GUEST BLOG: Lois Griffiths – I Can’t Breath
The poor man. George Floyd brutally assaulted by an American policeman, earlier this year. This shocking story galvanised the world to protest the brutality of militarized American police especially against African-Americans. Let’s hope it caused white Americans to realise that their own society needed transforming.
Just a minute!! THAT’S NOT George Floyd !
Those are Israeli police and the elderly man in the photograph, is Khairi Hanoun, a Palestinian farmer. Walking with a cane, carring a Palestinian flag, he was protesting the further expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
Oh well. That’s what happens over there. We expect the Israelis to be violent. They always have been. After all, “Israel has to defend itself’, a mantra we’ve been hearing for decades: defend itself from Palestinian farmers, fishermen, men, women and children, from grandmothers, little brothers and baby sisters.
But why are American police these days so militarized: wearing military combat uniform, using tear gas, physically assaulting people?
Something happened after 9/11. It was decided that the whole kaupapa for law enforcing needed to be transformed from community policing to militarized policing.
Not that police weren’t already heavy-handed in their dealing with the public, especially African-Americans .
Police departments needed to be trained to regard the public as the enemy, an enemy to be handled violently.
American officials were faced with a problem: how to indoctrinate police departments to accept, and even approve, of this new direction.
Go to the experts!
Israel has a thriving industry, exporting its tried and proven techniques of subjugation.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an American human rights NGO has published a carefully researched eye-opening, document, Deadly Exchange, explaining how American enforcement officials are trained by Israelis. Please visit their website. You can download the document for free. It’s an important insight into trying to understand what America is like today.
Visit jewishvoiceforpeace.org to download Deadly Exchange
I assume New Zealand police aren’t trained by the Israelis. Let’s hope not.
Lois Griffiths is a Human Rights Activist
JVP Direct Link
Excellent further reading, as well as the Deadly Exchange report, is the very informative mondoweiss.net article by Israeli (American born) anthropologist Jeff Halper ,
Israelizing the American Police, Palestinizing the American Public
He writes, ” The Israeli police is far from being merely a civilian agency charged with maintaining law and order. It is a paramilitary organization, operating under the Ministry of Internal Security, which is integrated into the wider military and security agencies under a regime of “permanent emergency.” Israel views the majority of the country’s population, the Palestinian citizens of Israel and the non-citizens of the Occupied Territory, plus other segments of Israeli society from African asylum seekers to “pro-Arab” progressives and Leftists, as “the enemy.” The major stance of the Israel police is thus not primarily a civilian task – protecting society as a whole – but one of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism.
68 year old Khairy Hanoun was protesting the confiscation of his land when he was so savagely attacked on 1st September. Not shown in the photo above, the guns trained on those trying to record what was happening.
The land from Hanoun’s village of Shufa, on the Northern West Bank, is being taken to build an industrial zone. Here is what Hanoun said:
“The [Israeli occupation’s] bulldozers came two weeks ago and started bulldozing the land and making roads for the industrial zone. People were prevented from being on their land. Of course, the inhabitants started to demonstrate in order to prevent this terrible Israeli project. On Tuesday we had four demonstrations in the area. The IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] prevented us from reaching the land. They used sound bombs and tear gas on people.”
After the demonstration had finished, the Israeli soldiers followed some teenagers, so Khairy and some activists tried to talk to the soldiers to tell them not to shoot at the kids.
“You can see from the video what happened.”
Video of the attack
Using the knee to neck tactic