This paper offers a comprehensive and critical investigation of the material, ideological, and operational connections binding the Israeli military (IDF), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the militarization of police and security forces in both the United States and Israel. Centering on the tumultuous years from 2023 to 2025—a period marked by unprecedented violence in Gaza and escalating domestic repression in the U.S.—the study interrogates how state violence is coordinated, justified, and adapted across borders. It details the direct and indirect linkages from the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza under Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to the systematic abuse, deprivation, and rights violations endured by migrants, Black, and Brown communities under Donald Trump and his political successors.
The analysis synthesizes evidence from a range of sources, including newly released government and NGO reports, legislative records, declassified communications, and investigative journalism from 2024–2025. It closely examines joint training programs between the IDF and U.S. police, the proliferation of Israeli surveillance technologies in American cities and detention centers, the legal and financial mechanisms enabling perpetual states of emergency, and the shared logic of occupation, exclusion, and dispossession that underpins both regimes. The research demonstrates that American and Israeli state violence do not simply resemble one another but are co-constitutive: the export of security doctrine, crowd control techniques, and punitive social policies creates a transnational feedback loop, continually refining the architecture of repression.
In exposing this pipeline, the study pays particular attention to the lived consequences of these policies: the deliberate use of starvation as a weapon in Gaza; the mass internment and abuse in ICE detention centers such as “Alligator Alcatraz”; the militarized suppression of dissent in protest sites like Atlanta’s Cop City; and the legislative assault on social welfare and basic rights for the poor in both societies. Drawing on the latest findings from the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, frontline journalists, and court records, this paper argues that the spectacle and substance of violence—whether enacted by missile strikes in Rafah, masked agents in Los Angeles, or budget cuts in Washington—serve a unified imperial strategy: to render entire populations disposable, disciplined, and deprived of redress.
Ultimately, the study reveals that the moral and economic bankruptcy of empire is mirrored in the purposeful starvation, incarceration, and repression of the most vulnerable—across borders and within them. In tracing this through-line, it calls for renewed attention to the global and local mechanisms of solidarity, legal accountability, and grassroots resistance that are vital to disrupting the machinery of modern state violence.
In the early decades of the twenty-first century, the boundaries separating foreign occupation from domestic policing have grown ever more porous. The fates of the oppressed in Palestine and the disenfranchised in the United States are now visibly, materially linked—tied together by a transnational architecture of control, surveillance, and violence. What unfolds in Gaza—the relentless bombardment by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the systematic destruction of infrastructure, and the purposeful starvation of a captive population—reverberates across the Atlantic in the form of ICE raids, overcrowded and abusive migrant detention camps, and the deployment of militarized police against protesters in American cities.[1] UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Gaza,” June 2025; ACLU, “Deaths in ICE Custody: 2024–2025 Review,” June 2025.
By 2025, these phenomena are no longer coincidental or merely diplomatic echoes. Rather, they have become infrastructural and intimate, the result of deliberate policy transfers and operational exchanges. Surveillance technologies first deployed to track and repress Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza—drones, facial recognition, predictive policing—are now fixtures in American cities and along the U.S.–Mexico border.[2] Jewish Voice for Peace, “Deadly Exchange: US-Israel Police Training,” 2018; The Intercept and Haaretz, “Inside the Deadly Exchange 2025,” March 2025. The tactical doctrines of “crowd control,” honed by Israeli forces over decades of occupation and tested against protestors and humanitarian workers, are now embedded in U.S. law enforcement’s training regimens, including in Atlanta’s notorious “Cop City,” where urban warfare is not simulated but institutionalized.[3] The Guardian and The Appeal, “Cop City Files Leak,” April 2025. The presence of masked, unidentified police squads, rapid-deployment paramilitary teams, and no-knock raids has become commonplace in both nations, transforming public space into a perpetual state of exception.[4] DHS Office of Inspector General, “Use of Special Response Teams 2024–2025,” May 2025.
This convergence is driven by more than shared technologies or tactics—it is the product of a powerful pipeline of money, weapons, ideology, and law flowing continuously between Washington and Tel Aviv. The engine of this pipeline is the political alliance between figures like Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, whose mutual embrace has emboldened the rightward drift and normalization of repression in both states.[5] U.S. Congressional Record, “Supplemental Appropriations for FY2025: Israel and Ukraine,” April 2025; Associated Press, “US Military to Remove 2,000 National Guard Troops from Los Angeles,” July 15, 2025. But it is also sustained by a durable bipartisan consensus within the American and Israeli establishments: an agreement that “security” is the ultimate rationale, one that justifies the expansion of surveillance, the criminalization of dissent, and the management of entire populations as threats to be contained or eliminated. The Iron Dome’s billion-dollar missiles, the $75 billion in new U.S. funding for ICE, the construction of fortified detention centers, and the legislative evisceration of food stamps, Medicaid, and other social supports are not isolated policy decisions; they are orchestrated components of a shared imperial logic that renders both foreign and domestic “others” disposable.[6] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Analysis of American Fiscal Security Act,” March 2025; Congressional Budget Office, “SNAP/Medicaid Cut Impacts,” July 2025.
International bodies have responded with alarm. The United Nations Human Rights Council and the International Committee of the Red Cross have repeatedly documented how Israel’s campaign in Gaza has evolved beyond traditional occupation—constituting, by 2025, a program of collective starvation, forced displacement, and the systematic targeting of civilian infrastructure.[7] UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Gaza,” June 2025; International Committee of the Red Cross, “Gaza Situation Update,” July 2025. These actions persist even in the face of international court orders, ICC arrest warrants, and mounting global condemnation.[8] International Criminal Court, “Decision on Applications for Arrest Warrants: State of Palestine,” June 2025. Independent investigations by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and journalists on the ground have confirmed the direct use of U.S.-supplied weaponry in attacks on hospitals, water purification facilities, schools, and food convoys, exacerbating a humanitarian disaster of historic proportions.[9] Amnesty International, “Israel: U.S.-Supplied Weapons Used in Attacks on Civilians,” July 2025.
Yet, as resources for militarism and surveillance surge, American lawmakers simultaneously enact sweeping austerity at home—slashing the very social supports that millions depend upon.[10] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Analysis of American Fiscal Security Act,” March 2025. Food assistance, health care, affordable housing, and disability benefits are sacrificed on the altar of “fiscal responsibility,” even as new appropriations for border militarization and overseas wars pass with bipartisan ease.[11] Congressional Budget Office, “SNAP/Medicaid Cut Impacts,” July 2025; U.S. Congressional Record, “Supplemental Appropriations for FY2025: Israel and Ukraine,” April 2025. For the architects of empire, the calculus is simple and brutal: there is always money for missiles and cages, but never enough for bread or medicine.
In this context, the destruction of Gaza and the intensifying criminalization of migration, protest, and poverty in the U.S. must not be seen as discrete crises or the unfortunate byproducts of geopolitics. Rather, they are two faces of a single project—a global architecture of state violence and social warfare, normalized and legitimized as the price of “security” and “order.” The developments of 2023–2025 reveal that this architecture is now more technologically advanced, institutionally entrenched, and widely accepted—if also increasingly contested—than ever before.
The following pages map this convergence, tracing its roots in policy, law, and technology; exposing its impacts on the most vulnerable; and pointing toward the urgent need for global solidarity and resistance in the face of empire’s widening circle.
Since October 2023, the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu—armed and emboldened by full U.S. diplomatic, military, and economic support—has prosecuted a campaign of “total siege” on Gaza, turning collective punishment into explicit policy. Hospitals have been systematically destroyed, food, water, fuel, and medicine blocked, journalists and humanitarian workers targeted, and entire neighborhoods razed. The UN Human Rights Council’s June 2025 report, echoing the International Committee of the Red Cross and corroborated by satellite evidence, describes these actions as a “coordinated campaign of collective punishment and ethnic cleansing, rising to the level of genocide.” [1] UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Gaza,” June 2025; International Committee of the Red Cross, “Gaza Situation Update,” July 2025.
The use of starvation as a tool of war has become central to Israeli policy. UN and ICRC reports from 2024–2025 document catastrophic levels of hunger: by July 2025, over a million Palestinians face acute malnutrition, with more than half a million at risk of imminent famine. [2] UN OCHA, “Gaza Emergency Situation Report,” May 2024; UN Independent Commission of Inquiry, “Occupied Palestinian Territory: Destruction of Civilian Infrastructure,” May 2025; B’Tselem, “Starvation as a Weapon,” 2023; Al Jazeera, “What Is the Kill Zone People in Gaza Need to Cross to Receive Aid?” July 21, 2025; PBS NewsHour, “UN’s World Food Program Says Israeli Tanks and Snipers Opened Fire on a Crowd Seeking Aid in Gaza,” July 2025. Deliberate restrictions on humanitarian aid have been publicly acknowledged by Israeli officials, and aid convoys, food depots, and water plants have been systematically targeted—even after international court orders to halt such attacks. [2] UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Gaza,” June 2025; International Committee of the Red Cross, “Gaza Situation Update,” July 2025.
Recent events underscore the brutality of the siege. As of July 2025, between 87–90% of Gaza is under Israeli occupation or evacuation orders, with 2.1 million Palestinians forced into just 12% of the territory. [3] The Guardian, “At Least 72 Palestinians Killed by Israeli Fire in Past 24 Hours as UNRWA Chief Brands Gaza ‘Hell on Earth’ – As It Happened,” July 22, 2025; Wikipedia, “Israeli Blockade of the Gaza Strip (2023–Present),” accessed July 22, 2025; The Guardian, “Israel Launches Air and Ground Offensive on Deir al-Balah in Central Gaza,” July 21, 2025. Infrastructure has collapsed—hospitals, water, and sewage systems are nonfunctional, and famine now grips at least 66,000 children.[3] The Guardian, “At Least 72 Palestinians Killed by Israeli Fire in Past 24 Hours as UNRWA Chief Brands Gaza ‘Hell on Earth’ – As It Happened,” July 22, 2025; Wikipedia, “Israeli Blockade of the Gaza Strip (2023–Present),” accessed July 22, 2025; The Guardian, “Israel Launches Air and Ground Offensive on Deir al-Balah in Central Gaza,” July 21, 2025. Since May 27, 2025, over 1,050 civilians have been killed at food distribution sites, including dozens shot by snipers at UN- and WFP-coordinated aid points. [2] UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Gaza,” June 2025; International Committee of the Red Cross, “Gaza Situation Update,” July 2025. [3] The Guardian, “At Least 72 Palestinians Killed by Israeli Fire in Past 24 Hours as UNRWA Chief Brands Gaza ‘Hell on Earth’ – As It Happened,” July 22, 2025; Wikipedia, “Israeli Blockade of the Gaza Strip (2023–Present),” accessed July 22, 2025; The Guardian, “Israel Launches Air and Ground Offensive on Deir al-Balah in Central Gaza,” July 21, 2025. On July 21, the Deir al-Balah offensive destroyed key humanitarian infrastructure and killed hundreds within 24 hours, many while seeking aid. [3] The Guardian, “At Least 72 Palestinians Killed by Israeli Fire in Past 24 Hours as UNRWA Chief Brands Gaza ‘Hell on Earth’ – As It Happened,” July 22, 2025; Wikipedia, “Israeli Blockade of the Gaza Strip (2023–Present),” accessed July 22, 2025; The Guardian, “Israel Launches Air and Ground Offensive on Deir al-Balah in Central Gaza,” July 21, 2025.
The U.S. role in enabling this policy is both direct and systemic. Congressional records show that since 1948, the U.S. has provided over $75 billion in aid to Israel, with more than $16 billion approved in 2025 alone—much of it earmarked for missile defense (including the Iron Dome), precision munitions, and advanced surveillance. [5] Congressional Research Service, “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel,” 2023; U.S. Congressional Record, “Supplemental Appropriations for FY2025: Israel and Ukraine,” April 2025. While Israeli security is elevated to existential necessity in U.S. policy debates, urgent appeals for American social safety net funding—SNAP, Medicaid, or pandemic relief—are met with austerity and derision.
American politicians across both parties—with rare exceptions—have either justified or facilitated the ongoing assault on Gaza, despite mounting evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity. [5] Congressional Research Service, “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel,” 2023; U.S. Congressional Record, “Supplemental Appropriations for FY2025: Israel and Ukraine,” April 2025. [6] U.S. GAO, “Pentagon Munitions Transfers, FY2024–2025,” March 2025; ProPublica, “Secret U.S. Arms Pipeline to Israel,” March 2025. [7] Center for Constitutional Rights, “FOIA Release: U.S.–Israel ICC Coordination,” May 2025. The function of the Iron Dome, and of U.S. financial and diplomatic support, is not merely defensive but actively underwrites and normalizes Israel’s capacity for large-scale, systematic violence.
Gaza is not only a site of suffering; it has become the world’s most advanced laboratory of contemporary siege, surveillance, and state violence. The techniques of control—total blockade, infrastructural sabotage, the use of hunger as a weapon, digital surveillance, and “legalized” impunity—are exported globally, directly shaping the doctrine of American border enforcement, urban policing, and protest suppression.
Despite widespread global outcry—28–29 countries and numerous UN bodies now demand immediate ceasefire and unimpeded humanitarian access—the siege and starvation continue, protected by American vetoes and financial flows. The cost is borne most heavily by Gaza’s most vulnerable: children, the elderly, the sick, and the poor, many of whom now face conditions classified as famine or “hell on earth.” [3] The Guardian, “At Least 72 Palestinians Killed by Israeli Fire in Past 24 Hours as UNRWA Chief Brands Gaza ‘Hell on Earth’ – As It Happened,” July 22, 2025; United Nations General Assembly Resolutions on Gaza, July 2025; Al Jazeera, “What Is the Kill Zone People in Gaza Need to Cross to Receive Aid?” July 21, 2025. [8] Same as above; United Nations General Assembly Resolutions on Gaza, July 2025.
The ongoing destruction and starvation of Gaza is not an aberration but a deliberate, systematic policy enabled by an interlocking web of Israeli strategy and American support. Its logic and technologies are neither confined to the Middle East nor limited to the current moment—they reverberate in every context where empire seeks to render populations disposable, and where the machinery of security is valued above the sanctity of human life.
From 2016 onward, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency evolved far beyond its initial mandate, emerging as the domestic engine of a global war on the poor and displaced—an evolution deeply influenced by the “tough on borders” doctrine of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[1] Spencer Ackerman, “ICE Was Designed for Brutality,” The Nation, 2020. The Trump administration openly admired and learned from Israel’s posture, casting Netanyahu’s siege strategies as a model for “maximum deterrence.” Though ICE originated in the post-9/11 landscape of counterterror, its mutation under Trump brought new levels of power and impunity: the agency became notorious for extrajudicial raids, mass detentions, and the pursuit of “total enforcement” within and beyond U.S. borders.[1] Spencer Ackerman, “ICE Was Designed for Brutality,” The Nation, 2020.
Materially, this shift manifested through the construction of new border walls, the proliferation of mass detention sites, and billions in unaccountable “emergency” spending. Much of this money flowed to private contractors and black ops outfits with histories paralleling the secretive and extralegal actions of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza and the West Bank.[2] Congressional Budget Office, “Analysis of the Border Security Bill,” 2023. Congressional analyses show that these appropriations were often shielded from public oversight, justified under the logic of crisis and national security.[3] Sophia Siddiqui, “Drones, Prisons, and Profiteers: The Corporate Ties of ICE and the IDF,” In These Times, 2023. The pipeline was not only financial or operational, but ideological: the logics of occupation, exclusion, and permanent threat, perfected in the Israeli context, were imported and repurposed for U.S. border and migration enforcement.
This militarized border regime yielded a documented system of abuse. Reports by the ACLU, Physicians for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and Congressional watchdogs confirm persistent patterns of sexual violence, forced sterilization, family separation, psychological torment, and medical neglect in ICE detention.[4] American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “Family Separation and Detention Abuse,” 2023. [5] Human Rights Watch, “Solitary Confinement and Retaliation in ICE Detention,” April 2025. [6] U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform, “Detention Center Abuses,” 2023. These abuses were not isolated; they were systemic and, in many cases, deliberate.
The South Louisiana ICE Processing Center—nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” by its own prisoners—became notorious for extreme isolation, deprivation, and violence, echoing the U.S. “black site” model and Israel’s treatment of Palestinian political detainees.[7] José Olivares and John Washington, “Inside the Alligator Alcatraz,” The Intercept, April 2024. Between January 2024 and June 2025 alone, the ACLU documented 57 deaths in ICE custody, the highest annual toll in over a decade—directly attributed to “deliberate indifference” and a lack of basic oversight.[8] ACLU, “Deaths in ICE Custody: 2024–2025 Review,” June 2025.
Senate Judiciary Committee transcripts and investigative reporting reveal that ICE agents systematically used forced sedation on detainees, disabled surveillance cameras during beatings and assaults, and imposed solitary confinement as a punishment for those who protested or went on hunger strike.[9] U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, “ICE Detention Transcripts and Footage,” June 2025. [10] Human Rights Watch, “Solitary Confinement and Retaliation in ICE Detention,” April 2025.
ProPublica’s May 2025 exposé revealed the existence of ICE “mobile detention buses”—black site vehicles modeled on Israeli prisoner transport—used to move, conceal, and isolate detainees from lawyers, families, the media, and Congressional visitors.[11] ProPublica, “ICE’s Mobile Detention Fleet: Borrowing from Israel,” May 2025. These practices drew direct inspiration from Israeli carceral tactics, including the use of indefinite administrative detention and transfer to undisclosed locations.
The meteoric rise in ICE and border militarization budgets occurred alongside deep domestic austerity. As funding for ICE and the border wall ballooned, Congress simultaneously gutted the social safety net: SNAP, Medicaid, and basic welfare programs for the poor were cut or capped.[12] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Analysis of American Fiscal Security Act,” March 2025. This juxtaposition represents not just economic but moral bankruptcy—the same logic that legitimates the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza was mirrored in the U.S. by the designation of migrants, Black, and poor Americans as disposable.[13] Federal Court for the Southern District of California, “Rodriguez v. ICE: Preliminary Injunction,” July 2025.
By 2025, DHS budget documents confirmed more than $76 billion allocated to ICE/CBP in under three years, with more than half earmarked for “emergency operations” and “infrastructure expansion,” much of it shielded from transparency.[14] Department of Homeland Security, “Budget Overview: ICE/CBP 2023–2025,” May 2025. Legal challenges, such as Rodriguez v. ICE (2025), allege systemic violations of constitutional rights, particularly of children and asylum seekers. Meanwhile, the Secure Communities Reauthorization Act, passed in June 2025, further entrenched ICE’s power—expanding data-sharing, justifying indefinite detention, and granting new “national security” exemptions that severely limited judicial oversight.[13] Federal Court for the Southern District of California, “Rodriguez v. ICE: Preliminary Injunction,” July 2025. [14] Department of Homeland Security, “Budget Overview: ICE/CBP 2023–2025,” May 2025.
In summer 2025, Los Angeles became a flashpoint as ICE, CBP, DHS, and FBI agents—often masked and refusing to identify themselves—conducted sweeping raids across immigrant neighborhoods. These actions, widely documented by local and national press, led to the unlawful detention of both migrants and U.S. citizens, with agents refusing to present warrants or even state their names.[15] Amnesty International, “USA: Response to ICE Raids Is Dangerous,” June 2025. [16] CalMatters, “Who Gets Caught in Immigration Raids—and Why,” July 2025. Mayor Karen Bass publicly denounced the operations as a “reign of terror.” In response to protests, President Trump federalized the California National Guard and deployed 700 Marines to the city—representing the largest such domestic mobilization in recent U.S. history.[17] Politico, “Mayor Bass Calls for End to ICE ‘Reign of Terror’ in Los Angeles,” July 20, 2025. [18] Associated Press, “US Military to Remove 2,000 National Guard Troops from Los Angeles,” July 15, 2025.
Amnesty International and leading civil rights organizations condemned these measures as unconstitutional. Federal court orders soon followed, requiring that agents establish “reasonable suspicion” for all stops and explicitly banning racial and ethnic profiling.[16] CalMatters, “Who Gets Caught in Immigration Raids—and Why,” July 2025. [19] Washington Post, “L.A.’s Protest Movement Shifts Tactics as ICE Raids Continue,” July 14, 2025. In response, local activists organized mass “know your rights” campaigns and citywide strikes, while the ACLU and legal partners pressed for full demobilization and a restoration of due process protections.[19] Washington Post, “L.A.’s Protest Movement Shifts Tactics as ICE Raids Continue,” July 14, 2025. [20] Amnesty International, “USA: Response to ICE Raids Is Dangerous,” June 2025.
The 2020s witnessed a deepening militarization of U.S. policing—an evolution inseparable from the so-called “Deadly Exchange.” Since the early 2000s, U.S. law enforcement agencies from hundreds of municipalities have sent officers to Israel to train with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli police, while Israeli officials visit the U.S. to study American policing. These joint sessions are not benign information-sharing exercises; rather, they are rooted in the exchange of counterinsurgency doctrine, urban surveillance, and crowd-control strategies forged in the repression of Palestinians.[1] Jewish Voice for Peace, “Deadly Exchange: US-Israel Police Training,” 2018. As Jewish Voice for Peace has documented, such exchanges have enabled U.S. police to adopt Israeli models of “total population management,” predictive policing, and “protest dispersal”—infusing American law enforcement with both the tactics and ethos of occupation.[1] Jewish Voice for Peace, “Deadly Exchange: US-Israel Police Training,” 2018. [2] The Intercept and Haaretz, “Inside the Deadly Exchange 2025,” March 2025.
This symbiosis is made manifest in Atlanta’s “Cop City,” a $90+ million police urban warfare complex whose second phase was completed in April 2025.[3] The Guardian and The Appeal, “Cop City Files Leak,” April 2025. Cop City is not simply a training ground for SWAT tactics but a site where the boundary between military and domestic policing blurs entirely. Protest simulation villages, drone runways, and real-time counterinsurgency drills are directly modeled on IDF operations in Gaza and the West Bank.[3] The Guardian and The Appeal, “Cop City Files Leak,” April 2025. [4] The Intercept and Haaretz, “Inside the Deadly Exchange 2025,” March 2025. Leaked internal documents (“Cop City Files”) confirm that curricula, from protest dispersal to surveillance, are drawn from recent Deadly Exchange protocols.[3] The Guardian and The Appeal, “Cop City Files Leak,” April 2025. Joint investigations by The Guardian and The Appeal in April 2025, as well as reporting from The Intercept and Haaretz in March 2025, reveal that U.S. police now routinely undergo training focused on “crowd dispersal, surveillance, and target identification” both in Israel and domestically.[4] The Intercept and Haaretz, “Inside the Deadly Exchange 2025,” March 2025.
The militarization of policing has been accompanied by a wave of criminalization directed at dissent—especially against movements for racial and environmental justice. By July 2025, over 300 protesters had been charged under Georgia’s draconian new “domestic terrorism” statute, passed to suppress opposition to Cop City and other state infrastructure.[5] ACLU, “Amicus Brief: Georgia Domestic Terrorism Law,” June 2025. The ACLU and other legal experts have denounced this law as a blueprint for weaponizing terrorism charges against activists, chilling First Amendment rights.[5] ACLU, “Amicus Brief: Georgia Domestic Terrorism Law,” June 2025. The logic is clear: dissent is no longer a protected civic act but a security threat to be met with militarized force and sweeping prosecution.
This approach is mirrored in the rise of paramilitary policing units such as Memphis’s “Scorpion Squad,” responsible for the high-profile killing of Tyre Nichols in early 2023.[6] Associated Press, “The Death of Tyre Nichols and the Scorpion Squad,” Feb. 2023. These squads—deployed in cities including Houston and Los Angeles—function as hybrid SWAT/counterinsurgency teams, employing drones, military-grade vehicles, and “less-lethal” weaponry often sourced from Israeli and U.S. defense contractors.[6] Associated Press, “The Death of Tyre Nichols and the Scorpion Squad,” Feb. 2023. [7] NAACP and Human Rights Watch, “Accountability Now: Scorpion Squads,” July 2025. The populations targeted are overwhelmingly Black, Brown, and poor—communities systematically framed as “threats” within a counterterrorism paradigm.
The Trump administration’s use of masked, unmarked federal agents during the 2020–2021 George Floyd uprisings and subsequent protests set a chilling precedent. These agents—operating in Portland, D.C., and beyond—employed tactics directly derived from Israeli undercover “Yamam” units and counterinsurgency playbooks: snatch-and-grab abductions, violent crowd dispersal, and denial of basic due process.[8] Ken Klippenstein, “Unmarked Federal Agents and the New Gestapo,” The Nation, July 2020. [9] DHS Office of Inspector General, “Use of Special Response Teams 2024–2025,” May 2025. By 2024–2025, DHS reports confirmed the proliferation of Special Response Teams lacking badges or clear agency identification, deployed especially against racial justice, abolitionist, and anti-ICE demonstrations.[9] DHS Office of Inspector General, “Use of Special Response Teams 2024–2025,” May 2025. This use of anonymous, militarized force represents a clear escalation of state repression—one shielded from public accountability and judicial oversight.
The pipeline is not merely tactical, but technological. DHS and local police departments have rapidly escalated the acquisition and deployment of armored vehicles, drones, facial recognition systems, predictive policing software, and “non-lethal” weaponry—much of it supplied by the same Israeli and American firms that arm border patrol and the IDF.[10] Just Security, “Weapons of Empire: U.S.-Israel Tech Pipeline,” May 2025. The result is the normalization of a protest policing model indistinguishable from foreign counterinsurgency, effectively importing the occupation’s logics of domination and impunity into the American metropolis.
The convergence of militarized policing, paramilitary squads, and legal impunity is starkly visible in the ongoing wave of extrajudicial violence against Black men and other marginalized communities. Investigations into the 2024–2025 killings by Scorpion Squad–style units in Memphis, Houston, and Los Angeles expose a near-total lack of meaningful prosecution or reform.[11] NAACP and Human Rights Watch, “Accountability Now: Scorpion Squads,” July 2025. Civil rights organizations, led by the NAACP and Human Rights Watch, have responded with the “Accountability Now” campaign (July 2025), directly linking U.S. police violence with Israeli methods and pushing for new federal oversight and civil rights litigation.[11] NAACP and Human Rights Watch, “Accountability Now: Scorpion Squads,” July 2025. Their research demonstrates that the adoption of counterinsurgency tools and attitudes—once confined to “foreign” conflicts—now defines the daily realities of policing and protest in the U.S.
The contemporary American security apparatus is intimately shaped by the “Deadly Exchange”—the ongoing partnership between U.S. police and Israeli military and security forces. Since the early 2000s, thousands of American law enforcement officials—from local sheriffs to major-city police chiefs—have traveled to Israel for joint trainings, seminars, and field exercises where they study Israeli strategies for population control, surveillance, crowd suppression, “non-lethal” weaponry, and counterinsurgency. [15] Jewish Voice for Peace, “Deadly Exchange: US–Israel Police Training,” 2018.
This exchange is not a one-way street: Israeli officials and corporate contractors also visit the U.S. to observe the latest American policing tactics and carceral innovations, producing a hybridized doctrine of repression. As Jewish Voice for Peace and subsequent academic research have documented, the result is a two-decade cross-fertilization of methods and ideology. What was once considered extreme—such as predictive “risk scoring,” no-knock raids, “targeted killings,” and mass digital surveillance—has become embedded in routine police practice across American cities. [15] Jewish Voice for Peace, “Deadly Exchange: US–Israel Police Training,” 2018. Tactics first developed for use against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza now reappear in the streets of Ferguson, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York. Police “counterterror” squads, modeled on Israel’s Yamam and undercover Mista’arvim units, now routinely patrol American protests, immigrant neighborhoods, and encampments of the unhoused.
In the wake of the George Floyd uprisings and the Cop City protests (2020–2025), American police and city leaders have pointed to Israeli training as “best practice” for urban crisis management and “crowd control.” The normalization of occupation logics—see-and-destroy, pre-emptive detention, collective punishment—has deepened as protest and migration themselves are reframed as existential threats to the social order.
Behind the exchange of tactics is an exchange of capital. A handful of transnational corporations and investment giants have positioned themselves as indispensable to both Israeli apartheid and U.S. carceral expansion. Elbit Systems—Israel’s largest military technology firm—has not only equipped the IDF with drones, surveillance towers, and border tech, but also won multimillion-dollar contracts with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to “virtualize” the southern border. [16] Sophia Siddiqui, “Drones, Prisons, and Profiteers: The Corporate Ties of ICE and the IDF,” In These Times, 2023. [17] Just Security, “Weapons of Empire: U.S.–Israel Tech and Surveillance Pipeline,” May 2025. Palantir Technologies, co-founded with CIA seed money, has become the engine of predictive policing in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and New York, while simultaneously providing data analytics for Israeli intelligence and military agencies. [16] Sophia Siddiqui, “Drones, Prisons, and Profiteers: The Corporate Ties of ICE and the IDF,” In These Times, 2023. [17] Just Security, “Weapons of Empire: U.S.–Israel Tech and Surveillance Pipeline,” May 2025.
GEO Group and CoreCivic—the two largest private prison operators in the U.S.—profit directly from the expansion of ICE detention and American mass incarceration. In 2025, both firms increased contracts for surveillance, e-shackles, and “behavioral analytics” designed in collaboration with Israeli security companies.[17] Just Security, “Weapons of Empire: U.S.–Israel Tech and Surveillance Pipeline,” May 2025. The May 2025 “Weapons of Empire” report by Just Security documents this growing nexus: as ICE and CBP budgets balloon, so too do contracts for Israeli-sourced facial recognition, biometric monitoring, and drone fleets.[17] Just Security, “Weapons of Empire: U.S.–Israel Tech and Surveillance Pipeline,” May 2025.
Oversight hearings and whistleblower testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform (June 2025) revealed that not only are Israeli companies providing surveillance technologies for new ICE “Check-In” kiosks, but that U.S. financial behemoths—BlackRock, Vanguard, and Goldman Sachs—are among the top investors in both U.S. carceral contractors and Israeli defense conglomerates. [18] U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform, “Testimony on Surveillance Tech Procurement and Financial Flows,” June 2025. These “capital pipelines” ensure the profits of repression flow freely between Wall Street and Tel Aviv, further binding the destinies of the policed, dispossessed, and occupied.
This transnational system is not simply about contracts and training sessions; it is the ideological circulatory system of modern empire. The technologies and strategies of dispossession—digital risk scoring, predictive surveillance, population profiling, and infrastructural control—are not neutral instruments. They encode and reproduce a racialized logic of control, designed to sort, immobilize, and, when convenient, discard entire populations. What begins as “homeland security” or “border management” becomes, in effect, the project of rendering the poor, racialized, and stateless ever more vulnerable to abandonment, violence, and slow death. [15] Jewish Voice for Peace, “Deadly Exchange: US–Israel Police Training,” 2018. [16] Sophia Siddiqui, “Drones, Prisons, and Profiteers: The Corporate Ties of ICE and the IDF,” In These Times, 2023. [17] Just Security, “Weapons of Empire: U.S.–Israel Tech and Surveillance Pipeline,” May 2025.
By 2025, as the “Weapons of Empire” report makes clear, these networks of surveillance and repression have only grown more powerful and profitable, further entwining the fates of Palestinians under siege, migrants at the border, and Black and Brown Americans trapped in the machinery of carceral capitalism.[17] Just Security, “Weapons of Empire: U.S.–Israel Tech and Surveillance Pipeline,” May 2025. To understand the present moment is to recognize how these pipelines—of money, training, ideology—construct a world where profit, control, and disposability are inseparable.
The years 2017–2025 witnessed the crystallization of an unprecedented axis between the United States and Israel, embodied as much in the personal and political convergence of Donald J. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu as in their governments’ policies. This period is not simply marked by synchronized interests but by a consciously constructed system of mutual reinforcement: a transnational pipeline of violence, law, technology, and profit that links the siege of Gaza to the criminalization of protest and poverty in the United States. The result is a new “state of exception”—a zone where legal norms are suspended, impunity is normalized, and state power is mobilized against the marginalized.
Trump and Netanyahu’s partnership was grounded in a shared worldview: that “security” justifies nearly any measure, that exclusion and violence are legitimate instruments of governance, and that law exists primarily as a tool for the powerful. From Trump’s earliest days in office, Netanyahu found in Washington not only diplomatic support but a willingness to shed the fictions of “peace processes” in favor of open state violence. Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and his “Deal of the Century” on Palestine were not isolated events, but part of a broader U.S. endorsement of Israeli maximalism. [1] UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Gaza,” June 2025.
In return, the U.S. imported the Israeli doctrine of the “permanent emergency.” Through the Deadly Exchange program and other channels, Israeli expertise in surveillance, counterinsurgency, and collective punishment became models for U.S. policing and border enforcement. [4] Jewish Voice for Peace, “Deadly Exchange: US-Israel Police Training,” 2018; The Intercept and Haaretz, “Inside the Deadly Exchange 2025,” March 2025. The architecture of occupation—once geographically and legally circumscribed—now shapes the carceral, surveillance, and legal apparatus of the U.S. homeland. [2]Spencer Ackerman, “ICE Was Designed for Brutality,” The Nation, 2020. [3]José Olivares and John Washington, “Inside the Alligator Alcatraz,” The Intercept, April 2024. [5]Amnesty International, “Israel: U.S.-Supplied Weapons Used in Attacks on Civilians,” July 2025. [6]UN Independent Commission of Inquiry, “Occupied Palestinian Territory: Destruction of Civilian Infrastructure,” May 2025.
Netanyahu’s government, emboldened by unconditional U.S. support, moved from the politics of occupation to the politics of open siege and annexation. The systematic starvation of Gaza, the expansion of settlements, and the criminalization of Palestinian resistance were mirrored in American policies of family separation, indefinite detention, and the evisceration of social welfare. [5]Amnesty International, “Israel: U.S.-Supplied Weapons Used in Attacks on Civilians,” July 2025. [6]UN Independent Commission of Inquiry, “Occupied Palestinian Territory: Destruction of Civilian Infrastructure,” May 2025. [9]Amnesty International, “Starvation as a Weapon in Gaza,” 2024. [10]Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Analysis of American Fiscal Security Act,” March 2025. [11]Congressional Budget Office, “SNAP/Medicaid Cut Impacts,” July 2025. In both countries, dissent was reframed as terrorism, and poverty and migration as existential threats to the state.
This partnership was cemented by the exchange of legal innovations that institutionalized impunity for state violence while criminalizing resistance. Trump’s Department of Justice deployed “national security” as a catch-all rationale for the prosecution of whistleblowers, journalists, and protest leaders, while ICE and CBP received expanded emergency powers—including indefinite detention and warrantless surveillance—through appropriations and executive orders. [7] ACLU, “Deaths in ICE Custody: 2024–2025 Review,” June 2025. [8] U.S. Congressional Record, “Supplemental Appropriations for FY2025: Israel and Ukraine,” April 2025. [14] GAO, “Pentagon Munitions Transfers, FY2024–2025,” March 2025. [15] Department of Homeland Security, “Budget Overview: ICE/CBP 2023–2025,” May 2025.
In Israel, Netanyahu’s government restricted civil society, criminalized protest and humanitarian aid, and gutted judicial independence, frequently using “security” as justification. Knesset reforms undermined checks on executive power; courts increasingly deferred to “military necessity” even in the face of documented war crimes. [9]Amnesty International, “Starvation as a Weapon in Gaza,” 2024.
Most dramatically, both leaders advanced a new politics of humanitarian deprivation: blockading food and medicine to Gaza, and slashing food stamps, Medicaid, and housing aid for millions of Americans. [9]Amnesty International, “Starvation as a Weapon in Gaza,” 2024. [10]Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Analysis of American Fiscal Security Act,” March 2025. [11]Congressional Budget Office, “SNAP/Medicaid Cut Impacts,” July 2025. Here, law functions as a weapon against the poor, not as a shield for the vulnerable.
The Trump–Netanyahu axis was not simply ideological but deeply financial. U.S. defense and surveillance giants—Lockheed Martin, Palantir, Elbit Systems—have become indispensable to both the Israeli war machine and the American carceral state. In 2024–2025, billions in expedited arms sales and surveillance contracts flowed from Washington to Tel Aviv, even as Congress slashed domestic social supports. [12] Just Security, “Weapons of Empire: U.S.-Israel Tech Pipeline,” May 2025. [13] ProPublica, “ICE’s Mobile Detention Fleet: Borrowing from Israel,” May 2025. [14]GAO, “Pentagon Munitions Transfers, FY2024–2025,” March 2025. [15]Department of Homeland Security, “Budget Overview: ICE/CBP 2023–2025,” May 2025. American and Israeli contractors supply both the IDF and ICE with drones, biometric systems, predictive analytics, and “smart” border tech. [12]Just Security, “Weapons of Empire: U.S.-Israel Tech Pipeline,” May 2025. [13]ProPublica, “ICE’s Mobile Detention Fleet: Borrowing from Israel,” May 2025.
Financial giants like BlackRock and Vanguard are deeply invested in both Israeli defense conglomerates and the private U.S. prison industry, while Israeli tech firms license their software to U.S. police and immigration agencies. [16] U.S. House Committee on Oversight, “Testimony: Tech, Contractors, and Investors,” June 2025. [17] Sophia Siddiqui, “Drones, Prisons, and Profiteers: The Corporate Ties of ICE and the IDF,” In These Times, 2023. Congressional and House oversight records from 2025 show that lobbying, campaign donations, and joint ventures between Israeli and American security firms continue to shape both countries’ legislative agendas.
Perhaps the most enduring legacy of this period is the normalization of a politics of impunity, achieved by blurring the lines between emergency and everyday governance. Both Trump and Netanyahu survived scandals, indictments, and mass protest through relentless appeals to “law and order” and the manufactured threat of chaos. [18] The Guardian and The Appeal, “Cop City Files Leak,” April 2025.
In both countries, the face of protest repression is increasingly masked agents, “special response” squads, and unmarked vehicles—drawing on the playbook of Israeli counterinsurgency and U.S. paramilitary policing. [19] Amnesty International, “USA: Response to ICE Raids Is Dangerous.” June 2025. [20] Politico, “Mayor Bass Calls for End to ICE ‘Reign of Terror’ in Los Angeles,” July 20, 2025. Oversight has been weakened: Congressional and Knesset investigations are routinely derailed or neutered, while media intimidation and direct attacks on journalists have become more common. [8]U.S. Congressional Record, “Supplemental Appropriations for FY2025: Israel and Ukraine,” April 2025. [18]The Guardian and The Appeal, “Cop City Files Leak,” April 2025. Emergency decrees—once extraordinary—are now routine, with “homeland security” invoked to justify everything from drone surveillance to warrantless arrests.
By mid-2025, as Gaza starves under blockade and Los Angeles witnesses the largest domestic military deployment in modern history, the consequences of this axis are manifest. The same legal doctrines, military technologies, and mentalities that sustain occupation in Palestine are used to criminalize protest, punish the poor, and expand surveillance in the United States. [1]UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Gaza,” June 2025. [5]Amnesty International, “Israel: U.S.-Supplied Weapons Used in Attacks on Civilians,” July 2025. [8]U.S. Congressional Record, “Supplemental Appropriations for FY2025: Israel and Ukraine,” April 2025. [12]Just Security, “Weapons of Empire: U.S.-Israel Tech Pipeline,” May 2025. [14]GAO, “Pentagon Munitions Transfers, FY2024–2025,” March 2025. [15]Department of Homeland Security, “Budget Overview: ICE/CBP 2023–2025,” May 2025. [19]Amnesty International, “USA: Response to ICE Raids Is Dangerous.” June 2025. [20]Politico, “Mayor Bass Calls for End to ICE ‘Reign of Terror’ in Los Angeles,” July 20, 2025.
The Trump–Netanyahu era represents a pivotal chapter in the rise of global authoritarianism: not merely a convergence of interests but a deliberate co-production of policy, technology, and ideology. “Security” is recast as exclusion, law as a weapon, and repression as the new norm of statecraft. Tracing the through line between their regimes is essential—not only for historical accountability but for the resistance yet to come, in Palestine, in America, and wherever empire’s logics of disposability take hold.
By 2025, the global machinery of repression and dispossession—engineered, tested, and exported between Israel and the United States—has become a seamless, sprawling architecture of state violence. Its pillars are visible everywhere: in the razed neighborhoods and starved hospitals of Gaza [1]UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Gaza,” June 2025. [2]UN Independent Commission of Inquiry, “Occupied Palestinian Territory: Destruction of Civilian Infrastructure,” May 2025. [3]International Criminal Court, “Decision on Applications for Arrest Warrants: State of Palestine,” June 2025. [4]Amnesty International, “Israel: U.S.-Supplied Weapons Used in Attacks on Civilians,” July 2025. ; in the isolation cells and death tallies of ICE’s “Alligator Alcatraz” [5]ACLU, “Deaths in ICE Custody: 2024–2025 Review,” June 2025. [6]José Olivares and John Washington, “Inside the Alligator Alcatraz,” The Intercept, April 2024. ; in the deployment of masked, paramilitary agents against protesters from Atlanta to Los Angeles [7]Amnesty International, “USA: Response to ICE Raids Is Dangerous,” June 2025. [8]DHS Office of Inspector General, “Use of Special Response Teams 2024–2025,” May 2025. [15]The Guardian and The Appeal, “Cop City Files Leak,” April 2025. [18]NAACP and Human Rights Watch, “Accountability Now: Scorpion Squads,” July 2025. [19]Amnesty International, “USA: Response to ICE Raids Is Dangerous,” June 2025. [20]Politico, “Mayor Bass Calls for End to ICE ‘Reign of Terror’ in Los Angeles,” July 20, 2025. ; and in the millions of kitchen tables stripped bare by cuts to SNAP, Medicaid, and public housing [10]Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Analysis of American Fiscal Security Act,” March 2025. [11]Congressional Budget Office, “SNAP/Medicaid Cut Impacts,” July 2025. [20] [21]Department of Homeland Security, “Budget Overview: ICE/CBP 2023–2025,” May 2025. [22]Public Accountability Project, “Votes and Donations Database,” July 2025. .
This is not merely the sum of bad policies, but a coherent project. The “pipeline” of funding, training, and doctrine runs straight from the Knesset and the Pentagon, through Congressional chambers and Wall Street boardrooms, into the contracts of private prison profiteers and the algorithms of predictive policing. [12]U.S. Congressional Record, “Supplemental Appropriations for FY2025: Israel and Ukraine,” April 2025. [13]U.S. Congress, “Secure Communities Reauthorization Act,” June 2025. [14]Federal Court for the Southern District of California, “Rodriguez v. ICE: Preliminary Injunction,” July 2025. [15]The Guardian and The Appeal, “Cop City Files Leak,” April 2025. [16]Just Security, “Weapons of Empire: U.S.–Israel Tech and Surveillance Pipeline,” May 2025. [17]Sophia Siddiqui, “Drones, Prisons, and Profiteers: The Corporate Ties of ICE and the IDF,” In These Times, 2023. [23]U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform, “Testimony on Surveillance Tech Procurement and Financial Flows,” June 2025. [24]ProPublica, “ICE’s Mobile Detention Fleet: Borrowing from Israel,” May 2025. It is enforced by the legal doctrines of qualified immunity, administrative detention, and “preemptive self-defense”—all designed to shield the machinery of exclusion and punishment from real scrutiny. [1]UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Gaza,” June 2025. [2]UN Independent Commission of Inquiry, “Occupied Palestinian Territory: Destruction of Civilian Infrastructure,” May 2025. [3]International Criminal Court, “Decision on Applications for Arrest Warrants: State of Palestine,” June 2025. [4]Amnesty International, “Israel: U.S.-Supplied Weapons Used in Attacks on Civilians,” July 2025. [13]U.S. Congress, “Secure Communities Reauthorization Act,” June 2025. [14]Federal Court for the Southern District of California, “Rodriguez v. ICE: Preliminary Injunction,” July 2025. It is justified in the language of “security,” which, stripped of real content, now serves as a global permission slip for violence against the poor, the racialized, and the dissenting.
Yet as the circle of violence widens, so too does the circle of resistance and demand for accountability. International courts name and pursue crimes that once hid behind diplomatic immunity [3]International Criminal Court, “Decision on Applications for Arrest Warrants: State of Palestine,” June 2025. [4]Amnesty International, “Israel: U.S.-Supplied Weapons Used in Attacks on Civilians,” July 2025. ; families and activists document and litigate abuses in ICE custody and on the streets [5]ACLU, “Deaths in ICE Custody: 2024–2025 Review,” June 2025. [7]Amnesty International, “USA: Response to ICE Raids Is Dangerous,” June 2025. [8]DHS Office of Inspector General, “Use of Special Response Teams 2024–2025,” May 2025. [18]NAACP and Human Rights Watch, “Accountability Now: Scorpion Squads,” July 2025. [19]Amnesty International, “USA: Response to ICE Raids Is Dangerous,” June 2025. ; and solidarity movements, from Black Lives Matter to the campaign for a Free Palestine, forge bonds across borders, naming the system and refusing its logic. [6]José Olivares and John Washington, “Inside the Alligator Alcatraz,” The Intercept, April 2024. [7]Amnesty International, “USA: Response to ICE Raids Is Dangerous,” June 2025. [15]The Guardian and The Appeal, “Cop City Files Leak,” April 2025. [18]NAACP and Human Rights Watch, “Accountability Now: Scorpion Squads,” July 2025. Mass mobilizations in Atlanta, federal injunctions in California, hunger strikes in Gaza, and global days of action all signal the same truth: the struggle is not only possible, it is already underway.
To break this pipeline of violence and deprivation, we must first name it and expose its flows. That means documenting the links of capital and surveillance; refusing the false choices between “security” and justice; and insisting, across borders and every language, that the sanctity of human life and the imperative of compassion cannot be criminalized. Whether in the courts, the streets, or the stories we tell, the resistance must be as global, networked, and persistent as the repression it seeks to end.
If the architecture of repression can span continents, so can solidarity. The widening circle of accountability is not just a hope, but a necessity—and it is being built, piece by piece, by those who refuse to let empire have the last word.
| Acronym | Meaning |
|---|---|
| IDF | Israeli Defense Forces |
| ICE | U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement |
| CBP | U.S. Customs and Border Protection |
| DHS | U.S. Department of Homeland Security |
| ICC | International Criminal Court |
| UNHRC | United Nations Human Rights Council |
| OCHA | UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
| CBO | Congressional Budget Office |
| SNAP | Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program |
| GAO | Government Accountability Office (U.S.) |
| NGO | Non-Governmental Organization |
| FOIA | Freedom of Information Act |
| WFP | World Food Programme (UN) |
| CBPP | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities |
| Year | Israel Military Aid (USD) | ICE/CBP Budget (USD) | SNAP Cuts (USD) | Medicaid Cuts (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | $8.5 billion | $21.3 billion | — | — |
| 2024 | $11.2 billion | $27.5 billion | — | — |
| 2025 | $16+ billion | $32+ billion | $23 billion | $11 billion |
Sources: U.S. Congressional Record, CBO, GAO reports (see Bibliography).
| Year | Reported Deaths |
|---|---|
| 2023 | 17 |
| 2024 | 24 |
| 2025 | 33 (Jan–June) |
Sources: ACLU, U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
(Attach or reference figures in final publication.)
Excerpt 1: Congressional Testimony (U.S. House, June 2025):
“The facial recognition technology now in use at ICE ‘Check-In’ kiosks was developed in partnership with Israeli firms Elbit Systems and AnyVision, financed in part by U.S. defense appropriations.”
— Testimony of DHS Tech Procurement Officer, U.S. House Oversight Committee, June 2025
Excerpt 2: UN Human Rights Council, June 2025
“The systematic deprivation of food, water, and medicine in Gaza, even after court orders, constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law and may rise to the level of genocide.”
— UNHRC, Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Gaza, June 2025
Excerpt 3: ACLU Letter on ICE Deaths (June 2025):
“The highest rate of deaths in ICE detention in more than a decade demonstrates a pattern of deliberate indifference and impunity…”
— ACLU to Senate Judiciary Committee, June 2025
Research Design:
Limitations:
Disclosure:
IV. Social Starvation: SNAP, Medicaid Cuts, and Economic Warfare (2023–2025)
A. Austerity for the Poor, Blank Checks for Repression
By 2025, the United States stands at the intersection of two accelerating crises: the purposeful destruction of the social safety net, and the relentless expansion of state violence in the name of security. The passage of the American Fiscal Security Act in February 2025 was not simply a legislative maneuver, but a declaration of priorities—a redistribution of suffering onto the nation’s most vulnerable. The Act’s $23 billion cut from SNAP (food assistance), $11 billion cut from Medicaid, and severe capping of housing support for 1.8 million families disproportionately targeted Black, Brown, Indigenous, and rural communities, amplifying already historic disparities. [20] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Analysis of American Fiscal Security Act,” March 2025.
The Congressional Budget Office’s July 2025 analysis was unambiguous: these cuts would drive “increases in food insecurity, childhood malnutrition, and homelessness, with the greatest impact on Black, Brown, and rural communities.” [21] Congressional Budget Office, “SNAP/Medicaid Cut Impacts,” July 2025. Even as the CBO sounded this alarm, appropriations committees funneled more than $75 billion in “emergency” and supplemental funds to ICE, the Pentagon, and Israel’s military, with little public debate or oversight. [5] U.S. Congressional Record, “Supplemental Appropriations for FY2025: Israel and Ukraine,” April 2025. [12] Department of Homeland Security, “Budget Overview: ICE/CBP 2023–2025,” May 2025. [20] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Analysis of American Fiscal Security Act,” March 2025. [21] Congressional Budget Office, “SNAP/Medicaid Cut Impacts,” July 2025. [22] Public Accountability Project, “Votes and Donations Database,” July 2025. The data reveal a pattern: lawmakers most committed to militarized security and the expansion of carceral infrastructure are also the architects of domestic austerity. Congressional voting records and campaign donations make this connection visible and deliberate, not accidental.[22] Public Accountability Project, “Votes and Donations Database,” July 2025.
This convergence is not only a matter of accounting. It reflects an ideological strategy—what scholars call “organized abandonment”—whereby the poor and marginalized are rendered more precarious and thus more easily policed, surveilled, and managed. [13] Federal Court for the Southern District of California, “Rodriguez v. ICE: Preliminary Injunction,” July 2025. [14] U.S. Congress, “Secure Communities Reauthorization Act,” June 2025. Billions for border militarization and missile defense (such as the Iron Dome) are justified as necessary for national security, while pleas for basic food, shelter, or health care are dismissed as fiscally irresponsible or politically untenable. The human toll is devastating, especially as the logic of scarcity is wielded as a tool of social discipline and exclusion.
B. “Beautiful” Bills and the Myth of Security
The 2025 “big beautiful bill,” championed by Trump and embraced by bipartisan consensus, stands as a monument to this convergence of austerity and repression. [14] U.S. Congress, “Secure Communities Reauthorization Act,” June 2025. While publicly marketed as a necessary measure for border security and immigration enforcement, its real legacy is the deepening of both fiscal and moral bankruptcy: expanding ICE’s budget, granting new surveillance and indefinite detention powers, and slashing the already inadequate resources for poor and working-class Americans. [12] Department of Homeland Security, “Budget Overview: ICE/CBP 2023–2025,” May 2025. [14] U.S. Congress, “Secure Communities Reauthorization Act,” June 2025.
This is the politics of deliberate deprivation, now normalized as the price of “security.” It is a politics that redefines entire classes of people—whether poor Americans or Palestinians under siege—as “unworthy” of aid, protection, or even survival. The same logic that justifies endless emergency appropriations for state violence, at home and abroad, rationalizes the calculated starvation of those seen as “other.” And it is a logic increasingly entrenched in the structures of law, media, and policy-making.
C. Law, Empire, and Impunity
Both the IDF and ICE operate within expanding zones of legal impunity, protected by doctrines such as “preemptive self-defense,” “administrative detention,” and “qualified immunity” that hollow out rights and shield violence from accountability. [1] UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Gaza,” June 2025. [2] UN Independent Commission of Inquiry, “Occupied Palestinian Territory: Destruction of Civilian Infrastructure,” May 2025. [3] International Criminal Court, “Decision on Applications for Arrest Warrants: State of Palestine,” June 2025. [4] Amnesty International, “Israel: U.S.-Supplied Weapons Used in Attacks on Civilians,” July 2025. [13] Federal Court for the Southern District of California, “Rodriguez v. ICE: Preliminary Injunction,” July 2025. [14] U.S. Congress, “Secure Communities Reauthorization Act,” June 2025. The legal innovations forged in the context of “the war on terror” have migrated into the everyday management of marginalized populations in both Israel/Palestine and the U.S. Congressional reauthorizations, executive support, and media normalization ensure that neither the Israeli nor American security apparatus faces real consequences for their abuses—even as watchdogs, courts, and global bodies document a mounting toll of rights violations. [7] Center for Constitutional Rights, “FOIA Release: U.S.–Israel ICC Coordination,” May 2025. [13] Federal Court for the Southern District of California, “Rodriguez v. ICE: Preliminary Injunction,” July 2025.
As social supports are eviscerated and impunity expands, the result is not simply more poverty or more violence, but a fundamentally transformed political order—one in which the line between foreign war and domestic governance dissolves, and the logic of occupation comes home.