The Palestine Laboratory

April 15, 2023
A sharp expos� of how Israel's suppression of Palestine has translated into lucrative anti-terrorist systems that the Israeli government exports globally. In the introduction, Australian journalist Loewenstein, an "atheist Jew" and author of Disaster Capitalism and Pills, Powder, and Smoke, writes about growing up "in a liberal Zionist home in Melbourne...where support for Israel wasn't a required religion but certainly expected." However, as the Israeli domination of the Palestinian narrative became increasingly apparent, the author grew disillusioned, not unlike many young people in the West. In this meticulous study, he asserts that "Israel's claim to be a thriving democracy in the heart of the Middle East is challenged by the facts"--namely, that the nation has been exporting sophisticated, state-of-the-art weaponry and surveillance technology around the world, largely to unsavory dictators who are trying to crush rebellious minorities, much like the Israelis with the Palestinians. Loewenstein lays out the methods the Israelis have used to control the Palestinians, including high-tech defense equipment, checkpoint security, and cybersurveillance, all of which have been tested and modified for effectiveness in order to export globally. As the author shows, the Israelis have sent weapons and technology to Pinochet's Chile in the 1970s as well as to disreputable regimes in Burma, Sri Lanka, Rhodesia, and Rwanda, among others. Israel's vaunted Uzi gun, designed in the late 1940s, has been sold to more than 90 countries since then. "Militarism [eventually] became the country's guiding principle," writes the author, especially since 9/11, when the rest of the world got a taste of the terrorism Israel has battled for decades. In his diligent narrative, Loewenstein devotes chapters to the now-ubiquitous Pegasus system, a phone-hacking tool sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group, and the recent activities of social media companies that have "routinely blocked content that was critical of Israel or showed the Palestinian point of view." An eye-opening, intriguing study.

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May 1, 2023
Loewenstein highlights a rarely discussed aspect of Israel's standing in the world, its dominance of the international military, security, and surveillance industries. As one of the largest weapons exporters in the world, its technology has played an outsized role in supporting authoritarian regimes, illegal coups, and dictatorships for decades, often in support of American foreign policy. Loewenstein meticulously documents Israeli connections to antidemocratic coups in Chile, Nicaragua, and Colombia. Israeli's surveillance tools have also been deployed against Americans, the private Israeli intelligence PSY-GROUP spied on American supporters of Palestinian rights, and with the help of Israeli prime minister Ehud Barack, Harvey Weinstein used it in a failed attempt to discredit his accusers and block press stories about himself. By making itself "the indispensable nation" due to its technological prowess, Israel is able to "ensure alliance and friendship, whether from authoritarian or democratic states," while its connections to social media giants have enabled it to block Palestinian villages from appearing on Google maps and censor Palestinian content on Facebook. Citing numerous Israeli and U.S. military and cybersecurity experts, Loewenstein urges a sober re-evaluation.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.