Antony Loewenstein's Blog, page 6

Australia’s refusal to stop trading with Israel

My interview with the Australian podcast 7am:

As Israel’s assault on Gaza city continues, Israeli aircraft and tanks have pounded the eastern and northern outskirts of the city, destroying buildings and homes.

It comes as a record number of Australians turned out this weekend in protest against the war – and as the relationship between the Australian and Israeli government worsens.

But while Australia moves to recognise a Palestinian state, it continues its military and trade relations with Israel, supplying parts that allow planes to drop bombs on Gaza.

Today, co-founder of Declassified Australia and author of The Palestine Laboratory Antony Loewenstein on Australia, Israel and the difference between what we say – and what we do.

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Al Jazeera English interview on Israel’s obsessive killing of Palestinian reporters

My interview with Al Jazeera English about Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinian journalists and the Western silence around it.

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CNN interview on Western failures to economically pressure Israel

My CNN interview about Israel’s stated goal of goal of endless occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

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The Palestine Laboratory discussed on CNN Chile

Following the recent release of the Spanish edition of my best-selling book, The Palestine Laboratory, I’m pleased to see this prominent segment on CNN Chile discussing the work:

 

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Al Jazeera English interview on how Israel and Australia still maintain close economic ties

My Al Jazeera English interview about how Australia continues to trade closely with Israel (despite growing rhetorical anger).

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Al Jazeera English interview on Australia’s worsening ties with Israel

My interview with Al Jazeera English on Australia and Israel having a spat (while still trading strongly between each other).

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TRT World interview on growing number of Israeli soldiers committing suicide

My TRT World interview about Israel’s forever war in Gaza.

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Al Jazeera English interview on faux Western recognition of Palestine

My interview on the flagship Al Jazeera English podcast, The Take, on the growing number of Western states claiming to “recognise” Palestine.

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India’s The Wire positively reviews The Palestine Laboratory

Following the release of the Indian edition of my book, The Palestine Laboratory, here’s a very strong review by Marcy Newman in the leading Indian outlet, The Wire:

In the last several months, in Karnataka alone, India has put on display the ways in which it colludes with Israel’s militaristic economy. In February, the Invest Karnataka meeting in Bengaluru, featured a panel titled ‘Sky to Soil: How Indian-Israeli Cooperation in Drones, Agri-Tech, and Clean Energy is Driving Sustainable Innovation.’ Just after the brief ceasefire took effect in late January, this meeting presented the ruse of military technology being used to support sustainable agriculture. This is Israel’s agro-diplomacy and it’s one of the many ways it dupes the Global South into collaborating on militarised agribusiness deals. One doesn’t have to look much farther than Israel’s scorched earth policy in Gaza, where farmers are met with empty fields and toxic soil, to know that sustainable agriculture is the farthest thing from their agenda.

In fact, in Narendra Modi’s India, Israel doesn’t have to camouflage its intentions at all. In Bengaluru’s Aero India 2025 event, also held in February, the Embassy of Israel – Defense Section, along with its heaviest hitters, Elbit Systems, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, and Israel Aerospace Industries, exhibited their wares which are responsible for massacring tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Read the whole piece: What India Buys Into When It Buys Israeli Arms – The Wire

 

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The ongoing appeal of Israel’s military industrial complex

My latest monthly column for the UK outlet, Middle East Eye:

While anybody with a shred of humanity is outraged by Israel’s campaign of mass starvation and death in Gaza, Germany has other priorities. It recently agreed to purchase a missile defence system from Israel’s largest arms company, Elbit, for $260m.

Nothing to see here. Just business as usual with a state that Israel’s own leading human rights organisations say is committing genocide.

Israel’s arms and surveillance industries are thriving because of its violence in Gaza, the West Bank and beyond. It is a major selling point. Occupation is big business. The latest available figures, from 2024, show record sales of $14.8bn.

Numbers for 2025 are likely to be even higher, fuelled by huge global demand for the arms, drones, surveillance and AI tools that Israel has deployed in Gaza.

Genocide is no impediment to Israel promoting itself as the ultimate “battle-tested” entity. Far too many democratic and autocratic states are listening, learning and buying. Big Tech is up to its neck with the Israeli army – looking at you, Microsoft, Amazon and Google, among many others.

I have spent more than a decade investigating the Israeli military-industrial complex. While it is an exaggeration to argue that Israel’s endless occupation and war crimes exist solely to boost defence sales, there is no question that the money made from the war economy significantly strengthens Israel’s bottom line.

It is a point rightly stressed by Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, in her recent report, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, where she names and shames the corporations profiting from Israeli actions. (Albanese regularly references my latest book, The Palestine Laboratory, in explaining the rationale for Israel’s geopolitical posture.)

Who is buying all these Israeli weapons?

A recent headline in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz details one key relationship central to Israel’s defence strategy: “Why the future of Israeli defence lies in India.” The report explains how many Indian and Israeli arms companies are now established business partners, with Israeli firms building factories in India.

One anonymous Israeli source told the paper: “The Israeli defence industry has become, if not a subsidiary of the Indian defence industry, at least its full partner.”

Indian-made drones have been used in Gaza since 7 October 2023, and the Modi government in New Delhi deployed Israeli drones in its brief war with Pakistan in April.

The Indian-Israeli relationship is fuelled by money, but it is also ideological, with both Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu embracing ethnonationalism and persecuting Muslims.

It is a marriage of convenience – and racism – between Hindu fundamentalism and Zionist supremacy.

Europe was the biggest purchaser of Israeli arms in 2024, accounting for 54 percent of total exports. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 pushed many European nations towards Israeli weapons and missile defence systems. This reliance partly explains the European Union’s reluctance to even partially cut ties with Israel nearly two years into its onslaught in Gaza.

The Israeli arms industry is the ultimate insurance policy for a Jewish supremacist state that knows how many others depend on it. It has a dark history of partnering with some of the most brutal regimes since World War Two – including some that are openly antisemitic.

I estimate that Israel has sold weapons or surveillance equipment to at least 140 countries in the past few decades.

It is bad enough that many western nations embrace Israeli militarism, but too many Arab states – including Bahrain, Morocco, the UAE and Saudi Arabia – continue to do business with Israel. There is no true solidarity or tangible support for their fellow Arabs, the Palestinians. Instead, many Arab elites crave “normalisation” with the government in Tel Aviv.

These Arab dictatorships fear their own people – an Arab Spring 2.0 – and purchase battle-tested Israeli surveillance tech to entrench their rule.

According to a new book on Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), journalist Karen Elliott House explains: “He [MBS] has this vision of Israel and Saudi Arabia as the two big powers [in the region] working hand in hand. It won’t be easy until there’s some resolution in Gaza, but Saudis who know him well will tell you he can’t allow Saudi interests to be forever retarded by the Palestinians.”

It is clarifying to know that one of the Muslim world’s most powerful autocrats regards the Palestinians as a distraction at best and a pest at worst. Just imagine what MBS could do for them if he demanded that Israel stop its genocide in Gaza. Instead, he appears to wish they would disappear – a view strikingly similar to Israel’s own.

The only way to truly stop the Israeli arms juggernaut is for nations to stop buying.

Furthermore, as the recently established Hague Group urges, countries must also stop selling weapons to Israel.

The defence industry is inherently corrupt and dirty, and many states partake in it.

With Israel the eighth-biggest weapons seller in the world and global military spending reaching a record $2.72 trillion in 2024, rejecting militarism and automated killing machines is the least a civilised country can do.

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