Knee on Neck: From Israel to Minneapolis
Mark Cramer (author of Old Man on a Green Bike and Urban Everesting)
The schooling for placing the knee on the neck of George Floyd, which resulted in his public lynching by Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin, may very well have its origins in Israel.
“The origin of the knee to the neck comes from the Israeli-style Krav Maga,” according to an experienced martial arts instructor I consulted. A professional fighter I asked also pointed to Krav Maga. The black-belt karate instructor considered Krav Maga more of a military defense practice than a martial art.
As could be expected, Israel Police national spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told the Jerusalem Post (10 June 2020), “There is no procedure that allows an officer of the Israeli Police to carry out an arrest by placing the knee on the neck of the suspect… It does not exist in any police textbook.”
This Krav Maga demonstration appears to show the instructor with the knee-on-neck technique.
How could Krav Maga have migrated from Israel to Minneapolis? According to a Minnesota Public Radio news report (“Minn. police learn from Israeli counter-terrorism conference,” Jon Collins, June 26, 2012):
About 100 Minnesota law enforcement officers attended a counter-terrorism training conference in Minneapolis, sponsored by the Israeli consulate in Chicago. Deputy Consul Shahar Arieli said Israeli law enforcement officers shared techniques to prevent terrorist acts.
The MPR reporter did not mention Krav Maga, but he did write that the half-day conference “briefly touched on concerns that law enforcement operations could violate civil rights.”
Must we place Derek Chauvin in a front-row seat at that Israeli counter-terrorism conference in order to be assured he was prompted by Israeli instructors to push his knee on the neck of George Floyd for nearly nine minutes? Not according to Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), “a national organization dedicated to a U.S. foreign policy based on peace, human rights and a respect for international law.”
Thus far the media blitz covering laundry lists of potential police department reforms has excluded any demands to end police exchange programs between the U.S. and Israel. Jewish Voice for Peace has a campaign called Deadly Exchange that proposes just that. JVP introduces its campaign with this statement:
“The deadly falsehood that violence against some communities will create security for others is perpetuated by the policies of both the U.S. and Israeli governments. One of the most dangerous places where the regimes of Trump and Netanyahu converge are in exchange programs that bring together police, ICE, border patrol, and FBI from the US with soldiers, police, border agents, etc. from Israel. In these programs, “worst practices” are shared to promote and extend discriminatory and repressive policing practices that already exist in both countries, including extrajudicial executions, shoot-to-kill policies, police murders, racial profiling, massive spying and surveillance, deportation and detention, and attacks on human rights defenders.”
A JVP petition calls for ending these exchanges.
Jewish Voice for Peace is not alone in condemning the deadly exchanges. The world’s largest human rights organization, Amnesty International, has already cited Israel for its deadly exchanges with American police departments, with specific reference to the notorious Baltimore police.
The current wall-to-wall, major-media examination of myriad police-department reforms ignores the documented Israeli-U.S. police exchanges.
Krav Maga began as an anti-fascist, street-fighting method taught in the Jewish quarter of Bratislava, in the mid-to-late 1930s. It mutated in reverse, becoming one of many methods for repressing Palestinian territories under Israeli occupation. Now we’ve all witnessed the latest migration of Krav Maga, onto the streets of Minneapolis
But the larger story is what goes on in those exchanges about deadly force between American police departments and Israeli advisors, especially the expressed “concerns that law enforcement operations could violate civil rights.” We don’t know the details, but we’ve seen the results.
