Atlanta Jews on high alert as anti-Israel group Stop Cop City goes national
Progressive movements mix anti-capitalist and anti-police messages with antisemitic tropes while diverse far-left causes band together under the anti-Israel banner
ATLANTA, Georgia — As the ongoing war in Gaza fuels a wave of demonstrations across American cities and college campuses, protesters are taking advantage of this moment to sound off against Israel, the police, and more.
One of the hot spots where the recent protests have met and merged is Atlanta, where opposition to a new police and fire training complex — dubbed “Cop City” by its detractors — has been joined by anti-Israel protesters, who say there’s a deep link between Atlanta’s new Public Safety Training Center and the Israel-Hamas war.
A field of signage protesting the training complex illustrates the confluence of opposition: “End Genocide in Gaza”; “Cut Ties with Israel” and “Stop Police Brutality.” In a show of unity, the signs culminate with “Killer Cops, KKK, Zionists — all the same.”
The anti-capitalist, anti-police, anti-Israel, and antisemitic agenda, language, and style of the US protest movements are taken out of an enduring political playbook, says Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University near Boston.
“If you are in favor of one progressive cause, you have to be in favor of them all,” Sarna says. “The price of admission to extreme progressive circles often is a statement against Israel, against Zionism.” The anti-police movement, he adds, has linked itself up with all the other progressive causes.
The phenomenon has spread across the country. “The fight against Cop City and for Palestinian liberation are both frontiers in the same struggle against the mechanisms of state-sanctioned violence and oppression,” reads a statement by student protest organizers at Emory University in Atlanta.
The ongoing military conflict in the Gaza Strip broke out on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed over the border and slaughtered 1,200 men, women, and children in southern Israel and kidnapped 251 to the Gaza Strip. Almost immediately after the Hamas massacre, anti-Israel protest movements sprouted across the globe, including in Atlanta.
US-Israeli law enforcement program under attack
The Atlanta activists’ prime target is the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE), a center at Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Based in Atlanta, the center has organized global law enforcement exchanges for over 30 years. The signature program is in cooperation with Israel.
GILEE has become the connective piece between the anti-Israel and anti-police protests.
Today, signs saying “Stop GILEE,” “Abolish GILEE,” and “Shut GILEE down” are a familiar sight at anti-Israel and Stop Cop City rallies in Atlanta and beyond. In the eyes of the protesters, GILEE serves as a perfect conduit for Atlanta police to carry out their “subversive” mission — importing militarized policing and urban warfare tactics from Israel into the US and vice versa to control the oppressed of the world.
“US military and police officers train with military and police officers globally in a colossal network of force and violence,” reads an essay published by Security in Context, a self-described research network.
A number of Stop Cop City activists barricaded themselves in tree houses, set police cars on fire, attacked officers with Molotov cocktails, and vandalized construction equipment. During a January 2023 raid to clear protesters off the land, one of them was shot by a Georgia state trooper under circumstances that have become the topic of debate.
To date, the state has indicted 61 protesters with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Some face additional charges including vandalism and arson. Several dozen have also been arrested for domestic terrorism. Some human rights organizations, like Human Rights Watch (HRW) and The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have called the charges draconian, disproportionate and overreaching.
Protest organizers contacted for this article did not return requests for comment. Representatives for GILEE declined to be interviewed.
Opposition against GILEE isn’t new. In 2018, the anti-Zionist organization Jewish Voice for Peace published a report called “Deadly Exchange.” It claims that exchange programs for senior police officers — including GILEE and another program organized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) — “promote and extend discriminatory and repressive policing practices that already exist in both countries.”
GILEE was founded in 1992 by Robert Friedmann, a professor emeritus of criminal justice at Georgia State. To date, more than 1,300 senior police officers from 25 countries have participated in over 300 exchanges. According to its website, GILEE provides “leadership development programs to law enforcement executives,” where participants share best practices in policing and innovative ideas on public safety and homeland security.
“There is no hands-on tactical training” at any GILEE program, Friedmann said in a 2022 interview with The Times of Israel. The GILEE website is clear that the program is not a police academy or a law enforcement agency, and GILEE doesn’t train with the military in the US, Israel, or any other country.
GILEE and the new Atlanta Public Safety Training Center are both focused on increasing police professionalism. The new training campus, as well as global exchange programs like GILEE, are critical investments in public safety, says Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum, a GILEE graduate.
Being exposed to different law enforcement agencies in Israel and around the world has helped his department’s leadership “to focus on recruiting diversity into the police ranks, remain apolitical within the organization, and develop a training infrastructure that reflects ethical, community-based policing,” Schierbaum says.
Police leaders participating in GILEE exchanges often glean ideas that, directly or indirectly, inspire, inform, or shape their own policies. In 2021, when calls for police reform grew louder, the police department in the Georgia town of LaGrange rolled out a new use-of-force training policy called “Shoot to Incapacitate,” which focused on de-escalation and was inspired by a GILEE program in Israel. The policy sparked a nationwide discussion.
Sometimes, the takeaways are less tangible but still powerful. Andrew Senzer traveled to Israel twice with GILEE. The recently retired deputy chief of the Atlanta Police Department particularly remembers his visit in 2021 when he spent a week shadowing an Israeli police district commander in the predominantly Arab village of Abu Ghosh.
“Community policing is critically important for the Israel Police, and it happens under tough circumstances,” says Senzer. After all, he adds, “Israel faces existential threats every day, and it has a very multi-ethnic population.”
When opposition over the new public safety training center erupted in 2021, and anti-Israel activists joined the fight in late 2023, Senzer didn’t allow himself to get too involved in the protesters’ radical messaging. Putting on his professional veneer as a cop worked for the most part, he says.
“But personally, I was incredulous,” adds Senzer, who is Jewish. He says he never thought that blatant antisemitism would be possible and accepted in the United States. He was mostly concerned for the safety of his three college-aged kids.
“It was unsettling. It was frightening,” he says.
A hate as old as time
Much of the language, arguments, and tactics of the anti-Israel and anti-police protest movements are taken “stock and barrel out of the old Soviet Union manuals,” says Sarna.
The rhetoric used by activists and their supporters includes slogans like “the ruling class forces behind Cop City,” “the police-military continuum,” or “an international system of repression that functions to secure US imperial interests.”
Mixed in are centuries-old antisemitic tropes — like the one of Jews being agents and benefactors of international finance. An article in the left-wing media outlet Truthout argues that GILEE and the Atlanta Public Safety Center, through the nonprofit Atlanta Police Foundation, “have an overlapping network of wealthy and corporate backers, some of whom are outspoken in defending Israel” — donors like Jewish philanthropist Bernie Marcus, co-founder of The Home Depot, an Atlanta-based home improvement retail chain.
There’s misinformation and disinformation, and often, the framing justifies the narrative. For example, the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) writes in an undated report titled “Bigotry and Brutality in Foreign Police Training” that “[a]mong other things, GILEE has taught that officers should inspire fear by ‘racking’ their firearms when they unholster them, which is a common tactic that Israeli officers use against unarmed Palestinian protesters.”
To those unfamiliar with Israeli firearms policy, this may seem like intimidation tactics. Yet it is a fact that police in Israel carry their handguns with a loaded magazine and an empty chamber, requiring them to rack the slide as they draw and point the weapon. The reason behind the practice, known as “Israeli carry,” is safety — to prevent an accidental discharge.
Bad actors
The story doesn’t stop in Atlanta, and it doesn’t stop with GILEE. It has gone national and global. “Free Palestine” and “Stop Cop City” have become synchronized battle cries at rallies from New York to Los Angeles and wherever police plan to build new major training facilities.
According to Sarna, there’s increasing evidence that the money for the protests comes from governments or individuals “who are looking to stir up dissent in the US, undermine American society and implement a system change.”
In Atlanta, most of the protesters charged with domestic terrorism were from out of state, and some from other countries such as Canada and France, according to the Georgia Attorney General’s Office.
Recent articles in the Wall Street Journal and Commentary detail how an opaque network of activist groups and shell organizations is used by bad actors in China, Iran and some Arab countries to fund and control antisemitic and anti-police protests in the US.
In July, Avril Haines, director of National Intelligence in the US, issued a statement saying that “Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of the ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza… posing as activists, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”
Jewish institutions hunkering down
The long-term effects of the connected protests are unknown, but the current impact is real.
In Atlanta, Jewish and Israeli institutions — from synagogues to schools to diplomatic missions — are on increased alert. Many have “hardened the security of their facilities, hired more security personnel and requested active threat training,” says Brian Davis, director of the Secure Community Network (SCN) in Atlanta. SCN is the official safety and security organization for the Jewish community in North America.
The number of events where Jewish institutions had to engage with local, state, or federal police has more than tripled since 2022, says Davis, in Atlanta and nationwide.
According to city officials, the costs for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center have increased by $19 million due to heightened security measures, litigation, and a spike in insurance rates. Protesters have destroyed about $10 million worth of construction equipment and other property across metro Atlanta.
Atlanta Police Chief Schierbaum says most of the protests have been peaceful and legal. But the joint response to those that weren’t peaceful helped his department hone its collaboration with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies as well as corporate security, he says. “I’ve seen us coordinate at a very high level,” says Schierbaum.
Over the next few weeks, a smooth-running security cooperation may be crucial. The city is preparing for another wave of protests as the war in Gaza continues, the outcome of the highly charged presidential elections could lead to unrest, and construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center comes to completion.
Schierbaum remains undeterred. “We will cut the ribbon in December and make sure the center’s operations are in no way stopped or detoured.”
