Editor’s note: This commentary is by Mark Hage, a member of Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel and host of the VTJP television program Salaam Shalom: Report on Palestine/Israel.
[S]ince 2001, thousands of U.S. police and agents from the FBI, CIA and ICE have attended training programs in Israel or here in the U.S. with visiting Israeli military personnel. Just weeks ago, it came to light that the Vermont State Police were scheduled to attend one of them.
Coined “deadly exchanges” by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), these trainings facilitate the introduction of tactics and technologies intended to militarize civilian policing, while deepening ties between the U.S. and Israel. They are led by members of Israel’s military, state security institutions, and government who have developed and honed techniques of mass violence and incarceration, surveillance, torture, censorship, and extrajudicial assassinations for over 50 years in the occupied Palestinian territories.
In November, several organizations expressed strong opposition to participation by Vermont’s state police in a December training in Israel organized by the Anti-Defamation League. The groups were Vermonters for Justice in Palestine, Migrant Justice, VT National Lawyers Guild, Justice for All, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, JVP, Black Lives Matter Burlington, Peace & Justice Center, Students for Justice in Palestine UVM, Brattleboro Common Sense, New England Yearly Meeting of Friends Israel-Palestine Working Group, Jubilee Justice Committee, Green Mountain Solidarity with Palestine, and Cathedral Church of St. Paul.
To his credit, Col. Matthew Birmingham, director of the state police, canceled Vermont’s attendance at the training. The mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts, also shut down participation by that town’s local police after local organizers contacted him. There are, in fact, similar organizing efforts across New England.
A 2018 report by Researching the American-Israeli Alliance and JVP has detailed the consequences of collaboration between U.S. police and Israel security forces. Here are excerpts:
“Informants [working with the NYPD] known as “mosque crawlers” were deployed to visit mosques, bodegas, and student organizations, and kept extensive dossiers on Muslim communities. Founders of this program admitted that they were inspired by Israeli practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
“During the trainings in Israel, airport officials explain to US delegates how they use ethnic and racial characteristics to identify suspicious passengers, and how to screen and question these passengers, read their body language and verbal responses, and perform searches.
“Law enforcement from San Bernardino and Los Angeles, among others, reported that they learned about how to intervene and shape media access and coverage of violence committed by the military and police.”
These examples demonstrate how Israel uses police exchange programs to transform decades of oppression into “field-tested” policing tactics.
Gaza, Ferguson, Baltimore, Standing Rock, the U.S.- Mexico border – this chain of militarized violence, repression and surveillance, marked by cruelty and a racist disregard for the lives of the oppressed, the poor, people of color, and indigenous communities, has deep historical roots in the U.S. and Israel. But it can be broken.
Those responsible for the occupation of Palestine, and those who rationalize or profit from it, must be exposed and stopped. Israeli practitioners should not be instructing or equipping our police.
In 2019, let’s urge our elected officials to pass legislation that would bar all Vermont law enforcement from collaborating with Israeli security forces or purchasing technologies and weapons from companies complicit in the occupation of Palestine.
