Jewish Voice
for Peace, December 2, 2011
From
Occupation to “Occupy”: The Israelification of American
Domestic Security
By Max Blumenthal
New
York - In October, 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, [2] 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 [3] the encampment with teargas
and rubber bullet rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in critical
condition [4] and dozens injured. According to Police Magazine
[5], a law enforcement trade publication, “Law enforcement
agencies responding to…Occupy protesters in northern California
credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.”
Training alongside the American police departments at Urban Shield
was the Yamam, [6] an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to
specialize in “counter-terror” operations but is better
known for its extra-judicial assassinations [7] of Palestinian
militant leaders and long record of repression [8] and abuses
[9] in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Urban Shield also
featured a unit from the military of Bahrain , which had just
crushed a largely non-violent democratic uprising by opening fire
[10] on protest camps and arresting [11] 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 but all-too-common feature of the post-9/11 American
security landscape.
The Israelification of America’s security apparatus, recently
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 reports that typically
highlight Israel ’s national security prowess without examining
the problematic nature of working with a country accused of grave
human rights abuses. But it has never been the subject of a national
discussion. And collaboration between American and Israeli cops
is just the tip of the iceberg.
Having been schooled in Israeli tactics perfected during a 63
year experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an
indigenous population, local 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 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.
The process of Israelification 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. By now, police chiefs of major American
cities who have not been on junkets to Israel are the exception.
“
Israel is the Harvard of antiterrorism,” said [12] former
US Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer, who now serves as
the US Senate Sergeant-at-Arms. Cathy Lanier, the Chief of the
Washington DC Metropolitan Police, remarked, [12] “No experience
in my life has had more of an impact on doing my job than going
to Israel .” “One would say it is the front line,”
Barnett Jones, the police chief of Ann Arbor , Michigan , said
[13] of Israel . “We're in a global war.”
Karen Greenberg, [14] the 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,” Greenberg told me.
“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? It’s counter-terrorism
creep. And it’s exactly what you could have predicted would
have happened.”
Changing the way we do business
The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs [15] (JINSA)
is at the heart of American-Israeli law enforcement collaboration.
JINSA is a Jerusalem and Washington DC-based think tank known
for stridently neoconservative policy positions on Israel ’s
policy towards the Palestinians and its brinkmanship with Iran
. The group’s board of directors boasts a Who’s Who
of neocon ideologues. Two former JINSA advisors [16] who have
also consulted for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, went on to serve in the Department
of Defense under President George W. Bush, playing influential
roles in the push to invade and occupy Iraq.
Through its Law Enforcement Education Program [17] (LEEP), JINSA
claims to have arranged Israeli-led training sessions for over
9000 American law enforcement officials at the federal, state
and municipal level. “The Israelis changed the way we do
business regarding homeland security in New Jersey,” Richard
Fuentes, the NJ State Police Superintendent, said [18] after attending
a 2004 JINSA-sponsored Israel trip and a subsequent JINSA conference
alongside 435 other law enforcement officers.
During a 2004 LEEP trip, [19] JINSA brought 14 senior American
law enforcement officials to Israel to receive instruction from
their counterparts. The Americans were trained in “how to
secure large venues, such as shopping malls, sporting events and
concerts,” JINSA’s website reported. Escorted by Brigadier
General Simon Perry, an Israeli police attaché and former
Mossad official, the group toured the Israeli separation wall,
now a mandatory stop for American cops on junkets to Israel .
“American officials learned about the mindset of a suicide
bomber and how to spot trouble signs,” according to JINSA.
And they were schooled in Israeli killing methods. “Although
the police are typically told to aim for the chest when shooting
because it is the largest target, the Israelis are teaching [American]
officers to aim for a suspect's head so as not to detonate any
explosives that might be strapped to his torso,” the New
York Times reported. [20]
Cathy Lanier, now the Chief of Washington DC’s Metropolitan
Police Department, was among the law enforcement officials junketed
to Israel by JINSA. “I was with the bomb units and the SWAT
team and all of those high profile specialized [Israeli] units
and I learned a tremendous amount,” Lanier reflected. [21]
“I took 82 pages of notes while I was there which I later
brought back and used to formulate a lot of what I later used
to create and formulate the Homeland Security terrorism bureau
in the DC Metropolitan Police department.”
Some 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 [12] to Israel sponsored
by PERF, bringing numerous high-level American police officials
to receive instruction from their Israeli counterparts.
PERF gained notoriety when Wexler confirmed [22] that his group
coordinated police raids in 16 cities across America against “Occupy”
protest encampments. As many as 40 cities have sought PERF advice
[23] on suppressing the “Occupy” movement and other
mass protest activities. Wexler did not respond to my requests
for an interview.
Lessons from Israel to Auschwitz
Besides JINSA, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has positioned
itself as an important liaison between American police forces
and the Israeli security-intelligence apparatus. Though the ADL
promotes itself as a Jewish civil rights group, it has provoked
controversy [24] by publishing a blacklist of organizations supporting
Palestinian rights, and for condemning a proposal to construct
an Islamic community center in downtown New York, several blocks
from Ground Zero, on the basis that some opponents of the project
were entitled to “positions that others would characterize
as irrational or bigoted.”
Through the ADL’s Advanced Training School [25] course on
Extremist and Terrorist Threats, over 700 law enforcement personnel
from 220 federal and local agencies including the FBI and CIA
have been trained by Israeli police and intelligence commanders.
This year, the ADL brought 15 high-level American police officials
to Israel for instruction from the country’s security apparatus.
According to the ADL, over 115 federal, state and local law enforcement
executives have undergone ADL-organized training sessions in Israel
since the program began in 2003. “I can honestly say that
the training offered by ADL is by far the most useful and current
training course I have ever attended,” Deputy Commissioner
Thomas Wright of the Philadelphia Police Department commented
[26] after completing an ADL program this year. The ADL’s
relationship with the Washington DC Police Department is so cozy
its members are invited to accompany DC cops on “ride along”
patrols.
The ADL claims to have trained over 45,000 American law enforcement
officials through its Law Enforcement and Society program, [27]
which “draws on the history of the Holocaust to provide law
enforcement professionals with an increased understanding of…their
role as protectors of the Constitution,” the group’s
website stated. All new FBI agents and intelligence analysts are
required to attend the ADL program, which is incorporated into
three FBI training programs. According to official FBI recruitment
material, [28] “all new special agents must visit the US
Holocaust Memorial Museum to see firsthand what can happen when
law enforcement fails to protect individuals.”
Fighting “crimiterror”
Among
the most prominent Israeli government figure to have influenced
the practices of American law enforcement officials is Avi Dichter,
[29] a former head of Israel ’s Shin Bet internal security
service and current member of Knesset who recently introduced
legislation widely criticized as anti-democratic. [30] During
the Second Intifada, Dichter ordered several bombings on densely
populated Palestinian civilian areas, including one on the al-Daraj
neighborhood of Gaza that resulted in the death of 15 innocent
people, including 8 children, and 150 injuries. “After each
success, the only thought is, ‘Okay, who’s next?’”
Dichter said of the “targeted” assassinations he has
ordered.
Despite his dubious human rights record and apparently dim view
of democratic values, or perhaps because of them, Dichter has
been a key figure in fostering cooperation between Israeli security
forces and American law enforcement. In 2006, while Dichter was
serving at the time as Israel ’s Minister of Public Security,
he spoke in Boston , Massachusetts before the annual convention
of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Seated beside
FBI Director Robert Mueller and then-Attorney General Alberto
Gonzalez, Dichter told the 10,000 police officers in the crowd
that there was an “intimate connection between fighting criminals
and fighting terrorists.” Dichter declared [31] that American
cops were actually “fighting crimiterrorists.” The Jerusalem
Post reported that Dichter was “greeted by a hail of applause,
as he was hugged by Mueller, who described Dichter as his mentor
in anti-terror tactics.”
A year after Dichter’s speech, he and then-Secretary of the
Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff signed [32] a
joint memorandum pledging security collaboration between America
and Israel on issues ranging from airport security to emergency
planning. In 2010, Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano authorized
[33] a new joint memorandum with Israeli Transport and Road Safety
Minister Israel Katz shoring up cooperation between the US Transportation
Security Agency – the agency in charge of day-to-day airport
security – and Israel ’s Security Department. The recent
joint memorandum also consolidated the presence of US Homeland
Security law enforcement personnel on Israeli soil. “The
bond between the United States and Israel has never been stronger,”
Napolitano remarked [34] at a recent summit of AIPAC, the leading
outfit of America ’s Israel lobby, in Scottsdale , Arizona
.
The Demographic Unit
For the New York Police Department, collaboration with Israel
’s security and intelligence apparatus became a top priority
after 9/11. Just months after the attacks on New York City , the
NYPD assigned a permanent, taxpayer-funded liaison officer [35]
to Tel Aviv. Under the leadership of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly,
ties between the NYPD and Israel have deepened by the day. Kelly
embarked on his first trip [36] to Israel in early 2009 to demonstrate
his support for Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip,
a one-sided attack that left over 1400 Gaza residents dead in
three weeks and led a United Nations fact-finding mission to conclude
that Israeli military and government officials had committed war
crimes.
Kelly returned to Israel the following year to speak [37] at the
Herziliya Conference, an annual gathering of neoconservative security
and government officials who obsess over supposed “demographic
threats.” After Kelly appeared on stage, the Herziliya crowd
was addressed by the pro-Israel academic Martin Kramer, who claimed
[38] that Israel ’s blockade of Gaza was helping to reduce
the numbers of “superfluous young men of fighting age.”
Kramer added, “If a state can’t control these young
men, then someone else will.”
Back in New York , the NYPD set up a secret “Demographics
Unit” [39] designed to spy on and monitor Muslim communities
around the city. The unit was developed with input and intensive
involvement by the CIA, which still refuses to name the former
Middle East station chief it has posted in the senior ranks of
the NYPD’s intelligence division. Since 2002, the NYPD has
dispatched undercover agents known as “rakers” and “mosque
crawlers” into Pakistani-American bookstores and restaurants
to gauge community anger over US drone strikes inside Pakistan
, and into Palestinian hookah bars and mosques to search out signs
of terror recruitment and clandestine funding. “If a raker
noticed a customer looking at radical literature, he might chat
up the store owner and see what he could learn,” the Associated
Press reported. “The bookstore, or even the customer, might
get further scrutiny.”
The Israeli imprimatur on the NYPD’s Demographics Unit is
unmistakable. As a former police official told the Associated
Press, the Demographics Unit has attempted to “map the city’s
human terrain” through a program “modeled in part on
how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank .”
Shop ‘til you’re stopped
At
Israel ’s Ben Gurion International Airport , security personnel
target non-Jewish and non-white passengers, especially Arabs,
as a matter of policy. The most routinely harassed passengers
are Palestinian citizens of Israel , who must brace themselves
[40] for five-hour interrogation sessions and strip searches before
flying. Those singled out for extra screening by Shin Bet officers
are sent to what many Palestinians from Israel call the “Arab
room,” where they are subjected to humiliating questioning
sessions (former White House Health and Human Services Secretary
Donna Shalala encountered such mistreatment [41] during a visit
to Israel last year). Some Palestinians are forbidden from speaking
to anyone until takeoff, and may be menaced [42] by Israeli flight
attendants during the flight. In one documented case, a six-month-old
was awoken for a strip search by Israeli Shin Bet personnel. Instances
of discrimination against Arabs at Ben Gurion International are
too numerous to detail – several incidents occur each day
– but a few of the more egregious instances were outlined
in a 2007 petition [43] the Association for Civil Rights in Israel
filed with the country’s Supreme Court.
Though the Israeli system of airline security contains dubious
benefits and clearly deleterious implications for civil liberties,
it is quietly and rapidly migrating into major American airports.
Security personnel at Boston ’s Logan International Airport
have undergone extensive training [44] from Israeli intelligence
personnel, learning to apply profiling and behavioral assessment
techniques against American citizens that were initially tested
on Palestinians. The new procedures began in August, when so-called
Behavior Detection Officers were placed [45] in security queues
at Logan ’s heavily trafficked Terminal A. Though the procedures
have added to traveler stress while netting exactly zero terrorists,
they are likely to spread to other cities. “I would like
to see a lot more profiling” in American airports, said [46]
Yossi Sheffi, an Israeli-born risk analyst at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Center for Transportation and Logistics.
Israeli techniques now dictate security procedures at the Mall
of America, a gargantuan shopping mall in Bloomington , Minnesota
that has become a major tourist attraction. The new methods took
hold in 2005 when the mall hired a former Israeli army sergeant
named Mike Rozin to lead a special new security unit. Rozin, who
once worked with a canine unit at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel
, instructed his employees at the Mall of America to visually
profile every shopper, examining their expressions for suspicious
signs. His security team accosts and interrogates [47] an average
of 1200 shoppers a year, according to the Center for Investigative
Reporting.
One of the thousands who fell into Rozin’s dragnet was Najam
Qureshi, a Pakistani-American mall vendor whose father accidentally
left his cell phone on a table in the mall food court. A day after
the incident, FBI agents appeared at Qureshi’s doorstep to
ask if he knew anyone seeking to harm the United States . An army
veteran interrogated for two hours by Rozin’s men for taking
video inside the mall sobbed openly [47] about his experience
to reporters. Meanwhile, another man, Emile Khalil, was visited
by FBI agents after mall security stopped him for taking photographs
of the dazzling consumer haven.
“I think that the threat of terrorism in the United States
is going to become an unfortunate part of American life,”
Rozin remarked [48] to American Jewish World. And as long as the
threat persists in the public’s mind, Israeli securitocrats
like Rozin will never have to worry about the next paycheck.
“Occupy” meets the Occupation
When a riot squad from the New York Police Department destroyed
and evicted the “Occupy Wall Street” protest encampment
at Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan, department leadership
drew on the anti-terror tactics they had refined since the 9/11
attacks. According to the New York Times, the NYPD deployed “counterterrorism
measures” [49] to mobilize large numbers of cops for the
lightning raid on Zuccotti. The use of anti-terror techniques
to suppress a civilian protest complemented harsh police measures
demonstrated across the country against the nationwide “Occupy”
movement, from firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets into
unarmed crowds to blasting demonstrators with the LRAD sound cannon.
[50]
Given the amount of training the NYPD and so many other police
forces have received from Israel’s military-intelligence
apparatus, and the profuse levels of gratitude American police
chiefs have expressed to their Israeli mentors, it is worth asking
how much Israeli instruction has influenced the way the police
have attempted to suppress the Occupy movement, and how much it
will inform police repression of future upsurges of street protest.
But already, the Israelification of American law enforcement appears
to have intensified police hostility towards the civilian population,
blurring the lines between protesters, common criminals, and terrorists.
As Dichter said, they are all just “crimiterrorists.”
“After 9/11 we had to react very quickly,” Greenberg
remarked, “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.”
Back
to Top
Send
this page to a friend!
