Cohen was covering a spontaneous protest that took place outside Likud headquarters on Saturday night after the conclusion of the scheduled rallies on Kaplan Street and Hostages' Square. A crowd of several hundred demonstrators gathered in the street, encircling a large metal box in which a fire burned underneath the words "No home." Police eventually used horses and physical force to disperse the crowd.

[…]

In addition to several violent arrests, protesters have sustained injuries from police-mounted horses and water cannons. Journalists and medical personnel have been subject to the same treatment as well, despite their protected status.

The past couple of weeks have seen the arrest of one doctor as he was administering medical treatment to a demonstrator, and another who suffered an eye injury as a result of a direct hit from a water cannon. Last week, Haaretz photographer Itai Ron was arrested while taking photos of the protest.

On Sunday, [Herzlianism’s] Public Defender's Office condemned what it called "widespread" excessive use of force by [neocolonial] police against protesters and called for the department of the Justice Ministry responsible for investigating police misconduct to address the issue.

The office released a statement saying that the violence evident in footage taken during anti-government protests "wounds the body and soul and tramples human rights," and that it "harms every part of [this] society and results in loss of trust in law enforcement."

Neocolonial police terrorizing a Jewish man in a wheelchair.

Neocolocial officer pushes a Jewish elder to the ground. He suffered a bloody face.

Neocolonial police push a Jew towards a fence.

Police forcing a Jewish man to lie down on the ground.

Police raiding the Mea Shearim Jewish neighborhood, physically abusing Jews and intimidating nearby witnesses.

Photograph of an officer literally dragging around a Jew.

Another.

And yes, in most of these videos you can hear the witnesses yelling ‘Nazi!’ at their oppressors. A couple of years ago it would have been startling to hear anybody—especially a Jew—liken Zionism’s neocolony to the Third Reich, but I think that the extermination campaign has really broken the taboo now.

Truly unfortunate. I propose an additional $50 million funding in police training will prevent such mishaps in the future.

Workers World spoke with encampment participant Nada Anusi, one of the students arrested May 10, who said: “On Friday morning, at about 5:30 am, we were woken from our sleep by the police with only two minutes left to gather our things and leave. While we anticipated a raid, especially in the early morning when community support and publicity there would be minimal, we did not want to leave the camp we built.

“The Ben Franklin statue [on UPenn Campus Green] became a site of resistance for students and campers. We all stood proud and strong as we watched hundreds of police storm the campus with wooden batons and riot gear. We knew what we were up against, and we were ready to face it, but the disproportionality of over 100 cops to 33 protesters was a disgusting view from the top of Ben Franklin.”

Anusi explained: “We were pulled off the statue by the cops, held tightly, zip tied and warned not to resist. Some of us were thrown onto the ground and dragged away, with bruised and dislocated shoulders. I was double-cuffed, patted down three times, shoved around, and violated in many ways. Despite that, the most upsetting part was watching UPenn police and the Philadelphia Police Department work together with the administration to take an entire encampment and shove it down a compactor.

“So much that was built, and from scratch, was destroyed. It was very wasteful. Very disturbing and an eerie reflection of what goes on at other encampments. For a minute, I imagined what it was like to be in Occupied Palestine and watch my family home get demolished with all the memories and life I put into it still there. It is not exactly comparable. I have a home to go to. But this was a place for me, as a Palestinian, to truly feel in community with those struggling alongside me.

Anusi concluded: “I participated in this encampment because I reached a point where my entire life is re-centered [on] Gaza. I live and breathe for Palestine and if that means I have to make all the noise in the world and continue to build while they destroy, then so be it. It is the least I can do. As an academic, the university serves as a proxy for my class struggle, for this anti-colonial struggle. More than 40,000 [people] martyred with all [their] universities destroyed, and it is about time we recognize our privilege in the belly of the beast and continue our global uprising.”

Even before they had finished with their mass arrests at Columbia, the cops sent significant numbers a mile or so north to CCNY. When they had what they considered enough force, they started to sweep the CCNY campus, arresting 179 people both on and off the campus. (Columbia Spectator, May 1) According to a May 1 morning press release posted to the CUNY “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” Instagram, the New York Police Department sweep resulted in multiple injuries.

“Police broke the ankle of an undergraduate student, broke the teeth of two protesters, attacked and burned many students, faculty and at least one journalist with pepper spray at close range, and beat many more with batons,” the news site City News reported.

When students, heartsick over genocide occurring before their eyes, confront established state policy, they get treated with the same police brutality, similar to their counterparts in Gaza.

Annelise Orleck, a 65-year-old Jewish professor at Dartmouth University, was floored twice by aggressive police officers who took away her phone while she was standing with pro-Palestinian student activists.

Orleck told reporters she felt unsafe on campus as a Jewish person but not because of her students, 'because police lifted me up and body slammed me, then arrested me'. She has now been banned from the Dartmouth campus, where she has worked for 34 years, under the terms of her bail conditions.

…wow.

Interview with the victim.

Within minutes, the Berlin police stormed the conference and forced the 250 attendees to disband. The police shut off the building’s electricity and demanded that the organizers stop livestreaming on their phones. Protests erupted in the surrounding streets, and riot police blocked and encircled the protest with vehicles. Many demonstrators were arrested.

The German state’s actions in suppressing this event and the subsequent protests have a precedent and represent an alarming trend in Germany and indeed in many [neo]imperialist states which use various instruments of state power to quash pro-Palestinian voices.

German authorities, as a pretext to justify their overreach, accuse activists like those connected with the Palestine Congress of being “antisemitic.” While German history dating from the […] Third Reich and prior antisemitism justifies the existence of laws against Nazi-type hate speech, the German state has distorted this justification and turned it into repression directed at anyone criticizing the repressive actions of [Zionism’s] state, even when these actions reach the level of genocide.

In the current confrontation, the Berlin police claimed that their raid on the Palestine Congress was due to such concerns of antisemitism. (Middle East Monitor)

German media resolutely parroted the state’s narrative. The truth is, as Dr. Abu Sitta said, that Germany is complicit in the genocide in Gaza and will not hesitate to obfuscate the truth and dispel dissidents to protect its interests as a capitalist [neo]imperialist régime that unwaveringly supports the […] occupation.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2280820

Please subscribe. Trying to help 'em out.

Palestinian protesters seem to be bearing the brunt of police crackdowns on protests in Germany — “We Jews are just getting arrested, the Palestinians are being beaten,” Hefets says. One example was the brutal arrest of a hijab-wearing protester at a sit-in in Berlin central station this past weekend, which was captured on video and posted to social media channels.

But Hefets believes her group of Jewish activists is also being specifically targeted at demonstrations because of its Jewish identity.

Last week, Jewish Voice’s bank account was frozen ahead of mid-April’s Palastina Kongres (Palestine Congress) — for “regulatory reasons”, according to the state-owned Berliner Sparkasse bank. The group’s account has been frozen before, in 2019, because of its support for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

“They [Jewish protesters] get in the way of the narrative of Jews being protected by Germans against Muslims — but when you see Jews marching, then you see it’s not needed,” says Hefets.

Her case was one of the reasons that Germany’s ranking was dropped to “narrowed” in the Civicus Monitor, an annual ranking that measures civic freedoms to protest.

[…]

Palestinian activist Ola Alzayat attended a protest in February and explains that, being pregnant, she took special care to stay out of trouble.

Suddenly, “somebody grabbed my face from behind. I didn’t know what was going on”, she says.

It was the police. In a video of the incident which has been seen by Al Jazeera, a visibly pregnant Alzayat can be seen being dragged away by the neck, with her keffiyeh pulled from her neck to her face. She is screaming: “I’m pregnant, please, please!”

Alzayat says that officers slapped her face when she tried to move, leaving her with bruising. They initially accused her of trying to “prevent an arrest”, later adding another accusation of hitting police officers with a flag, even though she claims not to have even had a flag with her.

She says she was carried by five officers and put into a police car, from which she saw her husband being arrested as well. Though the charge of preventing an arrest was dropped, she says investigations continue over the allegations that she assaulted a police officer.

OAKLAND, Calif. — A former correctional officer at a federal California women’s prison known for numerous misconduct allegations was sentenced to six years in prison for sexually abusing five inmates, federal officials announced Wednesday.

Nakie Nunley, who supervised inmates at the Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin, becomes the seventh correctional officer sentenced to prison for sexually abusing inmates, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. A 2022 investigation by The Associated Press revealed a cultural of rampant sexual abuse and cover-up at the prison.

The Free Jerusalem movement, an […] anti-occupation group, says [that neocolonial] police have detained five people and assaulted others who were “protesting against the criminal attack on Gaza”.

In a post on X, the group posted footage of [neocolonial] forces grabbing, shoving, and forcibly restraining several demonstrators in Jerusalem’s Paris Square.

They even used the ‘leg on neck’ technique on him. Disturbing.

(Although the OP described them as ‘IOF stormtroopers’, judging by the outfits they seem to be riot police rather than soldiers. I can understand the confusion, though.)

ETA: Mirror, which includes a clip of IOF terrorists bullying a Palestinian child.

Cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/Europe/t/856426

Since 9/11, many U.S. police departments, including Philadelphia’s, have been routinely trained by [neocolonial] “security experts.”

Miko Peled’s article “Deadly exchange: America’s racist policing has roots in Israel” was published May 29, 2020, by MintPress News shortly after the Minnesota police suffocation death of George Floyd went viral. Peled is an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem.

Peled described this training as a “collaboration between the two racist states who see no problem in executing and watching the slow agonizing death of Black and Brown people. Officer Derek Chauvin, who casually placed his knee on George Floyd’s neck [for 9 minutes], could have easily been [a neocolonial] soldier or police officer holding down a Palestinian.”

Peled describes the training sessions [under Zionism] where police delegations from the U.S. met with [neocolonial] military, police and intelligences agencies: “They are given ‘opportunities’ to learn about what [Zionism’s régime] calls counterterrorism but is in fact no more than ‘refining methods of racial profiling.’”

He also noted: “The training [that the neocolony] offers includes methods to control the media. […] The [neocolonial] methods taught include how to use the media as an arm of the government and ‘reframe coverage of state violence.’”

Eventually, the massive Black Lives Matter protests in response to Floyd’s murder sparked backlash against the Anti-Defamation League, one of the key facilitators of police exchanges between the U.S. and [its neocolony]. Facing sustained pressure from the Deadly Exchange campaign and Jewish Voice for Peace, the ADL temporarily disrupted the program after it was forced to acknowledge that “its exchange program helped militarize U.S. police and harm communities of color.” (The Guardian, March 17, 2022)

Whatever the ADL said in public, it is unlikely that these training programs ever stopped. The U.S. and [its neocolony] are clearly united in an all-out war, not just against Palestinians, but now spreading throughout the West Asia and Northeast Africa regions. The trainings are likely to intensify, with their impact felt, not just in Gaza or Jenin, but in Black and Brown neighborhoods in Philadelphia and cities across the U.S.

Berlin: Pensioner sustains life-threatening injuries after being involved in the Luxemburg-Liebknecht demonstration. A conversation with Alexander Klein

Because we were busy with the treatment, I repeatedly asked the police officers standing around us to call an emergency doctor. But they refused because they said they didn't have time. Instead we were pushed, our rescue packs kicked and thrown around. Ultimately, a parliamentary observer called the emergency doctor. The police then refused to let him cross Frankfurter Allee. If the police had called the emergency doctor right away, we wouldn't have lost 20 important minutes!

But otherwise you won't be prevented from treating patients at demonstrations? In some cases we are even prevented from even providing medical protection for gatherings. On November 18th we were searched in Eisenach for over an hour. The police even wanted to look into my underwear. We were not allowed to take protective helmets or scissors with us to the rally. The police repeatedly deny that we are rescue workers and try to classify us as demo participants, even though there are a number of court rulings to the contrary. In 2022, we were in court in Hamburg four times for this reason - and were acquitted four times.

I was at the Demonstration yesterday and a few blocks in front of where we were the Police arrested someone who chanted "From the River to the Sea" in the International Block and then got hit with flag Poles. Then Police knocked out a 65 year old man, and arrested 15 others some ended up in Hospitals. https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/466755.ll-demo-erinnern-und-k%C3%A4mpfen.html

On Wednesday, the police refused to approve a Jewish-Arab demonstration that was scheduled to take place at Habima Square in Tel Aviv on Thursday. It was organized by Standing Together and Women Wage Peace. These organizations appealed to the commander of the police's Tel Aviv district, Maj, Gen. Peretz Amar, asking him to approve the scheduled march and demonstration, even though such a demonstration does not require a permit.

The High Court of Justice issued a temporary injunction against Ben-Gvir on Wednesday determining that he had attempted to stop a demonstration by Hadash in Tel Aviv, even though he was prohibited from intervening in concrete decisions relating to the freedom to protest or demonstrate. Following the police's refusal to permit the demonstration, these organizations will submit a similar request next week.

"A police force that refuses to allow a Jewish-Arab peace march is a political police force, protecting a minister who fears peace and prefers unending war," said Alon Lee-Green, co-national director at Standing Together. "If the police fears for our wellbeing, let them do their job and protect our march and rally."

Women Making Peace said that "refusing to approve the rally at Habima Square is unreasonable, and violates our right to make our voice heard in the public sphere in favor of a political solution. Thus far, the police have provided no reasons for their refusal. Suspicion arises that these are instructions from above. Only two weeks ago, a similar rally was held there, which concluded without a single problem."

It feels like the neocolony is getting closer to civil war.

One of the police even pushed an elder onto the ground.

NYPD trying to hide what they are talking.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1476769

If you're an abolitionist, it's a good article to read.

We have to have a peace movement again, I feel.