Razan al-Naj­jar is the lat­est vic­tim in Israel’s onslaught of Pales­tini­ans to go viral. The 21-year-old nurse was shot dead by a sniper. Her only weapon? A wad of med­ical gauze. She’d been treat­ing pro­tes­tors who’ve been ral­ly­ing for their right to return to homes they were expelled from as refugees.

In 2015, Black and Palestinian artists and activists released a video and statement of Black-Palestinian solidarity in the face of state-sanctioned violence.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the death of anoth­er unarmed civil­ian is hard­ly even news to Palestinians.

May 14, the day the Unit­ed States moved its embassy to Jerusalem in sym­bol­ic sup­port of rec­og­niz­ing the city as Israel’s cap­i­tal, was also the blood­i­est day in this recent wave of demon­stra­tions. In just one day, at least 50 Pales­tini­ans were killed and 2,400 more injured by the Israeli mil­i­tary. (Oth­er counts put those fig­ures even higher.)

This isn’t an anom­aly. In this lat­est wave of demon­stra­tions, Israeli forces have killed dozens of unarmed pro­test­ers and wound­ed thou­sands more. And they’re not apologizing.

The vio­lence has addi­tion­al­ly trou­bling impli­ca­tions for the Unit­ed States — and not just for its for­eign pol­i­cy, but at home. That’s because U.S. police forces actu­al­ly train exten­sive­ly with the Israeli mil­i­tary. In fact, hun­dreds of fed­er­al, state, local, and even some cam­pus law enforce­ment depart­ments across the coun­try have trained in some capac­i­ty with the Israeli forces now gun­ning down Pales­tin­ian pro­test­ers in droves.

Some notable ones include the Chica­go police, respon­si­ble for shoot­ing and killing 17-year-old Laquan McDon­ald. The Bal­ti­more police too, who were respon­si­ble for killing 25-year-old Fred­die Gray. And the St. Louis depart­ment, which was deployed in Fer­gu­son when protests erupt­ed after police killed 18-year-old Michael Brown — prompt­ing Pales­tini­ans halfway across the world to begin tweet­ing advice for min­i­miz­ing injuries when police deploy tear gas.

U.S. police depart­ments are sent to Israel, or some­times Israeli forces come to the Unit­ed States, under the pre­tense of counter-ter­ror­ism training.

Appar­ent­ly that train­ing includes learn­ing the ben­e­fits of ​“skunk water” — a liq­uid devel­oped by Israel that’s used to break up anti-occu­pa­tion protests like the ones occur­ring right now. After protests in Fer­gu­son, the St. Louis depart­ment start­ed stock­pil­ing the stuff.

And that now infa­mous NYPD Mus­lim sur­veil­lance pro­gram? The NYPD Intel­li­gence Divi­sion Chief respon­si­ble for that one got the idea from a sim­i­lar pro­gram used to spy on Palestinians.

It begs the ques­tion of whom the U.S. police con­sid­er terrorists.

The for­mer head of Shin Bet (Israel’s inter­nal secu­ri­ty ser­vice) Avi Dichter — who has advo­cat­ed drop­ping heavy bombs on civil­ian-occu­pied Gaza apart­ment build­ings—believes there’s ​“an inti­mate con­nec­tion between fight­ing crim­i­nals and fight­ing ter­ror­ists.” He calls these threats ​“crim­iter­ror­ists.”

But this isn’t a one-sided trans­fer of tac­tics. Dichter likes to think of the war on ter­ror and the war on drugs in the same cat­e­go­ry. And when Israeli forces vis­it the Unit­ed States, they also receive train­ing from our police forces on the drug war tac­tics that have tar­get­ed Black and brown communities.

And just as well-doc­u­ment­ed as the U.S. police killings of Black Amer­i­cans are the Israeli mil­i­tary killings, tor­ture and sur­veil­lance of Pales­tin­ian adults and chil­dren.

Take 15-year-old Mohammed Tami­mi. He was shot dur­ing a protest and had to have part of his skull removed. He was then tak­en by Israeli forces in the mid­dle of the night, and beat­en into con­fess­ing that they didn’t shoot him in the face, despite med­ical records and eye­wit­ness accounts prov­ing otherwise.

Of course, this sto­ry has an end­ing that Black Amer­i­cans can also relate to — those in uni­form will rarely be held account­able by the government.

While these con­nec­tions may be new to some, the activists fight­ing both against the occu­pa­tion of Pales­tine and for Black lives are not strangers to how their strug­gles are linked.

In 2015, Black and Pales­tin­ian artists and activists released a video and state­ment of Black-Pales­tin­ian sol­i­dar­i­ty in the face of state-sanc­tioned vio­lence. And the Move­ment for Black Lives plat­form includes demands for the U.S. to divest from the occu­pa­tion of Palestine.

The move­ment is tak­ing root in many cities. In Atlanta, the group #ATLis­Ready released a list of demands fol­low­ing the police killings of Alton Ster­ling and Phi­lan­do Castile — the first call­ing for the ter­mi­na­tion of the Atlanta Police Department’s involve­ment in Israeli train­ing pro­grams. And Jew­ish Voic­es for Peace launched ​“Dead­ly Exchange,” a cam­paign to end the shar­ing of the worst prac­tices of policing.

And now, these move­ments are start­ing to notch some vic­to­ries. Durham, North Car­oli­na recent­ly became the first city to ban train­ings of U.S. police by the Israeli military.

The suc­cess of Durham’s train­ing ban, spear­head­ed by Demil­i­ta­rize from Durham2Palestine, is even more extra­or­di­nary when you con­sid­er the efforts of both the pow­er­ful pro-Israel and police lob­bies to crack down on Black and Pales­tin­ian-led activist organizations.

While the joint forces of the Israeli mil­i­tary and the U.S. police are a ter­ri­fy­ing and often­times dead­ly affront, a joint Black and Pales­tin­ian force for good is emerg­ing as quite pow­er­ful itself. And as the death toll ris­es here and in Gaza, it’s need­ed now more than ever.

This arti­cle was joint­ly pro­duced by In These Times and For­eign Pol­i­cy In Focus.