“Jewish Voice for Peace” quietly admits blaming Israel for US police brutality is antisemitic

For years now, the socialist Left – led by “Jewish Voice for Peace” – has been pushing the idea that US police learn to be racist from Israeli police, because a couple hundred US police have gone to Israel to learn counter-terrorism techniques over the last 20 years or so.

We reported on this in 2015 with idiotic articles by Rania Khalek and Dave Zirin that blamed Israel for police killing black people in the US.

 

Then in 2018, Jewish Voice for Peace issued a highly biased report filled with half-truths that tried to specifically blame Israel for US police brutality and racist methodology. The copious evidence from the very articles they link to that disprove their thesis were ignored.

Meanwhile, the concept that somehow US police are hypnotized by the ever powerful Israelis to attack black people has been the subject of thousands of tweets from JVP and their friends.

 

It’s bad enough that the claims about what US cops learn in Israel are complete and total lies. But the claim that somehow Israelis are responsible for how US cops act is fundamentally antisemitic – it is the trope that Jews have “hypnotized the world,” as Ilhan Omar put it, and US police are helpless robots who must do what their Jewish masters tell them.

Suddenly and quietly, Jewish Voice for Peace has changed gears and admitted themselves that the idea that Israel is responsible for US police violence – the trope that they have pushed for years -  is antisemitic! In a June 5 press release, they write:

Highlighting these police exchange programs without enough context or depth can end up harming our movements for justice. Suggesting that Israel is the start or source of American police violence or racism shifts the blame from the United States to Israel. This obscures the fundamental responsibility and nature of the U.S., and harms Black people and Black-led struggle. It also furthers an antisemitic ideology. White supremacists look for any opportunity to glorify and advance American anti-Black racism, and any chance to frame Jews as secretly controlling and manipulating the world. Taking police exchanges out of context provides fodder for those racist and antisemitic tropes.

Now they are talking about context? The 57-page “Deadly Exchange” report didn’t put any context in its introduction:

 

it is also amusing how they claim that white supremacists are the ones who are reading antisemitic messages in the “Deadly Exchange” libel. The Jersey City murderers, admirers of the Black Hebrews sect, echoed the Deadly Exchange claim of Jews controlling the police as well as Louis Farrakhan’s “Synagogue of Satan” characterization of Jews. Roger Waters, hardly a white supremacist, also used “Deadly Exchange” as his source for his antisemitic rant on Hamas TV.

Now JVP is backtracking and pretending not to be responsible for the hate – and deaths – that they have encouraged for years.

Why? Not because they are suddenly concerned about the antisemitic conspiracy theories that they have been pushing for years. It is because it “can end up harming our movements for justice.” There is nothing moral about this about-face – it is to distance themselves from the antisemitism that they are responsible for, because they might lose members or funding.

(h/t Daniel Sugarman – who for some reason blocks me.)