El laboratorio palestino (Ensayo)

by Antony Loewenstein

Cómo Israel se forra con la ocupación de Palestina

El complejo militar-industrial de Israel utiliza los territorios palestinos ocupados como campo de pruebas de armamento y tecnología de vigilancia que luego exporta por todo el mundo a déspotas y democracias. Durante más de 50 años, la ocupación de Cisjordania y Gaza ha proporcionado al Estado israelí una experiencia inestimable en el control de una población "enemiga", los palestinos. Es aquí donde han perfeccionado la arquitectura del control.

El periodista Antony Loewenstein, autor de Capitalismo del desastre, descubre este mundo en gran medida oculto en una investigación global con documentos secretos, entrevistas reveladoras y reportajes sobre el terreno. Este libro muestra en profundidad, por primera vez, cómo Palestina se ha convertido en el laboratorio perfecto para el complejo militar-tecnológico israelí: vigilancia, demoliciones de viviendas, encarcelamiento indefinido y brutalidad hasta las herramientas de alta tecnología que impulsan la "Start-up Nation".

Desde el software Pegasus que hackeó los teléfonos de Jeff Bezos y Jamal Khashoggi, las armas vendidas al ejército de Myanmar que ha asesinado a miles de rohingyas y los drones utilizados por la Unión Europea para vigilar a los refugiados en el Mediterráneo que se dejan ahogar. Israel se ha convertido en líder mundial en tecnología de espionaje y material de defensa que alimenta los conflictos más brutales del planeta. Mientras el etnonacionalismo crece en el siglo XXI, Israel ha construido el modelo definitivo.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Middle East, War, Technology, Israel

357 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 31, 2023

About the author

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist, best-selling author, filmmaker and co-founder of Declassified Australia. He's written for The Guardian, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books and many others. His books include The Palestine Laboratory, Pills, Powder and Smoke, Disaster Capitalism and My Israel Question. His documentary films include Disaster Capitalism and the Al Jazeera English films West Africa's Opioid Crisis and Under the Cover of Covid. He was based in East Jerusalem 2016-2020.

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is terribly depressing. The main idea is that since Israel operates as an occupying power, it has developed a wide range of military and surveillance techniques and technologies. Israel is in the top ten arms exporters in the world (ninth). This is impressive given it has a population of about 10 million. For a long time Gaza was under some of the world’s most heavy surveillance. The drone and message interception technologies necessary to ensure this provided Israeli companies with capabilities that foreign governments were very keen to access.

I guess most people are aware of the Pegasus spyware that NSO developed – that essentially allows someone to see everything you are doing on your mobile phone. There was a scandal about this a couple of years back – not only was it being used by some of the world’s most repressive regimes, think Viktor Orban or even the Spanish against Catalan and Basque officials, but was also used by Saudi Arabia when they needed to chop up Jamal Khashoggi.

That’s the other thing this book discusses – the fact that Israel doesn’t really get all that squeamish over who it sells its stuff to. In fact, as the US’s little me, Israel is said here to supply arms to countries that it would be diplomatically uncomfortable for the US to sell them to.

A major conclusion of this book is that Israel uses its captive Palestinian population as a testing and proving ground for its military and surveillance equipment. That this laboratory allows Israel to provide better than theory for the products that it sells. The endless war against the Palestinians can therefore be used to provide proof of concept and practical examples in how to disarm, constrain and subjugate a troublesome population.

The book goes into endless detail, all of which ultimately feels tragically exhausting by the end. He reminds us that Israel is a remarkably unequal society – one of the most unequal in Europe – and that there have been times when these technologies have been used against its own population too, and not just the Palestinians. Essentially, the message of this book is that the rich and powerful are well aware that inequality is not something people are likely to tolerate forever, and so repressive technologies will necessarily remain very popular, and increasingly so in the so called democracies. That is, one day probably relatively soon we will get to be Palestinians too. After being demonised in much the same way.

All of which makes this a less niche book than you might have guessed from the title.

[Anastasios Moralis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is definitely a book about Palestine, but it is also so much more.

It is a book about the hypocrisy, greed and disregard for human rights by the “good guys”.

It is about Israel providing arms to the brutal Hutu regime in Rwanda before and during the genocide.

It is a book about Israel supplying arms to General Pinochet and the junta in Chile and negating the US arms embargo.

It is about Israel supporting and arming Iran under the Shah, death squads in Colombia and the apartheid regime in South Africa.

It is about Israel supporting the Argentinian dictatorship, knowing that they were torturing Jews

It is about Israel currently supporting Russia in the invasion on Ukraine.

Ceausescu's Romania, Duvalier’s Haiti, Suharto’s Indonesia, Somoza’s Nicaragua, the list is huge

It is a book of governments spying on their citizens to suppress democracy, dissent, homosexuality, religious freedom or any civil liberties expected in society today.

It is a book about Facebook, Google, Instagram and Twitter suppressing the voices of Palestinians and Kashmiris and allowing hate speech from Israelis and Indians.

Books like this always take me a long time to read because I find many parts so difficult to believe that I have to check the facts myself; I haven’t managed to catch the author out on any of his assertions.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative, thorough, angering account of how much Israel has contributed to war and dictatorships across the globe. Put in overly simplistic terms that the book does a better job of delving into, Antony Loewenstein writes about how Israel has used the captive Palestinian population as a testing ground for surveillance and military equipment, which it then disseminates to regimes such as the devastating Hutu regime in Rwanda and the Argentinian dictatorship which targeted Jewish people itself. Lowenstein also touches on the active silencing of Palestinian voices on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube all in support of the Zionist movement. It’s so disgusting and frustrating knowing that the United States is contributing to this wretchedness!! And I appreciate Loewenstein taking a stand especially as a Jewish person himself (perhaps a low bar, but still).

There is a lot of information packed into this book and at times I found the writing a bit dry, though maybe that’s because I’m more of a mental health/psychology/memoir girlie than an international affairs girlie. Of course the content is still super important though.

[Nathan Shuherk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential. I chose this for my Patreon book club and my having a tough time waiting for the discussion. It’s truly incredibly well done and adds so many layers to better contextualize both the present and considering the future of our technological futures

[Miroku Nemeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

The selling of an idea of an "ethnostate" that knows how to deal with its indigenous colonized population is an essential component of Israel corporate and national marketing strategies. No book I have read makes this more clear than this excellent contemporary study by Loewenstein.

Read "The Palestine Laboratory" to see how Israel markets itself in intelligence, "security", arms, cybersecurity, apartheid wall construction, drone monitoring, mercenary, etc. operations especially against indigenous peoples with the oppression of the Palestinians as their case for marketing. They were an essential part of the assisting of right-wing death squads in Central America in killing indigenous and poor peoples, and even helped through their Pegasus Program to cover up the murder of the 43 in Mexico and the surveillance of the activists and families who survived. They are literally a blueprint for anti-indigenous evil and oppression around the world, with the backing of their settler-colonizer model, the USA.

My short review does not do this book justice. It's one of the most important books on Israel you can read today.

[August · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you though Israel was evil already but want to know how in greater detail then this is the book for you. Free Palestine.

[kitkat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super necessary book if you want to understand what the state of Israel and the Zionism project is really about. It is not about safety for Jewish people (as proved by the providing of weapons by Israeli defense companies to the anti Jewish government of Argentina). It is about occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and as we’re seeing in full scale today, the genocide of the indigenous Palestinian people. While so much of this book is important, I want to share two quotes that especially stood out to me.


“Every Palestinian is defined as a threat, and civil society actors are arguably seen by Israel as the most threatening because they could mobilize international support against the occupation.”

According to Israel, there are no innocent Palestinians. It is this logic that allows for Israeli lobbyists to campaign for the active silencing of Palestinian voices on social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. (A silencing campaign that unfortunately seems to be working). Any Palestinian voice simply documenting injustice could be framed as ‘inciting terrorism.’ The hate speech and genocidal language coming from Israel’s government and its citizens? Unchecked.
This same logic is also what allows Israel’s government today to refer to innocent Palestinians in Gaza as simply ‘human shields’ and ‘collateral damage.’ They would never dare refer to Israeli citizens the same way, proving that Palestinians aren’t humans in their eye. The first step to genocide isn’t the killing, it’s the dehumanization.


“A catastrophic war between Israel, Iran, or Hizbollah could trigger an overwhelming argument within Israel that Palestinians, potentially protesting in support of their Arab brethren, are undermining the state’s integrity. An Israeli military operation might then be undertaken to ensure a mass exodus, with the prospect of Palestinians returning to their homes a remote possibility”

This book was published before October 7th, and it’s shockingly relevant today. For people who think that self defense is ethnic cleansing and genocide, you need to take a real look inside yourself.

[milo · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars. ‘The Palestine Laboratory’ is a groundbreaking book that unravels the intricate layers of Israel’s occupation and genocide of Palestine, and mainly, its military-industrial complex. Loewenstein looks at the covert world where Palestine has served as an unsettling testing ground fr state-of-the-art weaponry and surveillance technology, to be later disseminated globally. In this book, Loewenstein has crafted a narrative that not only exposes the evil underbelly of Israel’s occupation of Palestine but also peels back the layers of a complex geopolitical landscape.

Spanning more than 50 years of occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, Loewenstein’s narrative unveils the Israeli state’s invaluable experience in controlling and subjugating the Palestinian population. It dissects the architecture of control that has been honed over decades, frm the Nakba to the current day, and frm the disturbing reality of surveillance tactics to the devastating impact of home demolitions. Loewenstein goes beyond the surface, exploring the human cost of indefinite incarceration on the world’s largest open-air prison, and shedding light on the brutality inflicted upon Palestinians by Israel.

At the heart of the narrative though lies a deep dive into the Israeli military-technological complex, where cutting-edge tools - frm drones and other surveillance apparatuses like CCTV cameras and threat detection systems - are forged in the crucible of conflict. ‘The Palestine Laboratory’ not only scrutinises the dark realities of the occupation but also examines the exportation of these technologies to a global audience, raising ethical questions about the complicity of various nations, both democratic and despotic, in perpetuating oppression.

Basically, fr those who thought they knew the reprehensible extent of Israel’s actions, Loewenstein’s work offers a disturbingly thorough examination that brings it all into the light of day, pushing us who don’t already know to confront the inhumanity of Israel. Read this book. Frm the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

[Darwin8u · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many parts of this hit so hard. It is a lesson of how Israel's relationship with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is a warning of state and economic power when other states use the tools of Israel to control their population or separate those they control. The bias of information coming of Israel and Palestine is problematic. This book is written by a former Israeli, interviewing experts in Israel, and is well-researched and careful. It is also scary. I would love to see Israel to live up to its potential instead of another pariah state. This book was published, however, right before the October 7 attacks and Israel's response makes my optimistic hope seem like a child's fantasy. Especially in this environment in both Israel and the United States.

[Mateusz Płocha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nie jest to tylko książka o zbrodniach Izraela wobec Palestyńczyków. To bolesna synteza stanu obecnego świata, w którym rządzą pieniądze. Może się to wydać mało odkrywcze albo wręcz niegroźne skoro owa prawda stara jak świat towarzyszy nam od zawsze. Jest coś jednak głęboko porażającego w tym, że wychowując się w kraju, w którym towarzyszyło nam hasło „nigdy więcej” tak łatwo pogodziliśmy się z tym, że „tak to już jest”.

[Stella ☆Paper Wings☆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
A really informative guide to Israel's massive influence on war and dictatorships worldwide. It's mostly informational though, and there's not much background or contextualization on Israel's history and relationship with Palestine, so this isn't necessarily one I'd recommend as a "beginners guide to Israel" or anything. However, it is a great read to learn more about modern US Empire and related topics


Sadly, Verso's ebook giveaway for this is now over, but I believe some of their other titles are still available free!

[giada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edit: Verso is currently offering a free digital edition of this book and five others in their Palestinian Reading List on their website!

I’ve never read about Israel’s role as a cog in the war machine in such an extensive way. This book explores Israel’s role in most world conflicts, from arms dealing to state of the art intelligence spyware, and how its importance came to be at the expense of Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied territories of the West Bank, as they're used as lab rats. When all of Israeli weapons come recommended as battle tested this is what they mean.

Loewenstein goes in detail about intelligence projects and secret military programs, also thanks to anonymous sources that used to be part of the IOF, and how these programs and the knowledge garnered from them shape the world now that they’re used against drug cartels in Mexico, or government Modi’s opposition’s in India and Kashmir, or in Israel as well, when the Israeli citizens saw these programs being used against them during Covid lockdowns - while they had accepted it when they were being used on Palestinians up until then.

It’s a bit of a tough read, first of all because the horror of violence on innocent people is undeniable, but also because it’s a very dense list of war crimes to cram in about three hundred pages.

It’s an incredible resource, up to date until late 2022/early 2023 (it was published in May of this year), but if I have to voice a complaint - the chapters are way too long. There are few paragraph breaks, there are no subsections, and as I said they are chock-full of information: they’re dense, and a bit difficult to read when you don’t know when you should stop. Of course, nonfiction shouldn’t be read like a novel, but I saw myself putting off reading because sometimes I came to dread it a bit, knowing it would take a long while for me to finish.

Regardless, this finds an easy solution in learning to pace yourself while reading, so not all hope is lost! It’s still deserving of acclamation.
3.5 stars rounded up.

Access to the ARC acquired thanks to NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Strega Di Gatti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extensively researched, The Palestine Laboratory features compelling evidence outlining how the Israeli government provides support and models of action to dictators, war criminals, and repressive regimes with “unwanted populations”.

Loewenstein additionally challenges the view of Israel as a nation similar to a startup company, powered by innovation and tech leadership. He explains how Israeli defence companies monetize the occupation and sell the results to dictators in a global market.

The connections are appalling, from weapons fuelling genocide in Sudan and Rwanda, to torture prisons run by proxies, to relationships with apartheid governments, to phone-hacking software sold to dictators but denied to their victims, to systems repelling migrants at the US border, to protecting foreign despots who harm their own Jewish populations, to the terrifying amount of surveillance technology used against civilians. This book is helpful reading for progressives who want to understand how struggles are interconnected and how technology and commerce play a role in oppression.

The Palestine Laboratory has a particular focus on the actions of spy agency Unit 8200 and the products it produces. These include systems to monitor Palestinian civilians (but not settlers) in their homes, remote "crowd control" tech to fire grenades, and large databases of personal details about every individual in the West Bank. We see how it's possible to track and control residents from cradle to grave.

I would like to see an update to this book with a section more focused on AI and digital spaces as a battleground. Unit 8200 is currently building invasive AI models to track targets including human rights activists (as reported in The Guardian). This month, contracts between Israel and Trump-linked firms revealed plans to target Americans through deployment of bots, influencer campaigns, and by framing query results returned by ChatGPT and Claude (as reported in Haartez).

Seeing how the actions of a democratic government can “white-wash fascism” was chilling. Naomi Klein (not NAOMI WOLF!) called this book "indispensable" for good reason.

[Tala🦈 (mrs.skywalker.reads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

czytajcie, izrael jebie nas wszystkich

[Vartika · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're struggling to understand the absolute absence of accountability when it comes to Israeli warmongering, The Palestine Laboratory is the book for you.

First published in 2023 – well before the events of October 7, the escalation of the genocide in Gaza, and the recent bombings of Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and now Iran – this is a thorough journalistic account of the Israeli military-technological complex, which not only reveals the the scale and nature of Western complicity in the occupation and destruction of Palestine, but also serves to upend commonly-held notions of Israel as a state built upon the principle of safeguarding a long-persecuted Jewish peoples.

From the very beginning, Israel has weaponised the trauma of the Holocaust and the imagined threat of being undermined by its neighbouring Arab states as a means to military might, funneling the reparations it received from post-war Germany and its continuing status as the largest recipient of US Aid towards developing surveillance technology and weaponry – an industry in which it is now a global leader. As Antony Loewenstein painstakingly shows, the continuation of the 'conflict' in Palestine and broader instability in the Middle East is actually crucial to its nationbuilding project: far from wanting peace, Israel has spent decades delegitimising the 'peace-process', because the popularity of Israeli weapons and surveillance technology is interminably linked to how it markets its products as being 'battle-tested' – on Palestinians living and dying under its thumb. A key revelations of this book is how it gets away with it: while it is the state and the IDF that perfect the architecture of occupation and control by using the occupied Palestinian territories as testing grounds, the neoliberal turn in Israeli politics and the country's projection of itself as a 'start-up nation' that supports technologcal innovation allows it to privatise and outsource security, which in turn ensures that it cannot be held accountable for how the technology is used. It also allows it to commercialise it with the occupation as a marketing asset, thus legitimising its actions in Palestine. As Loewenstein states, "[Israel] needs the world to legitimize its occupation and sells the technology used to maintain that occupation as a calling card".

Indeed, Israel's transition from pariah state to an indispensable geopolitical ally that most nations across the globe dare not displease has been largely facilitated by it thus successfully selling them the image of itself as a powerful 'ethnostate' that knows how to keep an occupied population 'under control': "What's appealing to growing numbers of regimes globally is learning how Israel gets away with politicide (per the late Israeli scholar and professor of sociology Baruch Kim-merling, 'a process that has, as its ultimate goal, the dissolution of the Palestinian people's existence as a legitimate social, political, and economic entity')".

Unsurprisingly, Israeli spying technology and defense hardware has fueled some of the most brutal conflicts outside of Palestine, from Apartheid South Africa, Pinochet's Chile, Ceausescu's Romania, and the Rwandan genocide to Bangladesh, South Sudan, Brazil, Mexico, Sri Lanka and Russia. Though Iran is now Israel's enemy no. 1, the two were actually close (though quiet) allies during the reign of Shah Reza, with Israel being the largest supplier of weaponry and spyware that facilitated his authoritarian rule (given the current state of affairs, I deign to highlight that Israel is not not part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and its nuclear facility at Dimona has never been inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency). Israel has also supplied weapons and technology to US-backed dictatorships, coups, and counterintergencies, including those in Haiti, Romania, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama and Guatemala, often acting as a proxy for US interests where the global superpower was not able or willing to sell weapons directly.

In fact, as Loewenstein's investigations reveal, the extent of US-Israel collusion is such that Pegasus – the spyware that gained notoreity for its deployment by governments in India, Morocco and Russia, and by the Saudis in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi – was designed so that any phone numbers with the +1 prefix couldn't be targeted (though the parent company, NSO, later developed a workaround for the FBI in 2019 as a way for the agency to hack Americans). As Loewenstein shows, even the relative cooling of relations between the two countries under Biden was not due to any real concerns for 'repression', which his government aided, but due to fears of Israeli surveillance capabilities surpassing and threatening his own (Israel is the third most aggressive intelligence to the US). The Israeli lobby in the US is all-powerful, something that has swung the country's foreign policy in favour of Israel under governments both red and blue. The benefits for the US are not limited to its operations abroad, but also extends to its own settler-cololonial action against Native Americans and Black people (it is alleged that Derek Chauvin, the officer who killed George Floyd, learned his killing move while training in Israel).

The EU is just as complicit. On the one hand, individual member states have used Israeli spyware to silence dissidents (Catalan's pro-independence politicians were spied on by Spanish officials, leading to the resignation of the head of Spain's intelligence agency in 1995). On the other, and just as insidiously, the EU uses Israeli technology for anti-migrant surveillance: patrol boats on its coasts have been replaced with drones, eliminating the chance of refugee rescue, and Israeli spyware is used in the EU's migrant processing centre in Niger. Even the United Nations, which formally condemns the occupation and genocide and has recently blacklisted Israel for 'grave violations' against children, uses Israeli contracts to secure its bases in Mali.

Using interviews with fources from within the IDF, Mossad, NSO and the Israeli State Archives, and with scholars, dissidents, whistleblowers within the country and from those affected by its deadly export, The Palestine Laboratory demonstrates how Israel exports the technology of occupation to despots, democracies, and regulators alike. Through this, it also exposes the truth behind the myths Israel has successfully perpetuates about itself.

Some of the most vicious and effective Israeli propaganda stems from its assertion of itself as 'the only democracy in the Middle East'. This is of course a claim that pales in view of the apartheid regime, but it is also deeply misleading in light of the growing inequalities within Israeli Jewish society and the fact that their civil liberties are also curtailed (any journalism regarding the state or military, for instance, requires being vetted by the IDF). And while Israel cloaks itself in progressive ideas like LGBTQ+ rights and equality of the sexes at home, it too follows religious laws in both matters. Further, its client list abroad tells its own tale: Israeli spyware facilitates homophobic persecution in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Kenya, and other states across the Global South; it helped Harvey Weinstein with both the spyware and the actual spies (ex-Mossad agents) to track and intimidate the women, journalists and other parties exposing the extent and nature of his sexual assault allegations.

But perhaps the most damning is the unmasking of the Israeli state's supposed raison d'être as a Jewish state. While trying to silence its critics and accusing them of anti-semitism, it has supplied weapons and surveillance technology to the Argentinian dictatorship despite being well-aware of the concentration camps and torture of Argentinian Jews; continues to partner Hungary despite Órban's growing anti-Jewish sentiment; and both arms and honours the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in Ukraine while denying help to the Ukrainian government since before the Russian invasion. Indeed, it has for decades "white-washed fascist and anti-Semitic regimes as long as those countries accepted [its] treatment of the Palestinians."

The Palestine Laboratory is thus invaluable in demonstrating how the goal of the Israeli State is not the safeguarding of Jewish lives but the subjugation of occupied 'others', unchecked territorial expansion (Ukrainian Jewish refugees taken in after 2022 were moved to illegal settlements in the West Bank) while building walls to separate and hide the 'other', and, most of all, authoritarian control – all of which it shares with its closest allies. Recent events – the Israeli government's orders banning Israeli citizens from leaving the country in the face of Iranian counter-attacks, effectively using Jewish people as human shields to maintain territorial control on occupied land; the ICE raids in the US and anti-immigrant legislation in the UK and elsewhere in Europe and the world – reinforces the salience of this Loewenstein's work at this moment in time. When moral clarity is lacking in the world, all roads lead to the Israeli regime.

N.B. In the preface to the 2024 paperback edition, Loewenstein refers to the Hamas attacks as 'illegal' and 'counterproductive to the Palestinian cause', but the context laid out in the rest of the book shows how the attacks were likely anticipated by the Israeli state, and probably even welcomed as a means to a clearly-stated end. A page later, he also refers to the BDS campaign as 'unprecedented', when the anti-Apartheid boycott against South Africa provides a very clear, well-known precedent.

[ez · Rating 4 out of 5]

another essential. i learned a lot more abt the military industrial complex and surveillance state that had only been touched on in previous readings. this book weaves webs if you will, and gets its work done showing how far wide and down the rot truly spreads. (4.5 stars rounded down)

[Mack · Rating 5 out of 5]

really can’t recommend this highly enough, extensively researched and the scope is crazy. obviously horrifying but idk it’s good to be armed with information — if you’re a psychopath like me this one is a good gym listen. i liked the audiobook narrator though i bet he’s divisive!

[Dagio_maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

«In solidarietà con i palestinesi e gli israeliani che combattono per un futuro giusto».


Esprimere il proprio pensiero riguardo la politica d’Israele è palesemente un tabù, o meglio, lo è se s’intende criticare in un qualche modo i metodi adottati nei confronti del popolo palestinese.
E’ come se, sia i governi sia la società civile, vivessero in un continuo stato di espiazione da una colpa gravissima, nostra malgrado ereditata, ma da cui non possiamo lavarcene le mani: la Shoah.

Da ciò un divieto che colpisce tutti indistintamente: non si può parlare di genocidio palestinese senza essere tacciati di antisemitismo.


Moni Ovadia ci presenta l’autore nella prefazione di questo saggio tremendamente doloroso nel suo illustrarci una realtà ancora più estesa di quello ci si può immaginare:

Antony Loewenstein, ebreo australiano nipote di profughi ebrei che lasciarono la Germania per sfuggire alle persecuzioni naziste, illumina un aspetto parallelo consustanziale della pratica sionista: la ripulsa dei grandi valori etici, spirituali e universalisti dell’ebraismo per imboccare il cammino idolatrico della forza, della prepotenza, di un nazionalismo fanatico, dell’idolatria della terra.


Dal 1948, dopo le prime occupazioni violente (Nakba), Israele ha costruito la sua immagine come modello di democrazia a cui ispirarsi per la lotta al terrorismo.

La realtà è che la Palestina rappresenta un ”prezioso banco di prova di nuovi dispositivi a beneficio di una potenza militare globale egemone che serve altri eserciti del pianeta. (…)
Il laboratorio palestinese di Israele trae vantaggio dagli sconvolgimenti e dalle violenze che avvengono nel mondo.”

” Il gran numero di dittature con cui Israele ha intrattenuto rapporti è sconcertante.”

... il regime di Pinochet, Sud- Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, Sudafrica dell’apartheid (Unspoken Alliance - ‘La tacita alleanza’), Iran, Indonesia (epurazione comunisti), Romania di Nicolae Ceausescu, Haiti )sotto François “Papa Doc” Duvalier e suo figlio Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier), Paraguay, il Nicaragua dei Somoza, Argentina di Peròn, Ruanda, Tigri-Tamil, Siria..

Una lista dolorosamente lunga che approda al respingimento dei migranti per cui ci sono società israeliane private (e voi direte: «beh, se sono private il governo che c’entra?»..C’entra, c’entra..) come (eh sì facciamo nomi e cognomi!) la Elbit e soprattutto la Frontex (interessante il caso dell’ex AD Fabrice Leggeri, dimessosi nel 2022 dopo un’accusa di violazioni dei diritti umani e in questi giorni tornato sui giornali per essere entrato nelle fila dell’estrema destra francese..) che operano in tal senso:

” Israele è un attore chiave nella battaglia dell’Unione Europea sia per militarizzare i propri confini sia per dissuadere nuovi arrivi,

Armi di ogni genere, cybersorveglianza, cybersicurezza: Israele è come una start up che ha come obiettivo quello di monetizzare.
L’attacco dell’11 settembre 2001 è stato il lancio definitivo sul mercato: mentre la questione palestinese si è legittimata nel nome di una guerra mondiale a tutto ciò che si considera terrorismo, l’impennata delle richieste di sistemi di sorveglianza ha avuto un’impennata mai vista prima.

Ancora una volta la Cisgiordania è stata il laboratorio dove testare nuove forme di controllo.
Così una società come Oosto (prima AnyVision) ha messo in atto un progetto Google Ayosh, che prende di mira tutti i palestinesi attraverso l’uso dei “big data” acquisendo competenze esportate poi a livello globale.

Non da ultimo è il ruolo del web e dei social dove i messaggi sono veicolati rimuovendo, da una parte, tutto ciò che arriva e/o appoggia la Palestina, e, allo stesso tempo, mettendo in primo piano, tutte le immagini e i discorsi pro-Israele.

” Nel maggio 2021 «The Washington Post» pubblicò un articolo con un titolo straordinariamente onesto, “L’intelligenza artificiale di Facebook tratta gli attivisti palestinesi come tratta gli attivisti neri americani. Li blocca”

Dopo oltre settant’anni in cui l’ideologia di dominio e superiorità è al comando non è facile resettare nelle menti altre prospettive anche perché è stato inculcato che la soluzione dei due stati non sia assolutamente fattibile.

Esiste un mondo dissidente a tutto ciò .
Una porzione di persone che sempre più faticosamente cercano di smascherare queste strategie e giornalisti investigativi come Loewenstein che denunciano la trappola dell’ideologia tossica.

Questo libro è stato pubblicato nel 2023.
Sarei curiosa di sapere l’opinione di Loewenstein dopo gli eventi in seguito ai fatti del 7 ottobre 2024.

"Era normale che agli ebrei venisse insegnato a scuola o nel corso dell’educazione religiosa – e così mi veniva detto anche a casa dai miei genitori ebrei liberali – che erano il popolo eletto e avevano un rapporto unico con Dio e la società. Noi potevamo e dovevamo aiutare gli altri (anche se venivano posti dei limiti a questa solidarietà, ovvero ne erano esclusi i palestinesi). È un sistema di credenze che permette alla supremazia razziale contro i non-ebrei di prosperare e giustifica l’indifferenza per le loro vite."

[Rita · Rating 5 out of 5]

An educational and important read. Thanks Antony Loewenstein for bringing the information together in a book. Let us all unite to stop the senseless killings and oppression of any group (Palestinians, Uighurs, people from Kaschmir in India, indigenous people all around the world; indigenous people in Arizona at the border to Mexico,...)

Chapter 1 deals with the critical regimes, Israel already sent weaponry to and aiding brutal regimes. (Chile Coup 1973, aiding Pinochet; Indonesia 1965-1966; Romania under tyrant Nicolae Ceausecu; Haiti under Francois Duvalier and his son; Nicaragua under the Somoza family; Guatemalan under Efrain Rios Montt)

"Exact figures are impossible to obtain, since the state never releases them, but today there are over 300 multinational companies and 6000 start-ups that employ hundreds of thousands of people. Sales are booming, with defense exports reaching an all-time high in 2021 of US$11.3 billion, having risen 55 percent in 2 years. Israel's cybersecurity firms are also soaring, with US$8.8 billion raised in one hundred deals in 2021. In the same year, Israeli cyber companies took 40% of the world's funding in the sector." (p.29)

Antony Loewenstein quoted Daniel Silberman: "Moral considerations are never considered when Israel aids dictatorships. It's about money and being a powerful nation." (p.23) As Israel's president from 1983 to 1993, Chaim Herzog, put it himself: "We must be guided in our [foreign policy] relationships by the one criterion that has guided governments of Israel ever since the establishment of the state:'Is it good for the Jews?'" (p.31)

Chapter 2 describes the increasing privatization of "security companies" in Israel. However the ties to the government are not cut in any way. Israel develops and uses a lot of facial recognition, surveillance and remote weapons. And sells to them all over world to other countries that want to strengthen their borders or "defend". Military service is compulsory for Jews and Druze, both men and women, and for Circassian men. The active-duty period is 32 months for men and 24 months for women, followed by reserve duty until age 40. (s: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Isra...) The people are needed for this organized occupation and crimes against the Indigenous people.

Chapter 3 recaps the horrible "operations": Pillar of Defense, Cast Lead, Protective Edge, Guardian of the Wall and the Great March of Return 2018. Antony reveals blackmails and manipulation done against Palestinians. I learnt about Israeli weapons such as 1) sea of tears and 2) skunk water. Morever I learnt about the US and Israeli computer virus Stuxnet that did not just hack information but cause physical destruction.

Chapter 4 deals with the European border control agency, Frontex. It explores how advanced drones have caused more deaths in the Mediterranean Sea than before. You can see a global increase in investments in border control and walls. "In post-pandemic Europe, mirgants will face a digitals fortress." (p.106)
"Between 2014 and 2025, more than 32,000 refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. The actual number is believed to be much higher."

(Sources: 1) https://www.institut-fuer-menschenrec..., 2) https://fra.europa.eu/de/news/2024/un..., 3) https://www.ecchr.eu/cluster/gewalt-r... 4) https://www.proasyl.de/thema/tod-an-d... )

"The EU is Israel's biggest trading partner, accounting for more than 29 percent of its trade in goods in 2020. In tandem, the Frontex budget surged from €6 million in 2006 to €460 million in 2020, rising again to €543 million in 2021. The EU pledged to spend €34.9 billion for border and migration management between 2021 and 2027." (p.105)
I recommend the documentary from Sea-Watch: Kein Land für Niemand, if one is interested in EU's border policies.

As Africans also tried to flee to Israel, Israel strengthend its borders. Furthermore I learnt about Yitzshak Yosef's racism: "It is acceptable and mainstream to hate Africans in Israel. In March 2018, one of Israel's two chief rabbis, Yitzshak Yosef called black people "monkeys" and the Hebrew version of the word "n**er" during his weekly sermon." p.99

Europe itself is not innocent, but very involved in selling weaponry. "European weapon companies such as Airbus, BAE Systems, and Leonardo contributed to mass displacement by selling arms that worsened conflict in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Turkey." (p.103)

The hypocrisy considering Ukraine/Israel is made clear in this chapter: "The EU announced in June 2022, at a meeting in Cairo with European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen alongside Egyptian and Israeli energy ministers, that it was a 'special moment' and the beginning of a new relationship. 'Significant' Israeli gas would soon be exported to Europe. The EU said that it would increase its energy independence while willfully ignoring its reliance on autocratic Egypt and occupying Israel. The message is clear: the Russian occupation of Ukraine is bad, but Israeli occupation of Palestine is completely fine." (p.109)

Chapter 5 makes one aware of the tight alliance between Israel and Apartheid South Africa (1948 to 1990). I learnt about the Non-Aligned-Movement. The hypocrisy in the West between the outrage at Uighurs in China and the silence around Palestinians is discussed.

Strong quote from the book:
"External borders are physically invisible but ideologically powerful. It includes Israel keeping Palestinians in a ghetto, Australia forcibly sending refugees on boats to remote and dangerous Pacific Islands, the EU deliberately allowing nonwhite migrants to drown in the Mediterranean, and the US repelling people from Latin America who are often fleeing policies in their home countries that were designed in Washington." (p.124)

Chapter 6 is about the global spyware industry. I learnt about the Five Eyes Intelligence. Israeli government is very much in control of the Israeli firm NSO. I learnt about Cellebrite, Black Cube and Psy-Group.

Chapter 7 dealt with the discrimination of Palestinian voices on social media (Meta, Google, Maps, YouTube).

I highly recommend the book if you are interested in Israel's past and present impact considering warfare and spyware. It is not a book focusing the Palestinian occupation or recounting the historical or present situation in Israel/Palestine.

[Kate | FocusOnYourShelf · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 Stars

This was certainly an interesting read, and clearly a lot of research was put into the subject matter. The first few chapters were probably the most informative, After that the book became a bit repetitive, disjointed and directionless.

I think the main point of contention I have about this book is Palestine and Palestinians are mentioned very little. The title of the book makes it seem like this book is how Palestine is used as a lab by Israel to test their technological and military creations and their exportation of these items around the world. While this is reflected a bit in the first few chapters, the book quickly becomes more about Israel and its impact on the military and technology, and the impact on Palestine is forgotten. I think my opinion may be a bit more positive if the title of the book was different.

[Emilie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such an informative read. It’s really a testament to how global the occupation is (as well as different systems of oppression) - and how the entire world is perpetrating it (not just in silent complicity).

[Randall Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs developed an online community and app called ACT.IL, an army of trolls to pester social media companies and media outlets for publishing content that’s critical of Israel.” Zionist troll farms that love to call you “Jew hater” for asking online why Palestinians don’t have equal rights, are subsidized by Israel or the IAC ACT.IL Media Room [check it out online]. “Israel has the highest income inequality of any nation in the OECD.” “A quarter of US Jews in a 2021 survey agreed that Israel was an apartheid state. Even the publisher of Haaretz, Israel’s most progressive, albeit Zionist, newspaper, admits it.” A 2021 survey by Jewish Electorate Institute “found that 34% of Jews agreed that ‘Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is similar to racism in the Unites States,’ 25% agreed that ‘Israel is an apartheid state’ and 22% agreed that ‘Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians’.”

“Palestinians had to suffer to make Jews feel safe.” Think of Israel as authoritarian capitalist, a government that combines aggressive racial capitalism with economic and technological power - the monetization of occupation. This occupation ain’t going to pay for itself – unless we make money off it. We can market our security products field tested in our Gaza prison that any dictatorship would want. “Both the Israeli government and private companies promoted their products as effectively battle-tested on Palestinians.” In response, because of Israel’s occupation for profit initiative, “Israeli arms sales in 2011 were the highest on record, surging 55 percent over the previous two years to US $11.3 billion.” Using this logic, Jeffrey Dahmer should have marketed his own line of cutlery and meat tenderizers, and I see a healthy market for John Wayne Gacy clown outfits that dispense chloroform through a plastic flower. Making money off the misery of others is the new black, baby! Is Israeli racial supremacy for you? You bet, if you can monetize it!

No wonder Israel is now one of the top ten weapons dealers in the world. It even shipped weapons to the brutal Hutu regime just in time to kill “around 800,000 Tutsis in 100 days.” Israel also sent Rwanda weapons once the 1994 genocide was already under way. Product Pitch: Make a killing while THEY make a killing. “A United Nations report in 2015 confirmed that Israeli weapons were fueling South Sudan’s civil war.” “Supporting despots is a bipartisan issue in Israel.” Large profits to be made in “targeting unwanted populations.” How sad that Hitler, who LIVED to target unwanted populations, didn’t live long enough to be a customer. “In 2020, Israel spent US $22 billion on its military” - the price of occupation and excessive racial hubris. Note that Latin America had been the earlier testing ground for the commercialization of repression (read Greg Grandin’s Empire’s Workshop). And before that creation of the Surveillance State in the Philippines (read Alfred McCoy’s Policing American’s Empire).

“Ethnonationalist ideology grows when accountable democracy withers. Israel is the ultimate model and goal.” Israel is well aware that “US-backed dictatorships in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador kidnapped, tortured, raped, and killed political opponents both within their own borders and across the region.” If they could get away with it, then the rogue state of Israel sure as hell can. Israel has long sold weapons to dictatorships. “A redacted CIA intelligence report from February 5, 1988, detailed the sophisticated weapons such as missiles, tanks, and aircraft that Israel was sending to the [Chilean] junta.” “Any Vision is an Israeli start-up that secretly monitors Palestinians across the West Bank with a range of cameras.” When asked by NBC News in 2019 about its work in the West Bank, [Any Vision] CEO Eylon Etshtein initially threatened to sue them, [and] denied there was even an occupation.” “The company changed its name to Oosto in late 2021.” Gideon Levy says, “The bulk of Shin Bet’s activity involves sustaining the occupation by means of tyrannical control over an occupied people.” Israeli scholar Baruch Kimmerling wrote in 2003 that Israel’s domestic and foreign policy is “Largely oriented towards one major goal: the politicide of the Palestinian people.” Israeli parliamentarian Bezalel Smotrich said in the Knesset in 2021 to the Arab members, “You are only here by mistake, because Ben Gurion didn’t finish the job, didn’t throw you out in 1948” – [an open admission of ethnic cleansing by a leading Zionist].

Why Israel cares less these days about sucking up to the US for aid: In 1981 US aid was equivalent to roughly 10% of Israel’s economy, but by 2020 (at close to $4 billion annually) it was down to 1%. Israel’s main products pitch has been the eternal victim trope: “We have been fighting a War on Terror (against those whose land we stole) since our birth. We will show you how it’s done.” “Without a highly militarized society it would be impossible to sustain more than fifty years of occupation.” “Israel completed the sixty-five kilometer high-tech barrier along the entire border of Gaza in late 2021, at a cost US $1.1 billion.”

“The unstated goal of the IDF information strategy is weaponizing Jewish trauma in the service of perpetuating occupation.” The job of Zionist internet trolls is to consciously “flood the internet with so much noise that the previous posts are quickly forgotten.” Israel has created two new kinds of drones: the skunk water drone [delivering water on you that will make you throw up] and a talking drone that tells Palestinian protesters to go home and [in Hebrew] tells Israeli activists to not “stand with the enemy”. Israeli intelligence is legally allowed to surveil ALL Palestinians yet is very limited in surveilling fellow Israelis. “Every Palestinian is considered a threat.” Orthodox Jews don’t get much sympathy from Zionists because they refuse to fight in the IDF and they receive welfare.

Zionist Rabbinical Ethics: “In March 2018, one of Israel’s two chief rabbis, Yitzchak Yosef, called black people ‘monkeys’ and the Hebrew version of the word ‘nigger’ during his weekly sermon.” Imagine any US preacher getting away with that. And this was the SAME rabbi who blessed Ivanka Trump in 2018. What was his blessing then? Thank God Ivanka, you are not a monkey or a N%#@? After WWII, Germany became “the most consistently pro-Israel nation on the continent and is Israel’s biggest trading partner in Europe.” That’s probably because Germany was so happy it didn’t have to give any precious German land to displaced Jews from the Holocaust and fine that the Palestinians got unfairly stuck with the ENTIRE bill. Germany sees Palestinians as a non-people. Note that Germany evolved from treating Jews like toasted shit, to treating Palestinians like toasted shit. Viva la Difference!

“The Palestinian laboratory can only thrive if enough nations believe in its underlying premise” [and what is that premise? Taking shit from others is fun? Or subjugating others is fun?]. “After 1967, Israel’s interest in liberation movements waned and its support for them became far less effective as it turned into an occupier itself.” Former South African prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd wrote in 1961 that “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” Takes one to know one. “Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was a known fan of Bantustans.” Sharon told an Italian Prime Minister that “the Bantustan model was the most appropriate for Palestine.” “The similarities between the US-Mexico border and Israel’s wall are growing by the year.”

India: Meanwhile, India has long occupied Kashmir and recently suspended the Kashmir and Jammu Constitution to make it a lot more like Israel’s occupation. Kashmir also has armed settlers. “Israeli Heron drones fly over Kashmir, just as they fly over the Palestinian occupied territories.” “In 2020, India was Israel’s largest purchaser of weaponry.” Did you know Gandhi openly opposed Palestine as a national home for the Jews? He wrote, “Palestine belongs to the Arabs.” Israel and India have issued joint statements, the funniest one was them saying together “there cannot be any compromise in the war against terrorism.” Ah, terrorists fighting AGAINST terrorism. Fun Fact: India is Facebook’s biggest market – 340 million users. Less Fun Fact: “Kashmiri youth are routinely arrested and tortured for social media posts, and cyber police use surveillance technology to monitor the entire population.” In the US, progressives also are often tortured, but instead by lame-ass centrist Facebook posts of liberals in the form of a parade of “Biden & Hillary as Flawless vs only Trump as Evil” memes.

But speaking of douchebag Trump you’ll dig this: In 2019 Trump reportedly suggested to his aides that to stop migrants entering the US, border guards should shoot them in the leg [shades of IDF] to slow them down and should electrify the border fence with sharp spikes on top to pierce human flesh. He later asked whether it was possible to build a water-filled trench around the border with snakes and alligators.” This book calls Saudi Arabia “a repressive ethnostate that imprisons and tortures dissidents and actively discriminates against its Shia minority.”

This book explains that no one should use What’s App, because those messages are easily hacked; What’s App was breached by Israel’s Pegasus. “according to a 2016 Privacy International report, Israel had the highest number of surveillance companies per capita in the world, beating both the US and UK.” Netanyahu has a clear history pushing spyware and selling to autocrats. Experts in cybersurveillance say “the world today is run by a transnational class of gangsters” a.k.a. a global kleptocracy. Israel’s Cellebrite helps you hack phones from short distance and Israel’s NSO Group helps you hack phones from long distance. Israel uses dark web searches to spy on BDS activists [especially in 2017]; why still physically go into activist’s houses if you are already secretly in through their back door?

All my Goodreads book reviews about Israel/Palestine books that I also put on Facebook get shadow banned by Facebook for content and this book explains why: “The Washington Post headlined a story with remarkable honesty in May 2021: ‘Facebook’s AI treats Palestinian Activists like it treats Black Activists, it blocks them’.” In May 2021, in Israel, “183,000 out of 1,090,000 Hebrew public conversations on social media were filled with incitement against Arabs and racism by Israeli Jews and yet the content wasn’t removed.” This included “A good Arab is a dead Arab” and “Scum. Just wipe them off the face of the earth and never leave a trace. Slaughter all Gazans and all Arabs everywhere” and the thoughtful “All the Arabs in the world and the Arabs who are reading this message, may all your family members have cancer.” If this hate speech were written about Israelis, it of course would be banned from US social media. No wonder Arab users have little trust in Facebook. A What’s App Hebrew message invited fellow Zionists to a “massive attack on Arabs” saying, “Please arrive with the appropriate gear, brass knuckles, swords, knives, sticks, pistols, and vehicles with bull bars.” If that was instead written by Palestinians about Israelis, you can be sure it would be prominently discussed on mainstream media for a week. US activists have only to post about apartheid, ethnic cleansing, occupation, or Genocide Joe to get shadow banned. Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked in 2014 called Palestinian children “little snakes” and urging the killing of all Palestinians because “they are all enemy combatants”. Funny how Facebook refused to remove any of these comments.

Did you know the You Tube posts at least 500 hours of new videos “every minute”? You can show Zionists proudly carrying automatic weapons and IDF destruction of Gaza, no problem, but if those videos show Israeli soldiers committed violence, they can be taken down. You Tube AI deems Palestinians “inherently violent.” A foundation and a research institute found “5.2 million comments [in Hebrew-language social media] either called for violence or were offensive, with Arabs being the main target of abuse.” One Palestinian activist Dareen Tatour spent months in prison for writing a poem that included the phrase, “Resist, my people, resist them.” Israel said those words were “inciting terrorism” even though we all know international law gives ALL occupied peoples the right to resist.

To stop Israel’s 75-year illegal occupation, the world will have to get past it’s guilt over the Holocaust in order to challenge Israel’s policies; it’s time to end Israel’s decades long “emotional extortion”. Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff Wilkerson says Israel might not exist within 20 years because it has become a “first order” strategic liability for the US.” “Israel’s Palestine laboratory thrives on global disruption and violence.” Netanyahu knows the world’s financial leaders [and others like Modi and Bin Salman] are becoming more right-wing and says, “They [the world] will become more like us than we will become like them”. The economic fools controlling our future are ghettoizing the planet in response to climate change, so Israel is assured some profit from globally controlling the surveilled. The US border surveillance budget is on track to hit $68 billion by 2025. As Edward Said said of resistance to Israel’s occupation, “what are they going to do? Kill everybody?” [They might do that soon in Rafah]. New proposed Likud legislation in 2022 is to give “prison terms for flying the Palestinian flag.” Likud members have warned that continued flying those Palestinian flags could lead to another Nakba and “don’t stretch the rope too much”.

Israel keeps going rightward: Haaretz Israeli journalist wrote in 2022 that Israel is now a “Jewish mutation” due to its embrace of messianic Jewish supremacism. A 2016 Pew poll found nearly one half of Israeli Jews “supported the transfer or expulsion of Arabs [settler-colonialism]. The Israeli Democracy Institute found that “some 60% of Israeli Jews backed the complete separation from Arabs.” Most Zionists can’t bear to be in the same room with Mizrahi or Black Jews so the other stuff should that not be surprising. The somnambulant KKK and Aryan Nations could learn a lot by studying Zionism’s many racist accomplishments. Sadly, the problem is the US still has no problem with human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel. Israel knows there will soon be an even bigger market for keeping your own population controlled, and that will require Israeli defense equipment. But presently to the world Israel looks like another Russia [illegally invading Ukraine] or US [illegally invading Iraq, Grenada, Panama, Vietnam, Afghanistan, yadda yadda] and it is hurting what little of its image it has left. Thus, the author concludes that to lose its increasing pariah nation status, Israel will clearly have to make radical structural changes.

To conclude, this book gives a short list of companies found by HRW to be actively aiding Israel’s war crimes: Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, JCB, TripAdvisor, Motorola, Hewlett Packard, Chevron, Volvo, Intel, Puma, McDonalds, Siemens, Sodastream, Disney (Marvel Studios), and Caterpillar. What a legacy: “selling death and misery around the world”. And we all can help it change, simply by being vocal against Israel’s never-ending disproportionate violence and crying perpetual victim on our Facebook and Instagram pages. Great book. I learned a lot, as you can see.

[Hungry Rye · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of good information in here but I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing style. The vast majority of the criticisms of China were derived from western sources as well so I found that very frustrating. All in all it’s decent read, I did learn a lot of Pegasus and Israel’s arms sales and business and the UAE but I’m not blown away.

[Gianni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ci sono aspetti meno conosciuti della storia e della politica di Israele che, letti nel loro insieme in questo documentatissimo libro del giornalista freelance australiano ed ebreo Antony Loewenstein, gettano una luce ancora più sinistra su ciò che succede in Palestina. Quello che qui viene definito Laboratorio Palestina è lo sfruttamento operato dal complesso militare e finanziario israeliano, statale e privato, in settant’anni di occupazione dei Territori, ”L’industria della sicurezza interna di Israele ha in pratica monetizzato i suoi strumenti e la sua strategia, mostrando con esempi testati sul campo di battaglia che puntare sulla separazione, tenendo palestinesi e israeliani lontani gli uni dagli altri fintantoché i secondi non avessero prevalso sui primi, fosse la soluzione nel breve e medio termine. I separatisti, nelle parole di Kimmerling, volevano “L’opposto di una pulizia etnica, ma con conseguenze simili a livello sia pratico che psicologico. Si tratta di qualcosa di radicato in un insieme di emozioni interconnesse: sfiducia, paura e odio verso gli arabi combinati al desiderio di togliere Israele dal suo immediato ambiente culturale.””.
Israele è diventato un paese leader nella cybersicurezza e nei sistemi di controllo biometrico e spionistico della popolazione, esportando sia tecnologia avanzata che il modello di segregazione (apartheid) sperimentato a Gaza e in Cisgiordania a moltissimi Stati, incurante di come questi sistemi possano essere utilizzati contro le minoranze politiche, etniche o religiose.
In un mondo sempre più arroccato e chiuso entro i suoi confini sta esportando anche il suo modello di etnonazionalismo senza briglie, invidiato e desiderato non solo da paesi a guida autoritaria, ma anche da quelli di presunta fede democratica

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will first admit that this is a well researched book, even if I wish certain claims had more specific citations. Loewenstein is very fairly critical of Israeli policy.
The issue is this book had very little to do with his main premise that Palestine is an experimental grounds, due to the fact Palestine actually factors very little into the book at all, only referenced every once in a while to discuss how certain measures are used to keep it under occupation. This isn't to say Israel definitely doesn't use it's tech against Palestinians, but the book seemed much more focused on Israeli military industrial exports then the actual effect Israel has had on Palestinians. For being a book barely over 200 pages it was a bit of a mess, where things were repeated way too often, the ideas didn't always gel together, there were a large amount of typos (editor should've done better), and this weird ad hominemy deal where the same person would be quoted in different parts of the book, but if they said something the author didn't agree with he would throw in some negative attribution to their character whereas he wouldn't do it when the person agreed with his point. There are some very important facts and ideas in this book, but I fail to see how it falls into his main argument. It could've been reworked into an exploration of Israeli military export policy, or how Israel has no issue dealing with governments commiting horrible human rights abuses (that also engage in virulent antisemitism, a weird thing for a state claiming to look out for and be there for Jews to do).

[Mery_B · Rating 4 out of 5]

[...] la decisión de Israel en 1969 de dejar de buscar nazis en Sudamérica, un pacto con el demonio que daba a entender que en las más altas esferas del Gobierno israelí preferían expulsar a palestinos a encontrar a asesinos de judíos.

[Irina R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best and most interesting books that i read this year. Kudos to the author for doing a brilliant job! 👏👏👏. Free Palestine!!!

[Julian Worker · Rating 5 out of 5]

The incredible information in this book is really quite riveting to read, especially as it's all documented and evidenced.

It would be unfair of me to pick on one particular element above all the others that Israel excels at in the areas of phone-hacking, surveillance, espionage, cyber warfare and house demolition. The book covers them all in great detail. You will be able to tell from the title where all these techniques are perfected.

Recommended.

[Nwaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

يقدم الكتاب سجلاً حياً للفظائع والجرائم الإنسانية التي ارتكبتها الحكومة الإسرائيلية بحق الفلسطينيين.

ومن أسوأها انتشار صناعة الأسلحة الفتاكة وتقنيات الذكاء الاصطناعي والطائرات المسيرة واختراقات الهواتف المحمولة واختبارها في قمع وترصد وقتل الفلسطينيين مقابل بيعها بالخارج للأنظمة السلطوية لجني مليارات الدولارات وكسب التأييد الدولي

[Genevieve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting subject matter but super repetitive and descriptive as opposed to analytical, which made the book less engaging. Would have liked to have read more about the impact on Palestinians rather than the nitty gritty of Israel just selling its weapons to other countries, which felt like an obvious point.