- Anything Antony Loewenstein writes on Israel is a must-read in my humble opinion.
- His new book is a detailed, enlightening, and very persuasive critique of Israel and its subjugation of the Palestinian people through its encouragement of the armaments industry in every way. I was stunned by its shocking revelations.
- Israeli companies are world leaders in CCTV systems, drones, threat detection technologies, and data exploitation and manipulation. All Palestinians are aggressively monitored regardless of age, location, or intent.
- Israel sells to regimes regardless of their intent. In 2021 it sold its surveillance systems to 130 countries, including repressive ethnocentric autocracies. European democracies such as Greece are also eager purchasers, particularly of drones used for locating refugees in the Mediterranean. India under Modi has adopted anti-Muslim, Israeli-developed, strategies in Kashmir, as has China in its treatment of the Uighurs. The border control systems being used along the US-Mexico border are dominated by Israel corporates and their technology.
- In the 1960s and 1970s South Africa’s apartheid state strongly supported Israel. According to the South African Government Yearbook in 1976 ‘Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples…a surrounding majority…of unwanted populations’. Using South African apartheid-era rhetoric to defend the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories remains alive to this day.
- Israeli companies ('Private Mossads') create sophisticated, state-sponsored surveillance technology that allows spyware to target its victims. Sophisticated hacking technologies are attractive to authoritarian regimes who also use the tools to target the gay community.
- In the world of social media Israel is ruthless in cracking down. Palestinian posts suddenly disappear on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp and Twitter. Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze contain a minimal amount of data about Palestinian precincts.
- The book has received high praise from well respected critics and publications:
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. (Noam Chomsky)
A sharp expose of how Israel's suppression of Palestine has translated into lucrative anti-terrorist systems that the Israeli government exports globally...As the author shows, the Israelis have sent weapons and technology to Pinochet's Chile in the 1970s as well as to disreputable regimes in Burma, Sri Lanka, Rhodesia, and Rwanda, among others....An eye-opening delineation of the alarming ramifications of Israel's status as an 'ethnonationalist state'. (Kirkus Reviews)
This interview with Antony is well worth watching:
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