Antony Loewenstein's Blog, page 3
October 15, 2025
Talking Palestine and Gaza in Poland
Following the recent release of the Polish edition of my book, The Palestine Laboratory, I was interviewed in the popular Polish newspaper, Fakt:
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Australia’s desperate need to be relevant to Trump
My book review appears in The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age:
Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era
Clinton Fernandes
Melbourne University Publishing, $17.99What makes Australia relevant in the 21st century? It’s a question the Albanese government thinks about constantly and wants the Trump administration to know that the decisions made in Canberra are designed to flatter and appease the US president, no matter the potential downsides for Australia.Think AUKUS, the US getting a massive share of Australia’s rare earths or the growing presence of American troops and intelligence assets on Australian soil. And this doesn’t even acknowledge the increasingly authoritarian policies and statements of Trump himself.It’s beyond the intellectual abilities of the entire Australian government to imagine a world where we aren’t entirely subservient to Washington’s dictates. Our semi-colonial status is lauded instead of being disparaged. A truly independent foreign policy is deemed impossible.
We’re too desperate to be liked even when it’s not clear that Trump could locate Pine Gap, in central Australia, a US intelligence gathering base that’s assisted Israel in its genocide in Gaza and the US during its bloody “war on terror” since September 11, 2001. A self-respecting nation wouldn’t tolerate this installation on its soil.Clinton Fernandes, professor of international and political studies at the University of New South Wales, has a distinguished record in the past decades explaining Australia’s relationship with its closest and furthest allies.
His latest book is a brutal, compelling and impeccably sourced analysis of what the second Trump administration is likely to be and how Australia fits into this agenda. Trump, Fernandes writes, “seeks economic control over” China and if that fails, “economic separation” from Beijing. To achieve this, Trump is “applying pressure on three geopolitical frontlines, Europe, the Middle East and China”.Fernandes offers a withering critique of the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal, endlessly praised by the Albanese government, Coalition opposition and mainstream media, as “demonstrating Australia’s relevance to the United States as it tries to preserve US dominance of the region”.
So much of the liberal discussion and fear around Trump suggests that he’s an isolationist who hates the US’s traditional allies. In fact, as Fernandes astutely observes, “he’s a sovereigntist. Sovereigntists are not anti-interventionists. They are illiberal, reactionary internationalists … Today’s sovereigntists aim to weaken non-Western associations that seek a more democratic international order.”It’s why Trump embraces reactionary parties from Israel to Argentina and Italy to Germany. He’s a proud imperialist (not unlike every US president before him, though perhaps more honest about his intentions than Democratic politicians).
This book should be required reading for any student of history and frankly the entire Canberra press gallery, who seem to view the Australia/US alliance as either one of equals or a benign superpower looking after its obedient children all in the name of world peace (even if some eggs have to be cracked in the process, including the obliteration of international law in Gaza and beyond).A particularly intriguing section involves Australia’s knowledge of Israel’s covert nuclear weapons program. Fernandes details how Australia has known for decades that Israel is a nuclear-armed state and yet never considers imposing sanctions on this illegal weaponry. “Because Israel performs a major service to the geopolitical West’s control of the Middle East,” Fernandes explains, “and its nuclear weapons allow it to remain the dominant military power in the region” (undoubtedly enhanced in the last years with the Israeli defanging of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran).Washington routinely shares its intelligence on Israel’s nuclear program with Australia. It’s therefore laughable when Canberra talks about a nuclear-free Middle East and conveniently ignores Israel’s arsenal. This hypocrisy is even stronger when reading Australian intelligence assessments of Tehran’s nuclear program that it is defensive and not aggressive.Barely a week goes by without Australian government talking up its credentials on the world stage. Federal Resources Minister Madeleine King recently spoke at the Australia-Japan Joint Business Conference in Perth and told the Australian Financial Review that Australia’s gas exports kept it relevant in regional security discussions in the Indo-Pacific.Australia’s ability to “speak about international issues” is code for the least popular child in the schoolyard hoping and praying that the coolest kid takes note (while still stealing your lunch money).Fernandes is uncompromising in his prose with little time for defenders of failed policies. “True believers in AUKUS are just one generation removed from true believers in the Afghanistan commitment,” he concludes.
Lest we forget the politicians and journalists cheerleading for the invasion and disastrous occupation of Afghanistan for close to 20 years before reality and a US withdrawal in 2021 forced them to see sense. AUKUS, Fernandes predicts, is akin to a faith-based program that many Australian officials would like to believe in, a world that doesn’t exist (and never will), of never-ending US dominance (and Australian subservience).Fernandes has an enviable record of political analysis. Whether it’s his 2004 book, Reluctant Saviour, which detailed how the Howard government had originally wanted to allow Indonesia to run riot in East Timor in the late 1990s or 2022’s Sub-Imperial Power on the uncomfortable truths about Australia’s real role in the world.Turbulence is no exception and forces us to confront who we are as a nation. The picture isn’t pretty.Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist, filmmaker and author of the Walkley-Award winning book The Palestine Laboratory.
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Dutch TV on the growth of the Palestine lab
The Dutch TV program VPRO Tegenlicht has featured my work around the Palestine laboratory and mass surveillance led by Big Tech in a 20 minute documentary.
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The Palestine Laboratory releases in Polish edition
The Polish edition of my global best-selling book, The Palestine Laboratory, is now out with the publisher, Szczeliny.
Here’s the Polish blurb:
How does Israel make money from the occupation of Palestine?
“The Palestine Laboratory” is a book that answers this question with devastating precision. For more than half a century, Israel’s defense industry has been using the occupied Palestinian territories as a test site – a place where it tests the operation of weapons, surveillance systems and surveillance technologies. Effect? “Bat-tern” solutions are now going to the army, regimes and corporations around the world – from Europe to Burma, from Jeff Bezos to the refugees in the Mediterranean.
Antony Loewenstein – an independent journalist of Jewish origin – reveals the backstage of this global business, using secret documents and witness accounts and his own investigations. It shows how the suffering of Palestinians resulted in a profitable export model: surveillance, violence, detention without a sentence – wrapped in the language of “innovation” and “security”.
This book does not allow you to look away. It shocks, provokes and stays with the reader for a long time. “Palestine Laboratory” is not just a story about Palestine. It’s a story about a world where each of us can become a tested case.
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The Palestine Laboratory film series long-listed for 2025 Walkley Documentary Award
I’m happy to announce that my film series, The Palestine Laboratory, broadcast on Al Jazeera English in early 2025, has been long-listed for the 2025 Walkley Documentary Award.
The Walkleys are the most prestigious journalism prize in Australia.
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October 9, 2025
Israel’s booming arms sector shows signs of fear
My monthly column for the UK outlet, Middle East Eye:
The Israeli arms industry has always been infused with hubris. This arrogance is due to the state selling weapons, surveillance tech and drones to more than 140 countries in recent decades.
Much of the world has come to rely on Israeli expertise in this area, with weapons and tech tested first on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Israel has used its mass slaughter in Gaza as the ultimate showroom for killer drones, mass destruction, AI-enabled warfare and the strategy of bulldozing entire neighbourhoods.
And yet now, two years after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, the first hint of fear has entered the industry.
Amid news that Spain is cutting multiple arms deals with Israel to protest the Gaza genocide, a source in the Israeli defence sector told the local financial outlet Calcalist: “After the war, they will come back on all fours. They need our weapons more than we need them. Spain is a small market, but we must remain vigilant about other, larger markets.”
Read the whole column: Gaza genocide: Could this be the downfall of Israel’s arms industry? | Middle East Eye
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The myriad of challenges with the ceasefire in Gaza
Following news that a ceasefire will (hopefully) occur in Gaza, along with my recent film, Germany’s Israel Obsession, here’s my interview with the German outlet, acTVism Munich (with a very strange and disturbing AI image of me).
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Al Jazeera English interview on the hopeful end of the “war” in Gaza
My interview on Al Jazeera English about the ceasefire declared between Israel and Hamas.
May this madness end once and for all.
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October 7, 2025
TRT World interview on two years since 7 October 2023
My interview with TRT World on the horrific two years since 7 October 2023.
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October 5, 2025
Trump’s false embrace of the war on drugs
The Trump administration’s acceleration of the global “war on drugs” is both dangerous and delusional.
I gave this comment to the UK outlet, The New Statesman:
“The idea of ramping up the drug war in a deluded attempt to stop people consuming drugs has never worked,” says Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist, film-maker and author of Pills, Powder and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs and The Palestine Laboratory. “Until the US, UK and other states legalise and regulate all drugs, this highly militarized drug war will continue.”
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