Eran Efrati, on Israeli military training US police. Explosive! (4 mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6wwLH2mimg
CONVERSATION WITH ERAN EFRATI, director of the organization Researching the American-Israeli Alliance (RAIA)
Topic: Deadly Exchange: What are American Police Forces Learning in Israel? A conversation that will bring the occupation of Palestine home to Central New York.
Date: Thursday, April 19, 6:15pm
Location: Greater Ithaca Activity Center (GIAC), 301 W. Court St., Ithaca, NY
Local contact: Beth Harris, beth55harris@gmail.com, 607-266-7587
Eran Efrati was a combat soldier with the Israeli military, which opened his eyes to the realities of the military occupation in Palestine. He is now an investigative researcher and director of the organization Researching the American-Israeli Alliance (RAIA). His research exposes the links between US law enforcement and the Israeli military, which has since 2002 been training US municipal and campus police. While Black Lives Matter and other social movements are seeking accountability and an end to police violence, American police officers, Border Patrol and ICE have been training with an apparatus that enforces a military occupation in Palestine.
Knowing this, Eran asks: “How can we resist the militarization of policing and the criminalization of citizens and immigrants?”
Eran is keenly aware of the slippery slope of applying military tactics to policing civilian populations, a topic of grave concern to Ithacans and all Americans.
This community conversation is free and open to the public. Donations to support RAIA can be made by checks written to RAIA’s fiscal sponsor, the AJ Muste Memorial Institute.
Musician Dara Anissi will open the evening with oud music dedicated to the people of Gaza.
Eran Efrati’s talk is presented by the Ithaca chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace and the Committee for Justice in Palestine. It is co-sponsored by many religious, peace and justice organizations in Tompkins, Broome and Tioga Counties, including the Tompkins County Immigrant Rights Coalition, Episcopal Peace Fellowship, Veterans for Peace of Broome County, Social Justice Council of the 1st Unitarian Society of Ithaca, Finger Lakes Veterans / Warrior Writers, Dorothy Cotton Institute, Cornell Islamic Alliance for Justice, United Methodist Upper NY Conference Task Force for Palestine/Israel, Multicultural Resource Center, Broome-Tioga Green Party, Ithaca Catholic Worker, Group 73 of Amnesty International of Ithaca NY, Ithaca Democratic Socialists of America, Congregation Tikkun v’Or Israel-Palestine Social Justice Workgroup, Ithaca College Futures Club, Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine, and Food Not Bombs.
As the new Poor People’s Campaign is gathering momentum and organizing across the country, locally and regionally, people are grounding themselves in understanding what, on April 4, 1967, MLK Jr. called the three evils of racism, poverty and militarism in his extraordinary and groundbreaking speech at Riverside Church in NYC, Beyond Vietnam–A Time to Break the Silence in which he took a courageous moral stand against the war in Vietnam,
Dr. King began to explore a new kind of revolution, a vision of people at the grassroots/community level creating new values, relationships, and structures as the foundation for a new society and combining the struggle against systemic racism with a struggle against poverty and militarism.
“We have left the realm of constitutional rights and we are entering the area of human rights.” …. “The Constitution assured the right to vote, but there is no such assurance of the rights to adequate housing, or the right to an adequate income … It is morally right to insist that every person have a decent house, and adequate education and enough money to provide basic necessities for one’s family.”
In 1968 the Poor People’s Campaign set up a multiracial, multi-ethnic Resurrection City on the Washington Mall and demanded an economic bill of rights.
Today the new Poor People’s Campaign is bringing together Americans who have a lot more in common than we are often led to believe about each other. Building coalitions and solidarity is not easy. As we remember the tragedy of his assassination fifty years ago, we can also look deeply at the legacy of Dr. King’s remarkable role in the Freedom Movement, the power of non-violent direct action, and his ability to see the interlocking web of all forms of discrimination, violence, oppression, and war. To these we add the fundamental need for a healthy planet and an end to environmental degradation. We can look at the good news of the massive amount of effective organizing happening all over the country now to end the many forms of interpersonal, cultural and state-sponsored violence, and the reverse the daily dismantling of the basic public protections of people’s civil, political, economic, cultural and social rights. Something powerful is happening here.