Friday, June 07, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
Haters constantly attempt to slander Israel as a
“white-supremacist” state. Using lies and distortions, they are trying to
convince African-Americans that Israel hates blacks and that they should hate
Israel.
Unfortunately, the lies seem to be working. In a recent poll,
only 46% of black Americans viewed Israel as “ally” or “friendly”, compared to 67%
percent of whites.
One of the accusations leveled at Israel, is that Israel is
responsible for police brutality against blacks in America, because Israel has
trained U.S. police forces in “brutal tactics” it uses against Palestinians. For
instance, a black movement has recently attacked
the Congressional Black Caucus for their support of Israel, citing the same
accusation.
But is it true? Is there any evidence linking Police
brutality in the US with Israeli Police?
One of the first people to make this accusation is an Israeli
BDS activist who included it in a lecture he
gave in Denver in 2014 [starting at 38:15]. Somehow linking it to a conversation he
had with a Maryland cop about Israel, he goes as far as telling the American
crowd “You guys are next in line. The next one who will die out of brutality
of the police, will be one of your sons or your daughters, in a protest,
because they are training together. Your Police training with our Army.”
JVP launched a campaign
around the accusation and it constantly appears in left-leaning media outlets
like The
Intercept and Truthout and
even made it into Teen
Vogue.
In 2018, two US Police departments caved to anti-Israel
hate groups’ pressure and cancelled their
training in Israel.
All those articles follow the same line. They assume Israel
is “brutal” and then comes the “proof”:
“A) US Police have trained in Israel.
B) There’s a problem of Police Brutality in the
US.
so
B) must be caused by A)”
Of course, this is a classic logical
fallacy. There’s no proof nor evidence showing a cause-and-effect
relationship between training in Israel and Police brutality in the US.
Police
brutality in the United States started long before the
training program in Israel was launched about 20 years ago. In fact, a commission to
investigate police tactics was established in the 1920’s (long before Israel
was even founded) and brutality grew worse in the
1960’s.
Serious research into the problem by experts and human
rights groups points to other reasons for police brutality, unrelated to
Israel.
One report blames
the post-9/11 "War on Terror" which has created a “climate of
impunity for law enforcement officers, and contributed to the erosion of what
few accountability mechanisms exist for civilian control over law enforcement
agencies. As a result, police brutality and abuse persist unabated and
undeterred across the country." Nothing to do with Israel, which isn’t
even mentioned in the report.
Another report cites
U.S. wars abroad and the soldier-to-police officer transition that has become
common, bringing veterans of foreign wars home to patrol mostly poor and
working-class communities of color. Again, Israel is not mentioned.
The ADL has clarified that in
the training session, US officers meet both Israeli and Palestinian law
enforcement officers. Yet I’ve never seen anyone accusing Palestinian police of
brutality in the US. There’s no evidence to date that any participant in their
program has used what they learned in Israel to promote racial or religious
profiling, police misconduct, or discrimination. But who cares about evidence?
The claim that Israeli training is causing brutality in
America is totally illogical. Israel is being used here as a scapegoat by
haters.
As correctly articulated by
another writer, this blaming of Jews for murder of innocents, literally blaming
Israel for causing the murder of American “sons
and daughters”, even though the Jews had nothing to do with
them, is a classic trope of antisemitism.
Yes, this is one more medieval-style blood libel, where
Jews became the scapegoats for problems that were not of their making.
Fortunately, not everyone falls for these Jew-hating
tropes. A statement
published by The National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives
rebuke these accusations and reiterates support for the training program. The
new Congressional
Black-Jewish Caucus could be another good sign.
(I had demolished the idea that Israel is responsible for US police brutality from another angle in 2015 - EoZ)
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