The Algemeiner Quotes Steve Pomerantz on Police Exchange Programs

The claim that US police learn violent tactics from Israel that disproportionately harm minorities, nicknamed “Deadly Exchange,” is false and has been thoroughly discredited, though it is still spread by antisemitic and racist organizations and individuals, mainly on the political left but also including Jew‐hating reactionaries such as Louis Farrakhan.

It is widely seen as a blood libel in the Jewish community.

In June, Israel Police foreign media spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld tweeted, in reference to the Floyd case, “There is no procedure that allows an officer of the #israel police dept to carry out an arrest by placing a knee on the neck of a suspect.”

“None of police Counter terrorism training that #Israel national police provide to foreign law enforcement officers involves such a measure,” he added.

Steven L. Pomerantz, a former assistant FBI director and the head of the Law Enforcement Exchange Program at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), which helps organize such training programs, told The Algemeiner, “Exchange programs began as a direct result of 9/11 at the specific request of senior law enforcement officers. It focused on counter-terrorism responsibilities of law enforcement, both prevention and response, and was aimed at only senior law enforcement officials.”

The programs, he said, included “no hands-on training and no tactical training.”

Ironically, he pointed out, far from promoting violence against minorities, “more recent programs have included subjects such as improving relations between law enforcement agencies and minority communities, and recruiting in minority communities.”

A fundamentalist Christian sect now widely identified with the political left, the Quakers have a long history of virulent anti-Israel activism, and during World War II opposed the Allied war effort against Nazi Germany.

Originally published in The Algemeiner