Étiquettes
Isreal, Palestinians, Repressive Tactics, US, US communities of color
In communities throughout the United States, law enforcement agencies are choosing to send officers to Israel on exchange programs to share violent practices of surveillance and repression. But as communities learn of these trips and their content, they are quickly backing out. Just last week, the Vermont State Police and Northampton Massachusetts Police Department pulled officers from a recent trip sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a self-proclaimed “civil rights” organization. Yet, in the face of community outrage and criticism, the ADL continues to stand by these deadly exchanges.
Since 9/11, US law enforcement agencies — including state and local police departments, as well as federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement — have participated in exchange programs with Israeli military and police forces. These programs facilitate a show-and-tell of worst practices, and the effects have been felt immediately here and in Palestine. In 2003, the New York Police Department (NYPD) established a “Demographics Unit” that infiltrated mosques, spied on Muslim student groups and tracked Muslim scholars. CIA officer Lawrence Sanchez, who helped to establish the program, told his colleagues that the idea came from Israeli methods of controlling the West Bank. Meanwhile, in 2016, Israeli police instituted the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk strategy, to harass and search young Palestinian men without probable cause.
In fact, the ADL — which advocates for Israel — has a long track record of working against movements for social and racial justice. In 2003, the ADL settled with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in the case ADC v. ADL, resulting from illegal spying carried out by the ADL on myriad social justice organizations, including Arab American organizations like the ADC, anti-apartheid groups like Artists Against Apartheid, gay liberation group ACT UP, the American Indian Movement (AIM) and unions like the United Farm Workers.
A permanent injunction prohibits the ADL from continuing surveillance, but today the ADL facilitates the National Counter-Terrorism Seminar (NCTS), bringing US officials to Israel, and the Advanced Training School, bringing Israeli law enforcement to the United States. On NCTS, law enforcement visit checkpoints that restrict Palestinian freedom of movement, meet with the Shin Bet security service known for carrying out targeted assassinations, and learn from Israel Airports Authority, which systematically racially profiles travelers.
Across the United States, as communities learn about these deadly exchanges, they are quickly severing ties. In April 2018, the city council in Durham, North Carolina, voted to prohibit police participation in international “military-style training” exchange programs, and just last week state police in Vermont and local police in Northampton, Massachusetts, decided to cancel participation in the recently concluded ADL-sponsored police exchange program for New England law enforcement agencies.
Groupe Gaulliste Sceaux 
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