London, June 2 (RHC)-- Amnesty International has revealed how police forces from a surprisingly wide expanse of the United States have been receiving training from Israeli forces and services, warning that the violence being exercised by American law enforcement has come to match Israeli brutality.
The UK-based rights group said the American police members have been either traveling to the occupied territories to receive training or have been trained inside the United States by Israeli forces. It said Israeli police, military, and intelligence services have been providing training to American forces on such issues as “crowd control, use of force and surveillance.”
It identified the recipients as “Baltimore law enforcement officials, along with hundreds of others from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state as well as the DC Capitol police.”
Besides those traveling to the occupied territories, “thousands of others have received training from Israeli officials in the U.S.,” Amnesty International noted.
The training is either taxpayer funded or privately funded as in the case of the money that has been offered for the process since 2002 by the international far-right Jewish organization Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange that arranges for visits to the occupied territories by Americans, and Washington, D.C-based think tank, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs of America, the human rights organization reported.
The training process, it regretted, puts members of the U.S. police “in the hands of [the Israeli] military, security, and police systems that have racked up documented human rights violations for years.” Amnesty cautioned that U.S. police abuses had now come to “parallel violations by Israeli military, security and police officials.”
Disturbing footage of a Black man being choked to death by a Minneapolis police officer in the United States has sparked online outrage and street protests over what is being described as the lynching of an unarmed Black man by armed police.
The reaction to this now opens up a wider conversation about why these incidents happen and how the follow-up to the crime is so similar to when Palestinians are killed by Israeli troops. It cited some of Israeli forces’ atrocities as extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings, the use of ill-treatment and torture even against children, suppression of freedom of expression and association, and excessive use of force against peaceful protesters.
Amnesty International finally advised that the U.S. police be instead trained on de-escalation techniques, how to handle mentally challenged or ill citizens, and how to appropriately respond to those using non-violent protest.
“The people of Baltimore deserve better. The American public deserves better,” the human rights agency said.
