The Gary Null Blog

At the time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department was preparing for an imminent confrontation with the nascent “Occupy” movement that had set up camp in downtown Oakland, and would demonstrate the brunt of its repressive capacity against the demonstrators a month later when it attacked [3] the encampment with teargas and rubber bullet rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in critical condition [4] and dozens injured. According to Police Magazine [5], a law enforcement trade publication, “Law enforcement agencies responding to…Occupy protesters in northern California credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.”

Training alongside the American police departments at Urban Shield was the Yamam, [6] an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in “counter-terror” operations but is better known for its extra-judicial assassinations [7] of Palestinian militant leaders and long record of repression [8] and abuses [9] in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Urban Shield also featured a unit from the military of Bahrain, which had just crushed a largely non-violent democratic uprising by opening fire [10] on protest camps and arresting [11]wounded demonstrators when they attempted to enter hospitals. While the involvement of Bahraini soldiers in the drills was a novel phenomenon, the presence of quasi-military Israeli police – whose participation in Urban Shield was not reported anywhere in US media – reflected a disturbing but all-too-common feature of the post-9/11 American security landscape.