Pro-Israel US group debated ending ‘deadly exchange’ programme following George Floyd killing

Global outrage over the brutal killing of George Floyd by a US police officer in 2020 prompted senior leaders of the pro-Israeli Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to recommend the termination of its controversial practice of sending US police delegations to Israel, according to a draft internal memo obtained by The Guardian and Jewish Currents.

ADL considered terminating the programme as American policing came under sharp focus following the killing of Floyd, especially the technique of pinning suspects to the ground with the police officer placing their knee on the neck of the assailant.

The memo draft was authored by ADL Senior Vice President, George Selim and Greg Ehrie, its Vice President for law enforcement and analysis, and was addressed to ADL CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt on June 9, 2020, a month after Floyd’s death, during a period of huge unrest. It concluded that the law enforcement trips to Israel should be terminated in part because they were a source of “high controversy.”

“In light of the very real police brutality at the hands of militarised police forces in the US, we must ask ourselves difficult questions, like whether we are contributing to the problem,” said the memo. “We must ask ourselves why it is necessary for American police, enforcing American laws, would need to [sic] meet with members of the Israeli military. We must ask ourselves if, upon returning home, those we train are more likely to use force. We hope that that is not accurate.”

Since 2004, the ADL has taken 500 to 600 police officers and partners to Israel for what it calls “educational and training purposes.” The memo claimed that the trips had “built bonds” among police but were “of questionable programmatic value”. They said the program could lead to “lost donor revenue” and could cost the ADL upward of $200,000 a year in staff time, including resources to “defend the trips from controversy”.

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The draft document said termination of the program was the “best approach” since it would “eliminate a program with limited impact and high controversy”.

Since 2017, ADL’s initiative has been the target of a long running campaign by Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) called Deadly Exchange. “The exchanges bring together police, ICE, border patrol, and FBI from the US with soldiers, police, border agents, etc. from Israel,” JVL said in its report on the ADL initiative. “In these programs, ‘worst practices’ are shared to promote and extend discriminatory and repressive policing practices that already exist in both countries, including racial profiling, massive spying and surveillance, deportation and detention, and attacks on human rights defenders”.

Despite their apprehensions over the programme, both Selim and Ehrie have confirmed that the memo was an initial draft and that the final decision was “to continue the program with updated curriculum and content in order to increase the value and impact of this type of law enforcement engagement”.

Revelations of ADL’s concerns over the programme prompted JVP to claim victory.  “The memo names our campaign over five times and makes it absolutely clear that our collective power made this program politically and financially costly,” JVP’s Director of Campaigns and Partnerships, Eran Efrati, is reported saying. “… the ADL chose the police, we choose the people. This is how we win! This is big! We have the ADL on their knees, backed into a corner, and admitting that our collective power forced them to stop these deadly exchanges, but we’re not done yet.”

It is time for the US to end its deadly exchange programmes with Israel