The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World
How Israel makes a killing from the Occupation?
Israel's military-industrial complex uses the occupied, Palestinian territories as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology that they then export around the world to despots and democracies. For more than 50 years, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has given the Israeli state invaluable experience in controlling an "enemy" population, the Palestinians. It's here that they have perfected the architecture of control.
Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein, author of Disaster Capitalism, uncovers this largely hidden world in a global investigation with secret documents, revealing interviews and on-the-ground reporting. This book shows in-depth, for the first time, how Palestine has become the perfect laboratory for the Israeli military-techno complex: surveillance, home demolitions, indefinite incarceration and brutality to the hi-tech tools that drive the 'Start-up Nation'. From the Pegasus software that hacked Jeff Bezos' and Jamal Khashoggi's phones, the weapons sold to the Myanmar army that has murdered thousands of Rohingyas and drones used by the European Union to monitor refugees in the Mediterranean who are left to drown. Israel has become a global leader in spying technology and defence hardware that fuels the globe's most brutal conflicts. As ethno-nationalism grows in the 21st century, Israel has built the ultimate model.
WINNER OF THE 2023 WALKLEY NON-FICTION JOURNALISM PRIZE
Shortlisted for the 2023 Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing
Reviews
A sad and sordid record of how "the light unto the nations" became the purveyor of the means of violence and brutal repression from Guatemala to Myanmar and wherever else the opportunity arose. -
This is a must-read on a hidden and shocking aspect of the Israeli colonisation of the Palestinians. We have waited long for such a book that exposes the way Israel uses its oppression of Palestine to enhance its military and security industries. This book shows clearly that this kind of export is now Israel's most significant contribution to the global violation of human rights. - Ilan Pappe, author of Ten Myths About Israel
A triumph of investigative journalism. It exposes the ruthlessness with which Israel exploits the experience gained from the illegal occupation to export all kinds of military hardware as well as the technology of surveillance, espionage, cyber warfare, phone-hacking, and house demolition. It also shines a torch on the dark side of Israel's support for despots around the world. Altogether, a profoundly depressing audit on a country that used to boast of being "a light unto the nations". - Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
Loewenstein's account of how the myth of Israel's 'start-up nation' is born out of the state colonisation of Palestine is a riveting and essential read. From drones to Pegasus software, policing techniques to deadly ammunition this is a persuasive and timely intervention.' - Eyal Weizman, director of Forensic Architecture
Loewenstein writes a fascinating book, documented and evidence-based, on the lesser-known side of the occupation, one of the few in history where the occupier only benefits and does not pay anything for it. This is a book that paints a portrait of Israel, one of the ten largest arms exporters in the world, which trades in death and suffering and sells them to anyone who wants to buy -
