New York state sends police chiefs to Israel for 'counterterrorism' training

More than a dozen police officers from the state of New York are on a training trip to Israel despite human rights experts saying that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Police officers have already been accused of being heavy-handed against pro-Palestine protestors both on student campuses in the state and in New York City.

The 13 officials are said to be learning about security issues facing Israel, undertaking counterterrorism training to protect Jewish communities, and learning about antisemitism.

The training comes the same week Israel launched unprovoked air strikes on the sovereign territory of Qatar on Tuesday in violation of international law, killing five Palestinians and one Qatari. Israel then killed 46 people and wounded 165 people in an ongoing exchange of strikes on Wednesday in Yemen.

According to a report in JNS, Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs has been running the government training programme for US law enforcement officials for six years and has been dubbed “Birthright for American police chiefs,” in reference to free trips to Israel offered to young Jews who live outside of Israel.

The training session is reportedly the second since the war on Gaza began in October 2023. Michel Kopy, commissioner of public safety for Rye, in Westchester County, told JNS, “The resilience of the Israeli people just stands out."

Long history of collaboration

US police trainers have been trained by their counterparts in Israel for more than two decades. Thousands of officers have learned crowd control, use of force, and surveillance from Israel’s police, military and intelligence services, according to an article by Amnesty International.

The article said that while pro-Israel groups privately fund some of these trips, most of these trips are taxpayer-funded.

In 2016, the Department of Justice published a report which found that the Baltimore Police Department “makes stops, searches and arrests without the required justification; uses enforcement strategies that unlawfully subject African Americans to disproportionate rates of stops, searches and arrests; uses excessive force; and retaliates against individuals for their constitutionally-protected expression”.

Critics of Israel’s military training programme have said that it exacerbates American police brutality, increases racial profiling of brown and Black people, represses social justice movements and contributes to the proliferation of surveillance and a police state.

Human rights experts say the Israeli military teaches American police officers potentially illegal and unconstitutional policing tactics for training its officers.

The practices of draconian policing were seen in the killing of unarmed Black civilian George Floyd by white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who asphyxiated Floyd by putting his knee on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes.

The killing, which was caught on camera, sparked national and international outcry and protests.

Activists pointed out that more than 100 Minneapolis Police Department officers were tactically trained on using one’s knee to restrain civilians at a counterterrorism event at the Israeli Consulate in Chicago in 2012, which was led by the Israeli military and police.