New tool maps connections between US, Israeli state violence in users' local community

A new resource for US-based Palestine solidarity activists was launched yesterday, providing a search engine that maps the connections between US and Israeli state violence in users’ local community.

The new search engine, called “Palestine is Here”, was announced in a statement by the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), whose member group Researching the American-Israeli Alliance (RAIA) is behind the project.

Along with the searchable database, RAIA also released “a new research report for the Deadly Exchange campaign, tracing the dangerous consequences of 16 years of Israeli training of US law enforcement”.

According to the US Campaign, the new tool “traces deadly exchanges of law enforcement between the US and Israel—including ICE agents and local police—that contribute to state violence across Palestine, in our streets, and at our borders”.

Read: Israel killed 37 Palestinian children this year

“In our local communities, under the banner of ‘counter-terrorism’, these exchanges contribute to expanded surveillance and infiltration of social movements; racial profiling and refined tactics and technologies that target entire communities; and suppression of public protests through force.”

The activists describe Palestine is Here as demonstrating “how Israel’s oppression of Palestinians is not just something happening on the other side of the world”, but rather how “that oppression is concretely intertwined with the oppression of Black, brown, indigenous, and other marginalized communities in the US through direct institutional alliances”.

Palestine Is Here will reportedly later “expand to map corporate, academic, military, and other local institutional links”.

Anna Baltzer, USCPR’s Director of Organising and Advocacy, said the “ground-breaking resource has the power to transform organising across the country”.