Israel/Palestine post 10/7 - follow-on events/thoughts as relate to other countries

Last time I saw Antarctica get involved in protests was the Iraq war.

This is so gross:

#HAPPENINGNOW: An incredible scene and proud moment as we have assisted @CityCollegeNY in restoring order on campus, culminating in raising Old Glory once again on their campus flagpole. 🇺🇸@NYPDPC @NYPD1stDep @NYPDChiefOfDept @NYPDChiefPatrol @NYPDnews pic.twitter.com/XZWFmvXcUs

— NYPD Deputy Commissioner, Operations Kaz Daughtry (@NYPDDaughtry) May 1, 2024

yeah I posted that on the Abolish the Police thread

see also this: https://bsky.app/profile/joshuajfriedman.com/post/3krgqsgggvs24

Minouche Shafik wrote a 2021 book - 'What we owe each other' - where she proposes a reset of the social contract to improve intergenerational fairness.
Then she went to Columbia and brought a notoriously violent police force into that social contract https://t.co/sI3aGz1wCR pic.twitter.com/QcdZWZrHw3

— Daniela Gabor (@DanielaGabor) May 1, 2024

Does NYC have a budget deficit or is it in a good financial place? … Not to discount the repressive impulse of cops, but they are also motivated by OT pay

Maybe they feel righteous going after privileged college kids… what’s the racial makeup of the students?

Nyc is realizing that paying 6B to cops leads to cutting library hours and other things people like

i can't believe the cop really did the gulp + tug collar thing, i thought that was just in cartoons

that was so good lol

Does NYC have a budget deficit or is it in a good financial place? … Not to discount the repressive impulse of cops, but they are also motivated by OT pay

― sarahell, Wednesday, May 1, 2024 12:02 PM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Maybe they feel righteous going after privileged college kids… what’s the racial makeup of the students?

― sarahell, Wednesday, May 1, 2024 12:05 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think this is very mysterious. The NYPD has been deeply, systematically racist against Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent since 2001 (at least). Also, like other US police depts the NYPD has also done joint training with Israeli police.

Of course basic greed, reflexive hatred of leftists & activists, and other forms of racism could of course be involved as well

don't know the stats offhand but ccny is definitely a very diverse school and wouldn't be surprised if it was majority-minority

Obviously none of us can read these pigs' minds, but the symbolism of taking down and contemptuously tossing aside the Palestinian flag then hoisting the American flag like they've just recaptured Iwo Jima strikes me as clearly evoking the War on Terror

Also, like other US police depts the NYPD has also done joint training with Israeli police

I know people love this as a talking point, but training sessions involving a few dozen NYPD going to Israel are not the reason crowd policing tactics exist. The police have always been the police. It wasn't "zionists" sicking water canons and dogs on civil rights protesters in the 60s.

I'm not 100% sure how extensive the NYPD's collaborations have been; my current understanding is that a) police training is Israel is very widespread throughout the US and b) it's especially strong in Georgia. I mentioned it mostly as evidence that the NYPD are likely to view pro-Palestinian activists as terrorist sympathizers, not to say Israel is the source of their racism. Again, I see that as most strongly growing out of the post-9/11 era

It gets used all the time to imply that Israel somehow planted the seed of police brutality in the US, which is just totally ahistorical and absurd. Small groups of American police officers spending a week in Israel at some seminars on explosives--or even if one of them concerns crowd control--does not fundamentally shape the nature of US policing.

I think it’s more alarm that communities are paying cops to go on walkabout to learn best practices (enhanced and efficient forms of violence) from a ‘foreign entity’ rather than the israeli government being the origin of police violence

I dont think anyone on the activist or activist-leaning left actually thinks the israeli government exports more brutality than the US does

I 100% agree that Israel is not the origin of US police brutality nor does Israeli training "fundamentally shape the nature of US policing." People making that claim are dead wrong.

However, I think you are downplaying the substance of these exchange programs somewhat. Just as one example, this happened on 10/7:

NYPD brass was part of a metro-area law enforcement delegation attending a counterterrorism and anti-Semitism training near the Gaza Strip when radical Islamic militants launched a deadly surprise attack on Israel this weekend, sources said.

The 32-member group arrived in Israel on Thursday and were just 20 miles from the border when Hamas attacked Saturday, the sources said.

https://nypost.com/2023/10/08/nypd-brass-part-of-delegation-in-israel-when-hamas-launched-surprise-attack/

I have no insight into the nature of Israeli police training for American cops on antisemitism. But I don't think it's totally absurd to think that this could have some, likely small but not nonexistent, influence on how NYPD leaders thinks about antisemitism and pro-Palestine protesters in the aftermath of 10/7

#HongKong police trapping hundreds of students inside #PolyUniversity. Won’t let them leave. Apparently want mass arrests. These actions by Beijing-backed govt raise question whether #China is in violation of its 1984 Joint Declaration commitments https://t.co/tc7akTgyZK

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 18, 2019

xp
But my point here was absolutely not "this too is Israel's fault"; it was that the NYPD are sympathetic to Israel in addition to being Islamophobic and racist towards people of Middle Eastern descent. TBC the latter is not a result of training in Israel.

I think it's fair to assume that the "counterterrorism summits" U.S. cops are paid to attend in Israel consist mostly of sales pitches by the exact same spread of U.S. and Israeli defense firms that you would find at a law enforcement conference in Texas.

idk, speaking as much to myself as you here, it's probably best not to assume anything about them without concrete evidence? sorry if that sounds absurd after my posts :/

I thought this was interesting, on the ADL's involvement: https://jewishcurrents.org/scoop-internal-adl-memo-recommended-ending-police-delegations-to-israel-amid-backlash

I dont think anyone on the activist or activist-leaning left actually thinks the israeli government exports more brutality than the US does

To give a new twist to an old Stokely Carmichael adage: If my city's chief of police wants to buy the department a tank after visiting Israel, that's his problem. If he has the budget to do it, that's my problem.

Afaict US police forces have been gradually shifting towards military policing of civilian populations for quite a while now

Yes, it's police militarization that is the larger problem. I haven't read Radley Balko's book on it (Rise of the Warrior Cop), but I believe the basic thesis is that in the US it was the War on Drugs that drove the development of SWAT teams and other military-style police techniques.

This got more serious post-9/11 when you saw stuff like the Dept of Defense's equipment transfer program and Homeland Security's grants for counterterrorism equipment: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/20/police-billions-homeland-security-military-equipment. And yes, giving cops tanks is clearly more of a problem than training programs.

lol my last line was an xpost

To give a new twist to an old Stokely Carmichael adage: If my city's chief of police wants to buy the department a tank after visiting Israel, that's his problem. If he has the budget to do it, that's my problem.

One can also make the simplistic argument that after the cold war ended, the weapons industry needed to find new markets for their products

Military hardware sellers gotta eat!

Military hardware sellers gotta eat!

after the cold war ended

But did it really?

I think we had warmer relations with the USSR than we do with the Russian Federation

_after the cold war ended_

But did it really?

I got a Kalashnikov and a coupon for vodka in 1997.

Basically Gorbachev and Yeltsin were “bros” … then Putin succeeded Yeltsin, then Yeltsin died and a lot of the more “liberal” factions lost the protection of his clout, and now we have Stalin 2

xpost "sorry, missile launchers can only be returned within 30 days of initial purchase, and this has clearly been damaged"

yeah but see the protests don't work:

The University of Vermont will publicly disclose its endowment investments by the end of the week, school officials said Wednesday. The decision comes in response to demands made by pro-Palestinian student protesters, who have staged an encampment on the Burlington campus since Sunday.

UVM provost and senior vice president Patricia Prelock met with a group of students on Tuesday evening and told them that the university would disclose its financial investments, making them accessible later this week, according to a post in the “UVM Palestine Solidarity Encampment” Telegram channel Wednesday morning.

Adam White, a university spokesperson, confirmed to VTDigger that the university plans to disclose that information. He also confirmed that Prelock, during her meeting with students, agreed to bring their concerns over the university’s commencement speaker back to leadership for discussion.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is set to speak at UVM’s commencement ceremony later this month. Protesters have characterized the choice as insulting, given that the U.S. vetoed three resolutions at the United Nations calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.

At the UPenn encampment:

An unknown individual was detained after he walked through the encampment and sprayed an odorous unknown substance on signs in the encampment.

Protesters followed the individual, chanting “stop spraying pesticides on our fucking signs” until he walked out of the encampment.

The Daily Pennsylvanian could not confirm what the substance was, and encampment members also said they do not know.

When he exited the encampment, the individual was handcuffed and detained for investigation by Penn’s Division of Public Safety.

Glad he was alone, the videos from UCLA that I've seen are really scary

Had to unfollow a prominent cookbook author because he was both sidesing the shit at UCLA.

On a professor beaten by police and hospitalized:
https://merip.org/2024/05/merip-statement-on-the-arrest-of-steve-and-sandra-tamari/

Read something today and it isn't special but also gets at something I have been thinking about in recent days:

The students were correct about Viet Nam, they were correct about the first gulf war and the embargoes, they were correct about the WTO and "free trade," they were right about the second Gulf War and the "War on Terror," they were correct about the stakes in Occupy, and they were correct in 2020 around BLM. And they are correct now.

While the demos do provide a distraction for the MSM to latch onto instead of actually reporting on the genocide occurring right now with our tax dollars, there's also no helping the demos and encampments being overwhelmingly correct in their assessments of the situation.

Absolutely. Columbia's hypocrisy on this has been esp notable.

I would push back against the "distraction" piece though -- for one, I don't think media attention to Gaza has deterred Israel in any way thus far, though of course it's impossible to test that theory.

More broadly, on the negative side: I think the violently over the top response to these protests has been grimly instructive in terms of how brutally dissent is and will be repressed in the US (no matter which party is in power), how police have accrued more power and evaded accountability in the last four years, how fierce the right wing's antagonism to higher education is, how brittle liberalism is when it comes to defending its institutions, and so on. Baroness Shafik flatly stating that Columbia will not divest from Israel no matter what is also illuminating.

On the positive side, we need global solidarity and resistance to deal with fascism, climate change, etc. I'm heartened that young people recognize this.

Seeing on BlueSky that the UC system academic workers union is calling a strike vote in response to UCLA police watching while fascists attacked students and faculty. So another potential positive is organized labor getting pissed off

sorry to reference the NYT but there was a pretty good opinion piece there this week about the student protests being right:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/opinion/columbia-student-protests-israel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.n00.H9EM.7niiAQglNBkl

There is a somewhat sad hierarchy of labor unions in the UC system… academic workers union is basically who you’d expect to be sympathetic… like it’s not a big deal imo

Basically the faculty and staff that are already out there supporting encampments etc

I had that same thought, like, tell me the time the anti-war protesters were wrong. All I can think of is the 1930s America Firsters, who weren't so much "anti-war" as "pro-Nazi." (But of course anti-war protesters are usually right, because most wars are bad and terrible!)

What a fucking monster

If you don't understand why people are mad at Biden today I honestly don't know what to tell you https://t.co/u1GcGVcmXX

— Erik Baker (@erikmbaker) May 1, 2024

Easier to stomach if you convince yourself they’re all RUSSIAN agitators.