Israel “Occupying” USA domestic security agencies? How insidious the training of the US police forces? Part 1
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 4, 2011
Part 1. Israel “occupying” USA domestic security agencies? How this Israelification is insidious?
Margaret Flowers posted on Dec. 4, 2011 under “The Israelification of America domestic security”.
This lengthy article describes how the State of Israel and its various lobbies in the USA have infiltrated US domestic security agencies and have taken root through sponsored trips to attending various programs within Israel security agencies and services.
I had to split the article into two parts after minor rearrangement.
I didn’t think much comments were necessary and the article could fall within the rubric “NO COMMENT“.
The first part is on how Israel is breaking up the Occupy Wall Street protests.
Collaboration between US and Israeli cops is just the tip of the iceberg.
Training alongside the US police departments and internal security apparatus at Urban Shield was theYamam, an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in “counter-terror” operations.
Actually, the Yamam is better known for its extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders and its long record of repression and abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel cooperation unleashed in full force against the Occupy Wall Street Movement, has taken place at every level of law enforcement, and in areas that have yet to be exposed.
The phenomenon has been documented in bits and pieces, through occasional news report that typically highlight Israel’s national security prowess without examining the problematic nature of working with a country accused of grave human rights abuses.
This insidious “cooperation” has never been the subject of a national discussion.
“The New York Police Department’s disclosure that it deployed “counter-terror” measures against Occupy protesters encamped in downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park is just the latest example of the so-called War on Terror creeping into every day life.
Revelations like these have raised serious questions about the extent to which Israeli-inspired tactics are being used to suppress the Occupy movement.
Karen Greenberg, director of Fordham School of Law’s Center on National Security and a leading expert on terror and civil liberties, said the Israeli influence on American law enforcement is so extensive it has bled into street-level police conduct.
“After 9/11, we reached out to the Israelis on many fronts and one of those fronts was torture. The training in Iraq and Afghanistan on torture was Israeli training. There’s been a huge downside to taking our cue from the Israelis and now we’re going to spread that into the fabric of everyday American life?
Israel’s counter-terrorism creep. And it’s exactly what you could have predicted would have happened.
After 9/11 we had to react very quickly, but now we’re in 2011 and we’re not talking about people who want to fly planes into buildings. We’re talking about young American citizens who feel that their birthright has been sold.
If we’re using Israeli style tactics on them and this stuff bleeds into the way we do business at large, were in big trouble.”
Through its Law Enforcement Education Program (LEEP), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) claims to have arranged Israeli-led training sessions for over 9,000 American law enforcement officials at the federal, state and municipal level. Richard Fuentes, the NJ State Police Superintendent, said after attending a 2004 JINSA:
“The Israelis changed the way we do business regarding homeland security in New Jersey.” Fuentes was part of a sponsored Israel trip and a subsequent JINSA conference alongside 435 other law enforcement officers.
A few of the police chiefs who have taken part in JINSA’s LEEP program have done so under the auspices of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a private non-governmental group with close ties to the Department of Homeland Security.
Chuck Wexler, the executive director of PERF, was so enthusiastic about the program that by 2005 he had begun organizing trips to Israel, sponsored by PERF, bringing numerous high-level American police officials to receive instruction from their Israeli counterparts.
What were the immediate benefits?
PERF gained notoriety when Wexler confirmed that his group coordinated police raids in 16 cities across America against “Occupy” protest encampments. As many as 40 cities have sought PERF advice on suppressing the “Occupy” movement and other mass protest activities. Wexler did not respond to my requests for an interview.
Margaret Flowers wrote:
“the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department turned parts of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley into an urban battlefield. The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual SWAT team exposition organized to promote “mutual response,” collaboration and competition between heavily militarized police strike forces representing law enforcement departments across the United States and foreign nations.
At the time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department was preparing for an imminent confrontation with the nascent “Occupy” movement that had set up camp in downtown Oakland, and would demonstrate the brunt of its repressive capacity against the demonstrators a month later when it attacked the encampment with teargas and rubber bullet rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in critical condition and dozens injured.
According to Police Magazine, (a law enforcement trade publication): “Law enforcement agencies responding to…Occupy protesters in northern California credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.”
Urban Shield also featured a unit from the military of Bahrain, which had just crushed a largely non-violent democratic uprising by opening fire on protest camps and arresting wounded demonstrators when they attempted to enter hospitals.
While the involvement of Bahraini soldiers in the drills was a novel phenomenon, the presence of quasi-military Israeli police – whose participation in Urban Shield was not reported anywhere in US media – reflected a disturbing and all-too-common feature of the post-9/11 American security landscape.
Having been schooled in Israeli tactics, and perfected during a 63-year experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an indigenous Palestinian population, local US police forces have adapted them to monitor Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods in US cities.
Meanwhile, former Israeli military officers have been hired to spearhead security operations at American airports and suburban shopping malls, leading to a wave of disturbing incidents of racial profiling, intimidation, and FBI interrogations of innocent, unsuspecting people.
The process of Israel’s insidious meddling in US domestic security began in the immediate wake of 9/11, when national panic led federal and municipal law enforcement officials to beseech Israeli security honchos for “advice and training”.
America’s Israel lobby exploited the climate of hysteria, providing thousands of top cops with all-expenses paid trips to Israel and stateside training sessions with Israeli military and intelligence officials. Police chiefs of major American cities who have not been on junkets to Israel are the exception.
US Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer said:
“Israel is the Harvard of antiterrorism...”
Cathy Lanier, the Chief of the Washington DC Metropolitan Police, said:
“No experience in my life has had more of an impact on doing my job than going to Israel.”
Barnett Jones, the police chief of Ann Arbor, Michigan, said of Israel: “One would say it is the front line. We’re in a global war.”
Note: You may read the follow-up post https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/part-2-israel-occupy-usa-domestic-security-agencies-how-insiduous-is-this-invasion/
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