Local police departments across America receive Israeli Military Police training

It is not uncommon for residents of America’s most heavily policed neighborhoods to describe their local cops as “an occupying force.” Judging by where many U.S. police forces get their training, the description seems apt.

Thousands of American law enforcement officers frequently travel for training to one of the few countries where policing and militarism are even more deeply intertwined than they are here: Israel.

U.S. police departments from small and large cities, such as Boca Raton, Boston, Chicago, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. have sent delegates to Israel for instruction. While there has been increased examination of American connections to various foreign powers, “U.S.-Israel police exchange programs have carried on without much public scrutiny.”

The Intercept wrote, “The focus of this training is on riot suppression, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism — all of which are essentially irrelevant or should be irrelevant to the vast majority of police departments…They shouldn’t be suppressing protest, they shouldn’t be engaging in counterinsurgency, and almost none of them face any real threat from terrorism.”

This is military education, enforcing armed forces’ rule, rather than learning how to maintain order in civil society. In the United States, the posse comitatus act forbids the domestic use of the armed forces without authorization by Act of Congress or the Constitution. (18 U.S. Code Section 1835). Yet, police departments around the country rely on Israeli military training and act as soldiers in blue uniforms.

Apartheid-supporting Israel routinely uses its police and military forces to murder or maim Palestinians who protest the Zionist seizure of their land and property. This includes journalists, such as Yaser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein who covered the Great March of Return.

Additionally, doctors, like the Canadian, Tarek Loubani, and medical workers, notably Razan al-Najjar, a 21-year-old nurse, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers during that same event. American policemen are rough enough without the addition of Zionist brutality. Remember Black Lives Matter? “American police shoot and kill far more people than their peers in other countries.”

And that’s not because U.S. citizens are allowed to possess firearms. “Many military veterans make careers in policing. Some bring war home… Even as departments around the country have attempted a cultural transformation from ‘warriors” to ‘guardians,’ one in five police officers is literally a warrior, returned from Afghanistan, Iraq or other assignments.”