This reminds us that #policing - in #SettlerColonial societies like Canada - has always been a central force for dispossession, displacement & containment.
Jeff Halper, director of the #Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions told audiences in #Canada: “Israel is involved in your prison systems. It’s involved in training the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It’s involved in your airport security.”
Some of the connections are longstanding, but have been the subject of very little public scrutiny. For example, 32 [#Canadian chiefs of police travelled to Israel in 2005, to attend events hosted by the #Israeli#Police and the Israeli Ministry of Internal Security. A few months later, 39 police chiefs made another trip to #Israel.]
#Ontario contingent was headed by #YorkRegionalPolice Chief Armand LaBarge, #OPP Commissioner Gwen Boniface, Emergency Management Commissioner Julian Fantino & representatives of #OntarioPoliceCollege. While in #Israel, they attended police field units, #Israeli border police, #AntiTerrorist units & a rehab centre for injured police officers.
#VancouverPolice chief Adam Palmer hosted #Israeli#police Major General Avshalom Peled — then commander of Border Police Unit 33, July 8, 2018. Palmer called him an “insightful leader”. #IndependentJewishVoices#IJV#Vancouver disputed this, saying Peled was “notorious for violent suppression of an entire population through widespread human rights violations including extrajudicial killings”.
A representative of #Zionist organisation, the Centre for #Israel & #Jewish Affairs #CIJA, addressed the #Vancouver#PoliceBoard on June 19, 2019 - part of an effort to persuade it to “formally adopt the #IHRA International [#Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition of #antisemitism and to ask relevant units of the VPD to make use of it as a tool.” How that tool might be deployed was not specified.
#Canadian writer/chronicler of #CanadianImperialism, Yves Engler criticised public discussions of Proteus for ignoring “how #CanadianMilitary trainers & aid have supported the creation of a #Palestinian security force explicitly to enforce #Israel’s occupation of the West Bank”. Engler draws on work by criminologist Jeffrey Monaghan, who's documented #Canada’s role in turning Palestinian security forces in the #WestBank into an arm of the #IsraeliStateOccupation.
Boucher confirmed “the relationship between #PalestinianAuthority security forces & the co-ordination with the Israeli Defense Force is happening on a 24/7 basis right now”.
Activists have called for an end to exchanges of all kinds with #Israeli police officials/units, particularly those that involve any training of #Canadian police. In their view, the 2018‒19 events make the #VancouverPolice complicit in legitimising #Israel#WarCrimes & promoting #antiPalestinian#racism. The responses of police forces across #Canada to the 2023 #Palestinian#resistance have done precisely the same.
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