Brazil-Israel Relations and the Marketing of Urban Security Expertise

• Author: Erella Grassiani,Frank Müller
• Date: 01 May 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19831442
• Published date: 01 May 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X19831442

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 226, Vol. 46 No. 3, May 2019, 114–130

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19831442

© 2019 Latin American Perspectives

114

Brazil-Israel Relations and the Marketing

of Urban Security Expertise

by

Erella Grassiani and Frank Müller

The transnational (re)making of contemporary urban pacification practices, discourses, and

technologies between Brazil and Israel is underpinned by coercive entanglements. The Isr aeli

experience with the occupation of the Palestinian territories has brought the Israel Defense

Forces and the country’s private security industry international recognition for their urban

warfare skills and related security technologies; Brazil has recently gained international recog-

nition for urban pacification efforts that emphasize the country’s military’s ability to combine

“hard” and “soft” skills, thereby foregrounding the nexus of military and humanitarian forms

of engagement on urban battlefields. Empirical findings framed by critical scholarship on paci-

fication demonstrate how recent shifts in the military and diplomatic relations between the two

countries seek to symbolically capitalize on their own and each other’s urban warfare experiences

to promote themselves as security experts capable of addressing a range of future urban threat

scenarios—from urban warfare to antigang and antiriot policing and peacekeeping.

A reorganização transnacional das práticas, discursos e tecnologias de urbanização con-

temporânea entre Brasil e Israel são movidas por envolvimento coercitivo. A experiência

israelense de ocupação dos territórios palestinos trouxe prestígio internacional às Forças de

Defesa Israelense, bem como à indústria de segurança particular do país, em virtude de tec-

nologia de combate urbano. Brasil recentemente alcançou reconhecimento internacional pelos

esforços de pacificação urbana, que enfatizam a habilidade das forças armadas do país em

combinar “soft and hard skills”, criando assim um nexo de interação militar e humanitário

no campo de batalha urbano. Observações produzidas em moldura crítica acadêmica sobre

pacificação demonstram de que modo mudanças recentes nas relações diplomática e militar

dos dois países visam capitalizar simbolicamente as experiências respectivas para promoverem

a si mesmos como especialistas em segurança capazes de tratar uma variedade de cenários

urbanos de risco—desde a guerra urbana contra gangs até o policiamento de manifestações.

Keywords: Brazil, Israel, Urban pacification, Defense industry, Marketing

Erella Grassiani is an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam and the author of

Soldiering under Occupation: Processes of Numbing among Israeli Soldiers in the Al-Aqsa Intifada (2013).

Her current research is part of a wider project on privatization and globalization of security with

a specific focus on Israel and security mobilities. Frank Müller is a researcher and lecturer in the

University of Amsterdam’s Department of Human Geography, Planning, and International

Development Studies. He is the author of The Global City and Its Other: Decentering Urban Informality

in and from Mexico City (2014). His current research examines urban security governance in social

housing developments in Medellín and Rio de Janeiro, locating these in global trends of urban

warfare. This work draws on research funded by the European Research Council under the

European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement no. 337974,

SECURCIT). Research was also conducted in the context of the project “Transnationales

Peacebuilding als Süd-Süd-Kooperation: Brasiliens MINUSTAH-Engagement in Haiti” under the

direction of Markus-Michael Müller, funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research.

831442LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X19831442Latin American PerspectivesGrassiani and Müller / BRAZIL-ISRAEL RELATIONS AND URBAN SECURITY EXPERTISE

research-article2019

Grassiani and Müller / BRAZIL-ISRAEL RELATIONS AND URBAN SECURITY EXPERTISE 115

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to congratulate the

Brazilian president-elect, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, in October 2018. He was the

first Israeli prime minister to visit Brazil at the turn of the year 2018–2019, to be

present at the latter’s inauguration (O Globo, December 27, 2018). The two state

leaders share a militant stand on “security” and military prowess. During the

visit, the politicians repeatedly stated their common interest in deepening

cooperation in the exchange of military/security high-tech equipment and

knowledge (Landau, 2018). The relationship between the two countries is not,

however, new. The late Israeli President Shimon Peres headed for Brazil in 2009

for a first visit of an Israeli president to the country in 40 years (Israeli Ministry

of Foreign Affairs, 2009). During this trip he met with Brazil’s then-president

Luis Inácio da Silva of the leftist Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—

PT) in order to “strengthen and deepen Israel’s strategic, diplomatic, and eco-

nomic ties” with Brazil. Peres was accompanied by 40 “representatives of the

top Israeli companies in water technology, agriculture, communications,

energy, medical equipment, and defense.” The visit was returned by a Brazilian

delegation (including high-ranking politicians and 70 business leaders) to

Israel a few months later with the aim of deepening the refreshed ties (Israeli

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2010).

The inclusion of actors from the security industry in the tour was not coinci-

dental. While their security concerns differ (with Israel’s stemming mostly

from the occupation of Palestinian territory and Brazil’s being related to drug

trafficking), the two countries have a great deal in common regarding a “need”

expressed by their leaders to emphasize these “threats” to their countries’ well-

being. Underlining this commonality, the delegation’s visit coincided with the

Brazilian leftist government’s new interest in internationally staging Brazil’s

“visible leadership of peacekeeping operations in order to increase its interna-

tional status” (Sánchez Nieto, 2012: 161) and advocating “new forms of global-

ization” (Amar, 2012: 10). This shift toward a stronger position on international

humanitarian and military interventions became most clearly grounded in the

country’s leading military role in the United Nations Stabilization Mission to

Haiti (MINUSTAH, for its French title Mission des Nations Unies pour la sta-

bilisation en Haïti 2004–2017). At the same time, coining a positive, “humani-

tarian” term for security interventions in domestic (urban) areas as well, Brazil’s

new role gained international recognition through the re-import of the urban

pacification skills that informed the installation of unidades de polícia pacificadora

(pacification police units—UPP) in many marginalized areas of Rio de Janeiro

from 2008 to 2015 (Amar and Carvalho, 2016; Harig, 2015; M.-M. Müller, 2016;

M.-M. Müller and Steinke, 2018). MINUSTAH was depicted as advancing

Brazil’s particular way of peacemaking, employing humanitarian peace build-

ing as a corrective to more militarized peacekeeping strategies (Call and

Abdenur, 2017).

While Brazil focuses on humanitarianism as a leading principle for sustain-

ing an image of positive and legitimate pacification efforts through its security

politics, Israel’s practices of securitization are more explicitly violent (Graham,

2010; Halper, 2015; Lambert, 2016; Turner, 2014). Israel uses harsh measures to

control the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories through check-

points, nightly raids, and surveillance and actively and violently attempts to