#antony loewenstein

[heritageposts]

By Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory (2023)

[...] The problem in Israel isn’t solely Netanyahu. He’s the symptom of a major larger societal shift. Replacing him with another carbon copy will change little for the millions of Palestinians who live under a brutal military occupation. One possible successor, Benny Gantz, has spent his career proudly promoting the destruction he’s caused in Gaza in previous wars. [...] Back in 2019, I wrote for the Jewish Forward outlet in the US that anti-Palestinian racism was ubiquitous in Israel, undeniably exploding since 7 October, and Netanyahu had simply been a reflection of contemporary Israel.   A 2016 poll found that close to half of Jewish citizens wouldn’t live in the same apartment blocks as Arabs. Fast forward to early 2024 and 68 percent of Israeli Jews opposed facilitating humanitarian aid to Gaza, according to an Israeli Democracy Institute study. This is at a time when Palestinians in Gaza are starving to death due to Israel’s deliberate policy of withholding lifesaving aid into the besieged territory. As far back as a 2012 poll, a majority of Israeli Jews opposed voting rights for Arabs if the Jewish state annexed the West Bank, and one-third of Israelis wanted Arabs in Israel to be denied the right to vote. In other words, apartheid was the Israeli vision for Palestine.

. . . continues on MEE (1 Apr, 2024)

[catshinji]

Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, explains how Israel tests their weapons in Gaza, and advertises their destructive capabilities to other countries that wish to use these weapons to similarly repress their own populations.

Israel forms a crucial part of the supply chain for the global arms industry, and the impunity with which they operate sets a dangerous precedent for populations around the world.

[akajustmerry]

The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World by Antony Loewenstein. Chapter 2: 'September 11 Was Good For Business'

[journeysendinlovers]

So I'm reading The Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein and I think it's difficult for the layperson--even ostensibly antizionists, passionate antizionists--to fully grasp the extent to which Israel is just a manufacturing plant that exports death and destruction. The extent to which Israel depends entirely on narrative to survive, especially as a nation whose closet of skeletons includes every single victim of genocide in the post WWII world that they could support the externination of. From Argentina to Uganda to Bosnia to Paraguay to Myanmar to Chile to Zimbabwe and Iraq and Lebanon and Brazil; Israel sides with whoever is paying for guns and "anti-terror" training which consists primarily of torture.

[wavecorewave]

From an Israeli perspective, the Palestine laboratory has had few downsides. Israel has worked closely with Washington for decades, often operating in places where the US preferred covert support rather than public backing. For example, Israel supported the police forces of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica during the Cold War when the US Congress had blocked US agencies from officially doing so. Both Israel and the US trained and armed death squads in Colombia well into the 2000s. The former drug trafficker Carlos Castaño, who ran a far-right paramilitary force, explains in his ghost-written autobiography, “I learned an infinite amount of things in Israel [in the 1980s], and to that country I owe part of my essence, my human and military achievements. I copied the concept of paramilitary forces from the Israelis.” He reportedly arrived in Israel in 2004 after fleeing his own country. Colombia has long been the most significant strategic US ally in the region. A Colombian government-appointed truth commission released its findings in 2022 about the grim realities during the country’s civil war between 1958 to 2016. The US was found to have known that its Colombian allies were running death squads and yet Washington’s backing increased. The Global South has been controlled and pacified with (principally) Israeli and US weapons.

Antony Loewenstein The Palestine Laboratory - How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World

[heavenlyyshecomes]

The IDF uses extensive facial recognition with a growing network of cameras and mobile phones to document every Palestinian in the West Bank. Starting in 2019, Israeli soldiers used the Blue Wolf app to capture Palestinian faces, which were then compared to a massive database of images dubbed the “Facebook for Palestinians.” Soldiers were told to compete by taking the most photos of Palestinians and the most prolific would win prizes. The system is most extreme in the city of Hebron, where facial recognition and numerous cameras are used to monitor Palestinians, including at times in their homes, instead of the extreme Jewish settlers living there, who routinely express genocidal threats against the Palestinians. The IDF claimed that the program was designed to “improve the quality of life for the Palestinian population.” […] Blue Wolf was a smaller version of the Wolf Pack database, which contained the personal details of virtually every Palestinian in the West Bank, including educational status, photos, security level, and family history. Soldiers in the West Bank were instructed in 2022 to enter the details and photos of at least fifty Palestinians into the Blue Wolf system every shift and were not allowed to end their shift until they did so. There was no security rationale for these actions. This is a similar set-up to what China does against the Uighurs in its Xinjiang province, using surveillance and technology to both track and intimidate the residents, though Beijing receives far more international condemnation than the Jewish state.

—Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World

[readingsquotes]

"Deadly robot dogs are in our future. Israel is using and testing them, both made in Israel and the US, in its destruction of Gaza.

It’s just one example, and there are so many more, of Israel not wanting to “waste” the opportunity in Gaza to show off its military hardware to an excited global market. My latest book, The Palestine Laboratory, examines this globally (pre 7 October 2023)."

[garudabluffs]

PERHAPS MORE than any other book published in recent years, The Palestine Laboratory demonstrates why Israel is a menace, not only to Palestinians and other Arabs whose countries it has invaded or bombed at one time or another, but really to people around the globe. Anyone who criticizes or mobilizes against their own authoritarian governments will likely have to contend with an Israeli weapon or technology designed to enhance government control over them and make dissent costly, if not impossible.

READ MORE https://www.wrmea.org/middle-east-books-and-more/the-palestine-laboratory-how-israel-exports-the-technology-of-occupation-around-the-world.html

Antony Loewenstein: Israel Is Testing New Weapons on Gaza as Arms Dealers Profit from Gaza War

NOVEMBER 14, 2023 Worldwide protests calling for a ceasefire are drawing attention to the role of weapons manufacturers and distributors supplying machinery to Israel’s assault on Gaza, with demonstrators blocking shipping tankers and entrances to weapons factories, and unionized workers refusing to handle military materiel over the war in Gaza. There is “a growing public awareness and anger” about the global connection between Western powers and the Israeli military industry, says Antony Loewenstein, who has investigated how Israeli weaponry and surveillance technology are used on Palestinians and exported around the world. “Israel is already, as we speak … live-testing new weapons in Gaza,” says Loewenstein. He also discusses what he characterizes as the “intelligence” and “political” failures of the October 7 Hamas incursion.

LISTEN READ MORE Transcript https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/14/israel_weapons

LINKS

"The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World"

19 October 2023

"Although we had always heard that people could be monitored through cell phones, we did not imagine that this could happen to us." +"When people ask us for something, we cannot afford to ask questions about ideology. The only type of regime that Israel would not aid would be one that is anti-American. Also, if we can aid a country that it may be inconvenient for the US to help, we would be cutting off our nose to spite our face not to.’ There’s rarely been a more honest appraisal of Israel’s entire weapons industry."

ISRAEL’S INSURANCE POLICY =>>"Israel’s arms sector, and its spyware industry in particular, is an insurance policy against political headwinds that may develop against the occupation."

"The lack of serious oversight benefits one actor in particular – Israel. As the lead exporter of these tools, the state is at the forefront of the intrusion technology industry. Founded in 2010, NSO Group Technologies Ltd is just one firm among a wider ecosystem of Israeli cyber-weapons companies. Of the 75 governments that have procured spyware and digital forensic technologies worldwide, 56 bought them from firms that are either based in or connected to Israel, such as NSO Group, Cellebrite, Cytrox and Candiru. These deals are all monitored and approved by the Israeli Ministry of Defence.

For Israel, spyware is not just a highly lucrative industry, but a strategic weapon to curry diplomatic favour."

[nando161mando]

On tomorrow's episode of 'Yeah Nah Pasaran!' on 3CR, we talk to Antony Loewenstein about his new book 'The Palestine Laboratory' & the war.

4.30pm, Thurs OCT 12 /// 855AM, digital, streaming, Community Radio+ app, podcats 🐈‍⬛ via @slackbastard

[quotesfromall]

An overwhelming majority of Israel's Jews have no interest in living in a state dominated by the Palestinians

Antony Loewenstein, After Zionism

[probablyasocialecologist]

The IDF uses extensive facial recognition with a growing network of cameras and mobile phones to document every Palestinian in the West Bank. Starting in 2019, Israeli soldiers used the Blue Wolf app to capture Palestinian faces, which were then compared to a massive database of images dubbed the “Facebook for Palestinians.” Soldiers were told to compete by taking the most photos of Palestinians and the most prolific would win prizes. The system is most extreme in the city of Hebron, where facial recognition and numerous cameras are used to monitor Palestinians, including at times in their homes, instead of the extreme Jewish settlers living there, who routinely express genocidal threats against the Palestinians. The IDF claimed that the program was designed to “improve the quality of life for the Palestinian population.”

Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World

[wavecorewave]

Incitement is so broadly defined by Israel that in many cases simply expressing support for Palestinian human rights, sharing a video online, or being opposed to Zionist colonization is deemed inappropriate. Social media posts are increasingly the sole reason a Palestinian will be detained for days, weeks, or months by the Israeli military. Israel’s interest in incitement is highly selective, with very few Israeli Jews detained for the same offenses. This is despite the fact that hate speech on Hebrew-language social media soared in 2020 and 2021, 9 percent higher than the year before, according to the Berl Katznelson Foundation and Vigo research institute. They found that 5.2 million comments either called for violence or were offensive, with Arabs being the main targets of abuse. Palestinian activist Dareen Tatour suffered years of house arrest and months in prison in 2018 for writing a poem that contained the words, “Resist, my people, resist them.” Israel accused her of “inciting terrorism.”

Antony Loewenstein The Palestine Laboratory - How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World

[heavenlyyshecomes]

And if the fear of terrorism does not sell Israeli militarism, then sexual allure will. The Alpha Gun Girls (AGA) were founded in 2018 by former IDF veteran Orin Julie. A group of scantily-dressed women caressing Israeli military hardware and wearing camouflage, they mirrored a similar gun culture in the US but with a strongly Zionist agenda. Julie’s social media posts were peppered with pro-gun rhetoric and lines like this: “No matter how hard it’ll be WE WILL DEFEND OUR LAND!” At the 2019 Defense, Homeland Security and Cyber Exhibition (ISDEF) in Tel Aviv, the AGA fondled rifles, posed for photos with the adoring crowd, and passed out brochures with their Instagram handles listing bust measurements, shoe and clothing size, and number of followers. A long line of people waited to get autographs. The women are regularly seen posing in deserts, their clothes covered in fake blood. Female models promoting weapons on social media were a new phenomenon in Israel, and Orin Julie believed that she was the first, telling the Times of Israel in 2018 that she “really loved Israel” and formed the AGA to promote companies like Elbit and Israel Weapons Industries as an integral part of her Zionism. “Social media and a transnational private defense industry have democratized the lusty aesthetics of warfare,” wrote Sophia Goodfriend, a doctoral student in cultural anthropology at Duke University who researched the marketing and production of Israeli surveillance tools, in Jewish Currents magazine. “AGA exports Israel’s ability to deny violence and normalize occupation by aestheticizing warfare,” she continued. “Dressed up in high heels and detachable angel wings, the eroticism of Israeli obfuscation is now a transnational commodity.” Julie received a huge online response, some praising her looks and weapons skills, with others writing that she was a “baby killer,” but there is no doubt that sexualizing Israeli weaponry was a brazen way to counter growing online criticism of Israeli occupation policies and a tactic that connects the Jewish state with the huge number of mostly right-wing and pro-Israel American supporters of the National Rifle Association. This was Zionism as objectified sex object, not a huge stretch from Israel using female soldiers in propaganda in the years after its birth to promote a strong and determined female citizenry. The political agenda wasn’t hidden, nor was it always explicit, leaving viewers to believe that nationalism and big guns were essential to maintain the Jewish state. That’s undeniably true because without a highly militarized society it would be impossible to sustain more than fifty years of occupation. AGA were trying to depoliticize the occupation by completely ignoring those suffering because of it.

—Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World

[4ft10tvlandfangirl]

Book recommendations for reading on Palestine with overviews or access to the content:

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine - A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917 - 2017 by Rashid Khalidi

The Palestinian - Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction by Martin Bunton

Voices of the Nakba: A Living History of Palestine edited by Diana Allan

Freedom is a Constant Struggle - Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis

The Palestine Laboratory - How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World by Antony Loewenstein

Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappé

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé

On Palestine by Noam Chomsky & Ilan Pappé

A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Huraini (Afterword by Malise Ruthven for later editions)

[good-old-gossip]

"Benjamin Netanyahu has been prime minister for longer than other Israeli leaders since the country’s birth in 1948 and is increasingly unpopular, but many of his policies in Gaza and the occupied West Bank enjoy huge Israeli support. The problem in Israel isn’t solely Netanyahu. He’s the symptom of a major larger societal shift. Replacing him with another carbon copy will change little for the millions of Palestinians who live under a brutal military occupation. One possible successor, Benny Gantz, has spent his career proudly promoting the destruction he’s caused in Gaza in previous wars. There’s long been a western obsession with Netanyahu, wrongly believing that he’s the impediment to a more humane "Jewish state". It’s the same mistake recently made by US President Joe Biden and Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, who argued that Netanyahu was blocking any prospect of peace in the region. It’s his belligerence, we’re told, that makes ending the Gaza onslaught impossible. When cautiously questioned by CNN recently, Netanyahu said that he wasn’t some fringe player in Israel but a leader who spoke for many Israelis, pursuing policies in Gaza with broad mainstream backing. He was right, and ignoring this reality doesn’t make it go away."

- Antony Loewenstein