After Michael Brown’s killing in 2014, Black protesters in Ferguson, Missouri faced a battleground of police weaponry and military tactics. From rubber bullets to neck restraints, many condemned this militarized level of brutality.
Many also discovered the relationship U.S. police have with another region.
Thousands of police officers, hailing from all over the country, have trained with Israeli officials. Hundreds traveled to Israel to learn killer tactics in person. They include former Ferguson police chief, Timothy Fitch, who “studied counter-terrorism.”
It’s not hard to see the connection when U.S. law enforcement surveils Black activists as “domestic terrorists."
For decades, Israel’s military has dispossessed, dehumanized, and murdered Palestinians, including Afro-Palestinians, justifying it by labeling them “terrorists,” too.
In fact, according to Amnesty International, Israel has “racked up human rights violations for years” – including torturing children and brutalizing protesters hoping to stop this genocide.
Israel and U.S. police even used the same U.S.-made tear gas canisters against Palestinian and Black American activists. And the U.S. has given Israel billions in taxpayer dollars in the past few decades to maintain military prowess in the region.
White supremacist policing and militarization is international. Challenging the U.S. police requires looking to its allied systemic violence worldwide, especially when carceral violence creates and feeds of anti-Blackness, xenophobia, and Islamophobia.
Our intertwined freedom is worth standing in solidarity together.