Over the past three decades, thousands of US law enforcement officials have visited Israel to train with the Israeli police, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and Shin Bet. The exchange transmits techniques of surveillance, repression, racial profiling, and more. It also yields lucrative contracts for Israeli companies to export their policing technologies from Gaza and the West Bank to the United States.

The Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange came first, established to expose Georgia police to Israeli tactics in advance of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta; more than 1,100 officials have since graduated from the program. But the efforts intensified after 9/11, when the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America started sending cops to study “counterterrorism” in Israel. Against the backdrop of the Second Intifada, American police learned how their Israeli counterparts controlled crowds and surveilled protest groups. One body that is acknowledged to have come out of the trips is the New York Police Department’s “Demographics Unit,” which deployed “mosque crawlers” to infiltrate Muslim communities.

The partnership between US and Israeli law enforcement came under fire in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. Around that time, two ADL vice presidents wondered in a leaked memo why “it is necessary for American police, enforcing American laws, . . .  to meet with members of the Israeli military” and whether “upon returning home, those we train are more likely to use force.” Their self-awareness didn’t catch on. Just last year, New York City mayor Eric Adams traveled to Israel and came back eager to deploy Israeli drones in the city, praising their ability to “strategically and successfully deal with a large crowd.”