Over 100 Minnesota law enforcement officers attended a 2012 conference organized by the Israeli consulate in which Israeli police trained them. Israeli forces often use the knee-on-neck restraint, and worse, on Palestinians.. Meanwhile, Congress is poised to pass a bipartisan package of $38 billion to Israel…
The story is familiar to oppressed people groups: a young man is assumed armed and dangerous, and is gunned down by police. Eyad al-Hallaq was disabled and Palestinian; the Israeli police were armed and dangerous. His parents describe their only son… (Israeli forces have killed over 10,000 Palestinian men, women, and children since 2000, most of them civilians.)
Israeli police in the village of Isawiyah have an agenda, and it involves brutality, incitement, humiliation, and violence.
For the past six weeks, Israel has been sending paramilitary police forces to raid the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya every evening. The raids, a severe form of collective punishment, have left one young Palestinian dead and hundreds wounded.
In the 2nd killing of an Ethiopian-Israeli in 2019, Solomon Tekah was shot by an Israeli police officer who felt “in danger” when trying to break up a fight. Eyewitnesses say he was in no danger. An Ethiopian-Israeli lawmaker said Israeli police have declared “open season” on Ethiopian-Israeli youth.
Israeli soldiers break into a home in the middle of the night, severely beat a blind, diabetic man on dialysis as his wife begs them to stop. Later, an Israeli military spokesman’s explanation does not remotely resemble the family’s description of the incident.
As Palestinians in Hebron navigate life without the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) observers, it is worth looking back on how oppressive and violent life was even with outsiders watching. Eric Garner would find the city eerily familiar.