As the Israeli government continues to commit war crimes against the people of Gaza, it’s important to remember how all struggles for justice are interconnected. For instance, the movement to Stop Cop a City here in Atlanta is also a movement to stop US police from collaborating with the Israeli military.
A delegation of Georgia law enforcement representatives pose with members of the Haifa, Israel, Police Department in August 2023. USAmerican and Israeli flags wave above them.
Through the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE), Israeli soldiers come to train right here in Georgia, and US police travel to Israel to learn their tactics…which is, frankly, terrifying, and a ludicrously literal example of the militarization of US police.
This relationship between Georgia and Israel has been going on for three decades, since 1992.
(Note that GILEE isn’t the only program in which US police collaborate with the IDF. This article from 2018 goes into more details about what tactics cops from various city police departments across the US have picked up from Israel.)
If Cop City opens, Israeli soldiers will be invited to come train there. Both sides will be able to hone their tactics for brutally stomping out even the most peaceful of protests.
STOP COP CITY. FREE PALESTINE. Here and there, settler-colonialist states target Indigenous lives, Black lives, and other POC.
Our struggles are interwoven. None are free till all, all are free from this imperialist horror.
U.S. law enforcement agencies need partners for effective training to strengthen their identified weak areas. Israel is not such a partner.
"This blog post is from August 25, 2016, authored by Edith Garwood, Amnesty International USA Country Specialist covering Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the State of Palestine.
When the U.S. Department of Justice published a report August 10, 2016, that documented “widespread constitutional violations, discriminatory enforcement, and culture of retaliation” within the Baltimore Police Department (BPD), there was rightly a general reaction of outrage.
But what hasn’t received as much attention is where Baltimore police received training on crowd control, use of force and surveillance: Israel’s national police, military and intelligence services.
Baltimore law enforcement officials, along with hundreds of others from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state, as well as the DC Capitol police have all traveled to Israel for training. Thousands of others have received training from Israeli officials here in the U.S..
Many of these trips are taxpayer funded while others are privately funded. Since 2002, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have paid for police chiefs, assistant chiefs and captains to train in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
These trainings put Baltimore police and other U.S. law enforcement employees in the hands of military, security and police systems that have racked up documented human rights violations for years. Amnesty International, other human rights organizations and even the U.S. Department of State have cited Israeli police for carrying out extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings, using ill treatment and torture (even against children), suppression of freedom of expression/association including through government surveillance, and excessive use of force against peaceful protesters."
Video description: clips from an MLK Day march, with the camera person filming from among protestors holding stop cop city signs (some of which read "stop environmental racism") as people waving Palestinian flags march in front of us. Text pops up as the video goes on that reads in total:
"Atlanta MLK march, Monday: Stop Cop City folks stood on a street corner as the parade marched by. And when the pro-Palestine marchers reached where we were...we joined their chants! If Cop City is built, Israeli soldiers will come to train here. Our struggles are deeply intertwined. Learn more at copcitysyllabus.com. Solidarity forever!"
Why Cop City, why here, and why now? The struggle for the Weelaunee Forest results from a decades-long fight over shifting dynamics of class
The struggle to Stop Cop City is not just a battle over the creation of a $90 million police urban warfare center. It's not just a fight to protect the 381 acres of forest land, known as one of the "four lungs" of Atlanta, currently under threat of destruction. It's not just a conflict over how the city invests the over $30 million it has pledged to the project, to be supplemented by at least $60 million in private funding.
The movement is all of those things. But even more fundamentally, the struggle to Stop Cop City is a battle for the future of Atlanta.
It's a struggle over who the city is for: the city's corporate and state ruling class actors who have demanded that Cop City be built, or the people of Atlanta who have consistently voiced their opposition and demanded a different vision for the city. It is a fight over who the city belongs to; over who Atlanta is run for and who it is run against; over who is welcome to live and enjoy life here, and who is expected to simply labor here for low wages and under constant surveillance.
In January 2023, Cop City claimed its first life when a joint task force of local and state police officers marched into the Weelaunee Forest and assassinated Tortuguita Terán, a 26-year-old queer, Indigenous-Venezuelan forest defender. The project has already claimed the lives of trees in the forest, as clear-cutting began in March 2023. Cop City has already stolen the freedom of 42 people who have been charged with domestic terrorism and dozens more who were violently arrested while protesting the project.
As the struggle to stop Cop City has gone national and international, it has also left many wondering: Given so much widespread opposition, why is the city of Atlanta so intent on building Cop City? And if they insist on building Cop City, why build it atop such precious forest land? And why now, when the plans were first proposed as early as 2017 and the city had previously committed to protecting and preserving the land in question?
Making sense of the drive to build Cop City requires understanding the shifting dynamics of class and racial domination in Atlanta, marked by organized abandonment: the state's retreat from the provision of social welfare and the interrelated build-up of policing and imprisonment to manage inequality's outcomes. Or, as abolitionists Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore put it: "profound austerity and the iron fist necessary to impose it."
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Expanding police infrastructure to control the masses is certainly not limited to the United States (though the U.S. has long exported and perfected its counterinsurgent police tactics overseas). Israel, for example, is home to the Urban Warfare Training Center known by the soldiers who train there as "Mini Gaza"—a $45 million dollar, 60-acre facility that is "meant to simulate the urban environments in which Israel's soldiers often operate." Beyond urban warfare training to combat so-called terrorism (recall, both Palestinian freedom fighters and Stop Cop City protesters have been called terrorists), the link between Israel and Georgia is even deeper, as the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) program has operated since the 1990s as an exchange between Israeli and Georgia police forces.
Cop City is thus part of a historic and ongoing pattern of governments at home and abroad, expanding police and jail infrastructure and honing urban repression tactics in response to, and in preparation for, uprisings and threats categorized as terrorism.
Atlanta activists and students from universities across Atlanta rallied to end the Georgia State University’s GILEE program which trains U.S
"On November 9, 2023 Atlanta activists and students from universities across Atlanta, including Georgia State University, Emory, the Atlanta University Center, and Georgia Tech, rallied in opposition to the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) as part of the November 9 international “Shut It Down for Palestine” day of action and the week of action. The students and other Atlanta residents demanded the end of this police exchange program, in which Atlanta Police Department officers train with the Israeli Occupation Forces to learn strategies and techniques to suppress local liberation movements, including the fight to Stop Cop City. "
The Black Alliance for Peace Atlanta Citywide Alliance (BAP-Atlanta), rooted in the legacy of anti-imperialist, anti-war, and pro-peace movements within the African/Black community, firmly denounces the ongoing exchange between the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) program, the Atlanta Police Foundation’s Atlanta Police Leadership Institute, and the Israeli Occupying Forces, scheduled May 14-22nd, 2023—and the urban warfare training facility, Cop City.
As an empire conceived in settler-colonial violence, the United States continues to impose systems of militarized control upon African/Black, Indigenous, and Palestinian communities. This oppressive reality manifests itself through international interventions, such as the GILEE program, as well as domestic initiatives, like the proposed $90 million police-training facility, Cop City. Local residents and activists have been demanding an end to GILEE for many years.
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Abolish the GILEE program and Stop Cop City
The U.S. imposes settler-colonial violence upon African/Black, Indigenous, and Palestinian communities through initiatives like police training with Israeli occupying forces and the urban warfare training facility, Cop City.
By Black Alliance for Peace June 4, 2023
