Connecting the militarization of Palestine with policing and prisons in the United States
On March 24, 2024, the Decarcerate Western Mass Bailout Project participated in Solidarity Benefit Shows' solidarity benefit at 10 Forward, which raised money for the Defend Atlanta Forest/Stop Cop City Bail Fund and E-Sims for Gaza.
We were asked to talk about the connections between the militarization of Palestine and policing and prisons in the United States. Our speech, below, was presented by volunteer Elliot Oberholtzer and written by volunteers Elliot Oberholtzer, Elizabeth Smith, and Sierra Dickey.
Hi my name is Elliot, and I am a member of the Political Education working group of DWM.
DWM is a grassroots group working to resist and end mass incarceration in our region. We run the Western Mass Bail Project, which posts bails in Hampshire and Franklin Counties. One of our major goals is to expose the workings of the carceral state in Western Mass, including how it interacts with global carceral and colonial projects, so I’m really happy to be able to speak here today.
I was asked to speak today about the connections between the militarization of Palestine and what’s happening here in the United States with regard to policing and prisons. There are two connections that I want to highlight: connections of the prison, military, and surveillance industries, and connections of carceral and colonial ideology.
First, a little about how the carceral state manifests in Palestine. Many of you have likely heard the term open-air prison used to describe Gaza, because of the physical and legal constructions that keep Palestinians from leaving, and prevent trade and humanitarian aid from entering. Many of you perhaps also know that before the events of October 7, there were at least 5,300 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. There are undoubtedly more than that now. 10,000 Palestinian children have been incarcerated in Israel over the past 20 years, with the most common charge against them being ‘throwing stones.’ Israel routinely incarcerates Palestinians without charges, evidence, or trial through their practice of ‘administrative detention,’ in which a person is held without having committed an offense, on the grounds that he or she plans to break the law in the future (B’Tselem). Everyday activities like going to school or to work, hanging out outside with their friends, and participating in religious ceremonies and holidays are all fraught with danger for Palestinians living in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and could at any moment result in incarceration. Israeli jailers are not required to return the bodies of incarcerated people back to their families after death. They do not provide adequate food, water, shelter, or medical care.
The situation in Palestine is exceptional in many ways, and also far more similar to the situation in the United States as some may think.
Similarities?
We lock kids up too. As of 2019, there were about 35,000 youth incarcerated in juvenile facilities in the US. Black youth are 4.4 times as likely to be incarcerated than white youth; youth who are members of a Native tribe or band are 3.2 times as likely to be incarcerated as white youth. The United States is the only country on earth that sentences juveniles to life without parole.
In 1987, the US Supreme Court ruled that a person could be held pre-conviction based on an assessment of “dangerousness;” this practice keeps people in jail, denying bail or setting bail impossibly high, because of what a person might do in the future.
Over 90% of criminal cases in the US end in plea bargains, not in a trial. That means that the majority of people that we incarcerate, we do without trial.
Prisons in this very state of Massachusetts do not provide adequate medical care to their incarcerated residents. For example, there have been numerous complaints against MCI–Framingham (a women’s prison) for lack of adequate medical care. And just this past summer, Framingham ended all educational programming without reason.
Going to school or work, hanging out outside with friends, and participating in religious ceremonies and holidays are all fraught with danger in the US for the populations most targeted by police, notably Black, Native and Latine folks, disabled folks, and immigrants.
Why do the carceral systems of two countries across the world from each other operate so similarly? In part, because they are joined by a similar ideology: the belief that a colonial and capitalist power can use incarceration and forced displacement to gain control of land and resources, and to extract from them. The United States used the tactic of forcing a marginalized population into a contained area and then bombing them when the US military and Air Force attacked Detroit in 1967 in response to Black protests against segregation. The US used the tactic of forcing a marginalized population to march from their homes and then attacking them on the way in the 1830s against the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations in what we now call the Trail of Tears. And of course the US has used policing, mass incarceration, paramilitary terror, and economic coercion to dispossess People of Color of their land and destroy their communities for hundreds of years. The US and Israel work the same because their goals are, while certainly not identical, substantially similar.
The other reason that our carceral systems operate so similarly is that they are constructed, supplied, and trained by the same institutions. The military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex of both Palestine and the United States are deeply intertwined. What they use over there, they import back to us over here, and vice versa. Cop City in Welaunee Forest in Atlanta, Georgia, is a prime example of this mutually reinforcing relationship: built by the Atlanta Police Foundation, the $90 million facility would be the largest police training center in the US and is modeled on the Israeli military’s “Little Gaza” mock city training site in the Naqab Desert. Both sites are intended to prepare American/Israeli police and military for urban warfare, strengthening the state’s violent repressive capacity and aimed particularly at participants in the Movement for Black Lives. There are 3 active “cop city” sites planned in Massachusetts right now.
The Cop City project is the latest outgrowth of a longstanding history of Atlanta police training and collaborating with the Israeli military: the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange Program (GILEE), dating back to 1992, sends American police forces to train with the Israeli Defense Forces, facilitating the exchange of repressive weaponry, tactics, and strategies between these entities. This program is replicated in police departments across the US, enabling American police, ICE, border patrol, and the FBI to train in Israel with Israeli police, military and the Shin Bet. Police from Easthampton, Pittsfield, and Haverhill have all cross-trained with Israeli police; in 2018, organizers in Northampton managed to prevent their police from doing the same.
Our police departments are not the only connections of industry between here and Palestine. Raytheon, Elbit Systems, L3 Harris, and other military and surveillance companies that manufacture the weapons and surveillance equipment used in Palestine have a stranglehold on our communities. The vast majority of jobs that engineering and technology majors at UMass are being funneled into are military jobs. Raytheon appears at jobs fairs at the high schools in Hampshire, Franklin, Hampden, and Berkshire counties. L3 Harris’s location in Northampton, just down the street from the Hampshire County prison, makes surveillance and drone targeting systems that are used in Palestine, at the US-Mexico border against people seeking asylum, and in conflicts and harm all over the world. Much of the surveillance that is being tested against protestors and marginalized populations in the US, including the cell-phone blocking and hacking, facial recognition, chemical and sonic weapons, and drone technology that we’ve all been exposed to here in Western MA if we’ve participated in actions and protests, was piloted in Gaza.
In the collective words of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, “Gaza is a strategy, not just a place.” Gazan people and land are used by US-Israeli forces as a laboratory to hone the instruments of imperialist oppression used worldwide to maintain and advance racial capitalism.
As these ideologies and technologies of repression are deeply interconnected, so too must be our movements: these points of collusion represent a mortal threat, but also ripe potential for solidarity. Decarceration and demilitarization in the US and Palestine are two facets of the same struggle, and it is essential that we learn, fight, and support each other together.
We’re engaged tonight in a vital component of that collective struggle: learning how the systems work, and exposing them. There are so many ways right here in Western MA to build on our knowledge and start to dismantle these systems where they target and impact us, so we hope you’ll come check out some of the materials on the tables and get involved in some of that work if you are not already. These systems are enormous, and cruel, and none of us can fight them on our own. But they’re not invulnerable, and we’re not helpless. I’m really glad to be here with you all, because our liberation depends on each other.
Syllabus on “Stop Cop City: From Atlanta to Palestine”: https://wawog.medium.com/stop-cop-city-from-atlanta-to-palestine-a-syllabus-56b1614ed13a
Map of cop cities recently constructed/under construction (3 in MA): https://isyourlifebetter.net/cop-cities-usa
PYM “Free Palestine, Stop Cop City” article: https://thenewinquiry.com/free-palestine-stop-cop-city
Gaza is a Strategy, Not Just a Place: https://samidoun.net/2023/11/gaza-is-a-strategy-not-just-a-place
Deadly Exchange: https://deadlyexchange.org
Administrative detention: https://www.btselem.org/administrative_detention
