the streets of Ferguson, pointing assault rifles at unarmed residents and
launching tear gas into people's front yards from behind armored personnel
carriers (APCs), could easily be mistaken for a Tuesday afternoon in the
occupied West Bank.

And it's no coincidence.

At least two of the
<http://www.vox.com/2014/8/14/6002291/ferguson-police-st-louis-county-in-cha
rge-jay-nixon-tear-gas-officer-fired> four law enforcement agencies that
were deployed in Ferguson up until Thursday evening - the St. Louis County
Police Department and the St. Louis Police Department - received training
from Israeli security forces in recent years.

Brute force

It all started when a yet-to-be-named Ferguson police officer (the name
Darren Wilson was released this morning - ed.) killed Michael Brown, an
unarmed Black teenager. According to witnesses, Brown was attempting to
surrender with his hands up when a Ferguson police officer
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/11/what-you-gonna-do-kill-us-
all-protesters-ask-ferguson-police.html> emptied his clip into Brown's body,
shooting the teen up to 10 times.

For hours police left Brown's lifeless body sprawled in the street uncovered
as a growing number of residents gathered nearby, demanding answers from
authorities. Police responded by deploying K-9 units and riot squads to
crush the crowd, predictably inciting a riot, which police used to justify
more brute force.

But the people of Ferguson refuse to submit and have mobilized every single
day to demand justice for Brown and an end to the
<http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/10-insane-numbers-ferguson-kill
ing> racist, undemocratic regime they live under.

" <http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hands-up-20140813-story.html> Hands
up, don't shoot" has become their rallying cry, a symbol of Brown in his
last moments and what it means to be Black in America, where
<http://mxgm.org/operation-ghetto-storm-2012-annual-report-on-the-extrajudic
ial-killing-of-313-black-people/> every 28 hours an African-American is
killed by a self-styled vigilante, security guard or police officer.

Still, police did not relent, prompting one Ferguson protester to shout at a
row of military-style tactical vehicles, "You gonna shoot us?
<http://instagram.com/p/rn68uHEQUM/> Is this the Gaza Strip?"

"Will we as a people rise up like the people of Gaza? Will our community be
bombed like last night with tear gas? That was a terrorist attack,"
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/12/michael-brown-s-hometown-i
s-under-occupation.html> remarked another Ferguson protester to The Daily
Beast.

Meanwhile, journalists were
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/huffington-post-reporter-arrested-
ferguson_n_5676829.html?cl33r> manhandled and detained. Police were caught
on video
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/14/al-jazeera-ferguson-tear-gas-journ
alists_n_5678081.html> deliberately firing tear gas at an Al Jazeera America
film crew as they were setting up their equipment.

Even elected officials weren't spared. Missouri state Sen. Maria
Chappelle-Nadal was
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/state-senator-ferguson_n_5676766.h
tml> tear gassed and St. Louis Alderman Antonio French, who had been
documenting the unfolding police repression in Ferguson on social media
since just after Brown's murder, was
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/antonio-french-alderma
n-arrest-ferguson-missouri/14042391/> arrested.

As the situation spiraled further out of control, Palestinians began
<https://twitter.com/MariamBarghouti/status/499754015983681536> tweeting
<https://twitter.com/Rajaiabukhalil/status/499754907579473920> advice on
dealing with tear gas to the people of Ferguson.

Cops become soldiers

Domestic policing in the U.S. has a long and sordid history rooted in the
violent control and subjugation of communities of color, so the police
violence directed at the predominantly Black residents of Ferguson is
nothing new.

 
<http://sfbayview.com/2014/08/israel-trained-police-occupy-missouri-after-ki
lling-of-black-youth/michael-brown-seated-protester-end-police-brutality-081
415-by-james-cooper/> Description: "It's not even a race war. It's about
cops killing people and beating people." says a masked Ferguson resident
sitting in the middle of the street in protest of the police shooting of
unarmed teenager Michael Brown and the violent police response to the
protests that followed. - Photo: James Cooper

"It's not even a race war. It's about cops killing people and beating
people." says a masked Ferguson resident sitting in the middle of the street
in protest of the police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown and the
violent police response to the protests that followed. - Photo: James Cooper

But the widespread militarization on display in Ferguson is part of a more
recent
<http://www.alternet.org/story/153147/pepper-spraying_protesters_is_just_the
_beginning%3A_here_are_more_hypermilitarized_weapons_your_local_police_force
_could_employ> trend that began three decades ago with the introduction of
the disastrous "war on drugs" and dramatically escalated with the "war on
terror" - leading directly to the counterinsurgency-like tactics deployed
against the people of Ferguson by civilian police officers who more closely
resemble combat soldiers in Afghanistan than domestic cops.

This
<https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/jus14-warcomeshome-report-w
eb-rel1.pdf> cop-to-soldier transformation has been facilitated by the U.S.
government through mechanisms like the Pentagon's 1033 or military surplus
program, which funnels excess military gear to law enforcement agencies
across the country. The program's motto: "From warfighter to crimefighter."

In 2013 alone, the program showered U.S. police departments with nearly
<http://www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/leso/Pages/default.aspx> $450
million worth of military equipment.

St. Louis County law enforcement agencies, including the Ferguson Police
Department,
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/08/13/ferguson-police-michael-br
own-militarization-column/14006383/> participate in this program and have
received military-grade rifles, pistols and night vision equipment in recent
years, though it's unclear if the equipment is being used in Ferguson now.

As The New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.h
tml?_r=1> reported in June, the scaling down of U.S. wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan means "former tools of combat - M-16 rifles, grenade launchers,
silencers and more - are ending up in local police departments, often with
little public notice."

"During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police
departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000
ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision
equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft," the
newspaper added.

Ferguson police also receive money from the Department of Homeland Security
as part of a grant program that has doled out billions to U.S. law
enforcement agencies to purchase military-style equipment, like the APCs
charging through the streets of Ferguson.

In the last five years alone, Missouri has received nearly
<http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119081/militarized-police-response-micha
el-brown-protests-911-legacy> $70 million in DHS money for law enforcement
related programs.

Emulating apartheid

While there is a wealth of scholarship on police militarization in the U.S.,
there has been little to no examination of the ways Israel's security
apparatus facilitates it.

Decades of testing and perfecting methods of domination and control on a
captive and disenfranchised Palestinian population has given rise to a
booming "homeland security industry" in Israel that refashions
occupation-style repression for use on marginalized populations in other
parts of the world, including St. Louis.

Under the cover of counterterrorism training, nearly every major police
agency in the United States has traveled to Israel for lessons in occupation
enforcement, a phenomenon that journalist Max Blumenthal dubbed "the
<http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/2178> Israelification of America's
security apparatus." Israeli forces and U.S. police departments are so
entrenched that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) has opened a
<http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/01/09/nypd-kfar-saba-branch-new-yo
rk-p.html> branch in Tel Aviv.

 
<http://sfbayview.com/2014/08/israel-trained-police-occupy-missouri-after-ki
lling-of-black-youth/michael-brown-aftermath-st-louis-county-police-aim-at-p
rotesters-from-armored-truck-ferguson-mo-081314-by-jeff-roberson-ap/>
Description: St. Louis County Police Department Chief Timothy Fitch was
trained by Israelis, and most of the military vehicles and officers
terrorizing Ferguson wore identification as belonging to St. Louis County
Police. - Photo: Jeff Roberson, AP

St. Louis County Police Department Chief Timothy Fitch was trained by
Israelis, and most of the military vehicles and officers terrorizing
Ferguson wore identification as belonging to St. Louis County Police. -
Photo: Jeff Roberson, AP

In 2011, then St. Louis County Police Department Chief
<http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BF1s_dc8pVsJ:https://w
w5.stlouisco.com/scripts/PD/press/view.cfm%3FViewMe%3D16635+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=c
lnk&gl=us&client=safari> Timothy Fitch attended the Anti-Defamation League's
(ADL)  <http://dc.adl.org/national-counter-terrorism-seminar-in-israel/>
National Counter-Terrorism Seminar, an annual week-long Israeli training
camp where U.S. law enforcement executives "study first hand Israel's
tactics and strategies" directly from "senior commanders in the Israel
National Police, experts from Israel's intelligence and security services,
and the Israel Defense Forces," according to the ADL's website.

Until Thursday night, the St. Louis County Police Department appeared to be
the largest, most militarized and brutish force operating in Ferguson. "St.
Louis County Police" was scrawled across the side of most of the
<http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/news_and_politics/photograp
hy/2014/08/ferguson/140814_POL_Ferguson_07.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg>
tactical unit vehicles and appeared on the combat-style
<http://a.abcnews.com/images/US/gty_police_ferguson_weapon_jc_140814_4x3_992
.jpg> uniforms of officers aiming assault rifles at peaceful protesters.

The ADL boasts of sending more than 175 senior U.S. law enforcement
officials from 100 different agencies to the seminar since 2004, who are
"taking the lessons they learned in Israel back to the United States."

The ADL is just one of several pro-Israel groups forging close ties between
U.S. cops and Israel's security and intelligence apparatus.

Another is the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a
neoconservative think tank that claims to have hosted some
<http://www.jinsa.org/files/leepConferences.pdf> 9,500 law enforcement
officials in its
<http://www.jinsa.org/events-programs/law-enforcement-exchange-program-leep/
all> Law Enforcement Exchange Program (LEEP) since 2004.

LEEP "takes delegations of senior law enforcement executives to Israel to
study methods and observe techniques used in preventing and reacting to acts
of terrorism" and "sponsors conferences within the United States, bringing
Israeli experts before much larger groups of law enforcement leaders,"
according to JINSA's  <http://www.jinsa.org/files/LEEPbookletforweb.pdf>
brochure.

Former St. Louis Police Chief Joseph Mokwa is listed as having
<http://www.jinsa.org/files/leepParticipants.pdf> traveled to Israel as part
of a LEEP conference in  <http://www.jinsa.org/files/LEEPbookletforweb.pdf>
February 2008.

Following nationwide outrage and embarrassment, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon
pulled St. Louis County Police forces out of Ferguson and placed the
Missouri Highway Patrol in charge of policing demonstrators. The St. Louis
Police Department voluntarily removed its officers from Ferguson.

As a result, Ferguson no longer looks like
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/14/ferguson-protest-contrast_n_568063
9.html> occupied territory, though the underlying issue, Michael Brown's
murder, has yet to be addressed.

Meanwhile, the scope of Israel's influence on U.S. law enforcement remains
virtually ignored by the media despite the troubling implications of
emulating an apartheid regime actively engaged in ethnic cleansing and war
crimes.

The culture of racism and impunity that has long plagued American policing
is deadly enough as it is. Adding Israeli-style repression to an already
dangerous mix guarantees disaster.

 

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