Was it?

Not a joke.

Critics of Israel’s military assaults on the Gaza Strip and its crackdown in the occupied West Bank point out that the LAPD has sent personnel to study and train with Israeli security forces accused of state-sanctioned violence against civilians in the two Palestinian territories.

The Police Department’s ongoing relationship with Israeli forces — based on what officials have said is a shared goal of fighting extremism inside their borders — has come under scrutiny before, along with other international training efforts. The agency’s dealings with Israeli forces date back to at least the early 1980s, but ramped up after the 9/11 attacks as the LAPD sought to boost its counter-terrorism training.

In 2002, the Washington advocacy group Jewish Institute for National Security of America sponsored an LAPD delegation’s weeklong trip to Israel, during which department officials visited police and military outposts and studied Israel’s border patrol operations in the Galilee region and the occupied West Bank. Around the same time, the department began sending bomb squad technicians to learn from their counterparts in Israel; at least one trip was paid for by an $18,000 donation from the Los Angeles Police Foundation, a nonprofit independent fundraising group.

In the years since, high-ranking officials from L.A. and Israel have routinely traded delegations. But critics say that in light of the polarizing conflict in Gaza, the LAPD’s ongoing ties to Israeli forces threaten the department’s image of impartiality.

https://archive.is/vh8fA