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Comment by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE | Hacker News Reader

> I wouldn't be surprised if IDF forces deployed to the West Bank are trained much like American police officers are

IDF trains them.

https://www.amnestyusa.org/blog/with-whom-are-many-u-s-polic...

David Simon and others have written extensively for decades about the problems with the Baltimore Police Department, and other departments around the country. They trace these problems back to the war on drugs and other purely American factors.

The Amnesty article that you're citing is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. The Baltimore Police Department did not need to learn about constitutional violations from the Israelis.

Everybody thinks the War on Drugs is about "keeping people safe". It never was, it was always about manufacturing a tool to oppress "others".

from that lens it was almost necessary to invent a pretense since people got all huffy about overt oppression at the end of Jim Crow.

You can add The War On Terror to that list.

Where do think US police get all their fun toys to play with?

"How 9/11 helped to militarize American law enforcement": https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-9-11-helped-to-milita...

Yep. But the War on Drugs has been around much longer and is more relevant to people's day to day lives. And people buy into it. I hear this all the time "Sure, weed should be legal, and cocaine too because I like to party now and then, but the 'hard stuff' should definitely be illegal because its dangerous".

To make matters worse -- people think that those who advocate against it are doing so because they want to do drugs (and some may) but it's a civil liberties issue and is the foundation for the militarization of the police.

The War on Drugs is more relevant to your day-to-day life, perhaps, but people in the Middle-east are also people, in case you forget that.

That checks out. Although the history of "Warrior Policing" in the US predates this (going back to the 60s) and extends far beyond IDF training programs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrior_policing

Pretty sure police brutality was invented way before Israel existed.

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