Blood Libel #30 | "The Deadly Exchange"
Anti-Zionist:
Israel trains U.S. police in brutality. Programs like the “Deadly Exchange” are why American cops kill Black and brown people. Israel exports occupation tactics that fuel racism and violence in the U.S.
Pro-Zionist:
That’s a modern blood libel—scapegoating Jews for America’s deepest injustices.
Police brutality in the U.S. didn’t start with Israel. It’s rooted in America’s own legacy—slave patrols, Jim Crow laws, systemic racism. U.S. cops didn’t need Israeli training to abuse power.
What you’re calling the “Deadly Exchange” refers mainly to the ADL’s National Counter-Terrorism Seminar, which brings a small number of senior U.S. law enforcement leaders to Israel to study counterterrorism, emergency response, and crisis de-escalation—not street policing or racial profiling.
There’s no evidence these programs have contributed to brutality. No officer involved in unjustified killings was trained in Israel. The programs don’t teach crowd control, use-of-force tactics, or militarization—they teach how to save lives in emergencies.
So why target them?
Because this isn’t about justice. It’s about demonizing Israel. The campaign began with Jewish Voice for Peace, a fringe group that cloaks antisemitic rhetoric in social justice language. They’ve tried to tie Zionism to white supremacy, even blaming Jews for George Floyd’s death. That’s not activism. That’s incitement.
And it hurts everyone. It undermines real police reform by deflecting blame from the American institutions that need fixing. It divides natural allies—Black and Jewish communities—who once marched together for civil rights.
You can criticize policing without scapegoating Jews. If your movement needs a villain and always picks Israel, ask yourself why.
Beyond the Talking Points
The “Deadly Exchange” campaign falsely claims that U.S. law enforcement’s abuse of Black Americans is the result of training with Israeli police and military. The accusation goes like this: U.S. police departments travel to Israel, learn brutal tactics used against Palestinians, and then bring those tactics back home to oppress Black and brown Americans. This narrative is not just wrong—it’s dangerous and antisemitic.
The Facts
Most U.S.-Israel exchange programs—often facilitated by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) or law enforcement associations—deal with counterterrorism, hostage situations, and mass casualty preparedness, not racialized street-level policing.
Fewer than 0.1% of U.S. police officers have ever attended one of these programs.
Use-of-force policies in American police departments are set locally, shaped by U.S. history and culture, not Israeli practice.
Israel doesn’t teach chokeholds or no-knock raids. Those are homegrown American practices, rooted in domestic law enforcement.
The Origins of the Campaign
The phrase “Deadly Exchange” was coined by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)—a group that uses its Jewish identity to give cover to anti-Israel messaging. In 2017, JVP launched the campaign in an effort to end police exchange programs with Israel. Their materials often featured imagery linking Israeli soldiers with American cops kneeling on necks—explicitly drawing a line between George Floyd’s murder and Zionism.
This attempt to link Zionism to white supremacy is deeply offensive—not just to Jews, but to the truth.
Israel is a multiethnic democracy, where Jews of color, Arab citizens, and immigrants from Africa and Asia live alongside one another. The IDF includes Muslim, Christian, and Druze soldiers, and Israeli police confront threats very different from those in American cities.
Conflating these realities is intellectually dishonest, and morally corrosive.
Is It Naive to Criticize These Programs?
It is not naive to question how law enforcement operates or to scrutinize foreign partnerships. In a world where policing practices urgently need reform, all forms of cooperation should be examined. But the Deadly Exchange campaign doesn’t offer good-faith criticism—it offers a distortion.
What many activists miss is the actual nature and purpose of these exchange programs. These are not militarized boot camps or tactical street-policing intensives. They are leadership seminars for senior officials, focused on crisis prevention, counterterrorism strategy, and community recovery. There is no field training, no instruction in riot suppression, no reinforcement of aggressive policing techniques.
To claim otherwise is to fundamentally misunderstand—or deliberately misrepresent—what these programs are.
Perhaps more troubling, the campaign shifts blame for American failures onto Israel and Jews. Yet another antisemitic trope. The United States has centuries of systemic racism and police violence—long before Israel existed. American policies, union protections, qualified immunity, and militarized equipment from the Pentagon’s 1033 Program all play far greater roles in domestic police brutality than any foreign partnership. But instead of addressing those entrenched causes, “Deadly Exchange” finds an external scapegoat.
In doing so, it applies a blatant double standard. The U.S. conducts law enforcement exchanges with dozens of countries, including regimes known for police abuse and repression—China, Russia, Brazil, Egypt. Yet only Israel is singled out, demonized, and falsely linked to racist violence. That’s not principled activism; that’s selective outrage with a political target.
The result is a betrayal of historic alliances. For decades, Black and Jewish communities stood shoulder to shoulder in the fight for civil rights. That coalition is now being fractured by a campaign that—intentionally or not—blames Jewish institutions for Black suffering.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed rejected a call by anti-Israel campaigners to stop local law enforcement officials from training with their Israeli counterparts. Georgia Black law enforcement groups, and Native American leaders all defended the Israel exchanges, citing valuable counterterrorism collaboration. He was quoted as saying:
There was a demand that I stop allowing the Atlanta police department to train with the Israeli Police department,” Reed said. “I’m not going to do that. I happen to believe that the Israeli police department has some of the best counter-terrorism techniques in the world, and it benefits our police department from our long-standing relationship.
Finally, there is real-world danger. This campaign plays into classic antisemitic tropes—that Jews control systems of violence, that they orchestrate suffering from behind the scenes, that they profit from oppression. These are the same conspiracy patterns that have preceded pogroms, expulsions, and shootings for centuries.
The 2019 New Jersey kosher deli shooter reportedly engaged with online content echoing these very claims.
Criticizing policing is not antisemitic. Blaming Jews for police brutality is. The distinction is not subtle. It is vital.
The Real Impact: Dividing Natural Allies
The campaign intentionally drives a wedge between Jews and Black Americans by weaponizing legitimate anger over police violence. Instead of holding American systems accountable, it externalizes the blame to Israel—allowing activists to push a two-for-one agenda: delegitimize Israel while appearing to fight racism.
Yet historically, Black and Jewish communities have stood side by side in the fight for civil rights. Dr. King marched with rabbis. The NAACP was co-founded by Jews. And many Jews risked their lives for Black liberation. Pushing the “Deadly Exchange” myth betrays that shared legacy.
Moral Clarity
U.S. police violence is a real and urgent issue, but it’s not Israel’s fault.
Blaming Jews for American injustice is not activism—it’s antisemitism.
True justice demands we fight racism without scapegoating, and pursue peace without lies.
The “Deadly Exchange” narrative weaponizes deeply antisemitic tropes by falsely suggesting that Jews and Israel are responsible for police brutality in the U.S. This accusation is factually baseless and historically dangerous.
What These Exchange Programs Actually Do
Targeted training for senior leaders only — U.S. law-enforcement executives (police chiefs, commanders, ICE/FBI leadership, etc.), not patrol officers, participate .
Focus is on counterterrorism, leadership, emergency resilience—not crowd control or brutality. Sessions include:
Deterrence and disruption of attacks
De-escalation techniques
Implicit bias and hate-crime prevention
PTSD, trauma response, and community recovery .
Scope remains small—but strategic. Examples:
ADL’s National Counter-Terrorism Seminar (NCTS): ~500–600 officers since 2004 .
Georgia GILEE: ~1,250 officers trained and ~43,000 participants in workshops as of 2023 .
Misrepresentation & Smears by DX Activists
DX falsely brands these programs as “military training” or “occupation-style policing,” ignoring:
Their peaceful, educational format
The absence of Israeli army involvement .
There’s no evidence linking participants to misuse of force in U.S. policing—no one involved in unjust killings trained in Israel .
These programs are one of many exchange agreements. The U.S. partners with dozens of countries (Argentina, France, Japan, etc.), but DX singles out Israel—revealing bias or agenda .
Institutional Reevaluation, Not Retraction
Deadly Exchange activists falsely claimed “victory”, suggesting the ADL had admitted wrongdoing — but that’s not true. The pause was about optics, not guilt. While the ADL publicly dismissed that line of critique in the summer of 2020. “Seeking to link Israel as a state to US police misconduct is a bizarre excuse for the centuries-long history of racism and injustice that has been part of American history, really since our founding,”
The ADL still defends the program’s content, stating it does not teach use-of-force or militarized tactics, and is focused on saving lives from terrorism.
No evidence has ever linked this program to police brutality in the U.S.
5. Antisemitic Context & Real-World Harm
DX amplifies the age-old antisemitic tactic: blaming Jews/Israel for societal ills (e.g., pandemics, plague, wars).
That scapegoating radicalizes individuals: Investigators found the 2019 New Jersey kosher-deli shooter was influenced by DX-style conspiracies .
The result? Greater hostility toward Jews + damaged alliances—especially between Black and Jewish communities—without addressing real root causes of police violence.
DX is a Double-Edged Deception
It distorts legitimate security programs with false charges of brutality.
It selectively targets only Israel, ignoring similar U.S. partnerships globally.
It hijacks racial justice activism, undermining genuine reform efforts and sowing division.
It fuels antisemitic violence, upholding a pattern of hatred that has real-world consequences.