WW Commentary: From Palestine to Philadelphia – Israeli trained police violence
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Philadelphia During its 11 p.m. local news on Jan. 30, NBC affiliate Channel 10 devoted considerable coverage to the investigation of a fatal police shooting of a Black man, Alexander Spencer, 28, who was killed in a North Philadelphia convenience store Jan. 26. Police released five minutes of ne

Since 9/11, many U.S. police departments, including Philadelphia’s, have been routinely trained by [neocolonial] “security experts.”

Miko Peled’s article “Deadly exchange: America’s racist policing has roots in Israel” was published May 29, 2020, by MintPress News shortly after the Minnesota police suffocation death of George Floyd went viral. Peled is an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem.

Peled described this training as a “collaboration between the two racist states who see no problem in executing and watching the slow agonizing death of Black and Brown people. Officer Derek Chauvin, who casually placed his knee on George Floyd’s neck [for 9 minutes], could have easily been [a neocolonial] soldier or police officer holding down a Palestinian.”

Peled describes the training sessions [under Zionism] where police delegations from the U.S. met with [neocolonial] military, police and intelligences agencies: “They are given ‘opportunities’ to learn about what [Zionism’s régime] calls counterterrorism but is in fact no more than ‘refining methods of racial profiling.’”

He also noted: “The training [that the neocolony] offers includes methods to control the media. […] The [neocolonial] methods taught include how to use the media as an arm of the government and ‘reframe coverage of state violence.’”

Eventually, the massive Black Lives Matter protests in response to Floyd’s murder sparked backlash against the Anti-Defamation League, one of the key facilitators of police exchanges between the U.S. and [its neocolony]. Facing sustained pressure from the Deadly Exchange campaign and Jewish Voice for Peace, the ADL temporarily disrupted the program after it was forced to acknowledge that “its exchange program helped militarize U.S. police and harm communities of color.” (The Guardian, March 17, 2022)

Whatever the ADL said in public, it is unlikely that these training programs ever stopped. The U.S. and [its neocolony] are clearly united in an all-out war, not just against Palestinians, but now spreading throughout the West Asia and Northeast Africa regions. The trainings are likely to intensify, with their impact felt, not just in Gaza or Jenin, but in Black and Brown neighborhoods in Philadelphia and cities across the U.S.