#antony loewenstein

[heritageposts]

Western obsession with Netanyahu is misplaced. Most Israelis want war to go on

Getting rid of Netanyahu would solve nothing. He might be personally unpopular among Israelis, but his policies in Gaza and the West Bank en

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'

[tephrahedron]

the first episode of Australian investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein's documentary "The Palestine Laboratory" is out now. it's a companion work to his book of the same name, which looks at how Israel's private and public weapon sectors use Palestine as a testing ground for surveillance and weapons technology.

[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

[huariqueje]

Brave : Ashamed , furious, sad ... helpless. Antony Loewenstein

[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

[indizombie]

It was important as a Jew, to say to people in the outside world, Gaza is not some far away land that is too scary for you to contemplate. You always hear children. Roughly half the population is under 18. So often you're seeing kids playing, laughing, crying, screaming … everywhere. And I had friends there who had kids, and we often would spend time with those children. There was in parts of Gaza real beauty, a calmness. Amazing fresh produce, beautiful fresh fish. I've tried to look at those images and see, did I go to some of those areas? Did I go to a restaurant there, or did I meet people there on the shore? And I am furious and sad and often feel helpless. Seeing what has happened to Gaza since October 7 has been heartbreaking, honestly, and I'm so ashamed, I'm so ashamed. Because it's being done in my name.

Antony Loewenstein, author of ‘The Palestine Laboratory’