User Profile

When you embark on a journey, you have already arrived. The world you are going to is already in your head. You have already walked in it, eaten in it; you have already made friends; a lover is already waiting.

— A Map to the Door of No Return by Dionne Brand (Page 115)

"Battle-tested over Gaza" was a badge of honor. Canada under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau purchased Elbit-made Hermes 900 drones worth US$28 million in late 2020. This drone was first tested during the 2014 Gaza war. Canada claimed that the drones would be used for surveillance purposes in the Arctic "to detect oil spills, survey ice and marine habitats." The equipment would help "to keep our waters clean and safe." The deployment of the Hermes was for civilian purposes, but a leading Israeli arms manufacturer benefitted from the deal.

— Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein (29% - 30%)

The unstated goal of the IDF information strategy is weaponizing Jewish trauma in the service of perpetuating occupation. Through countless posts and memes, the IDF believes that highlighting the sacrifices that Israel makes in its never-ending battles with the Palestinians is a winning way. In this logic, Palestinians have no right to be angry about their plight and their trauma is nonexistent. Resisting the occupation is thus rendered illegitimate. (...) There was hope at the birth of the digital revolution that being able to film and disseminate photos and videos of Israeli abuses in Palestine might help the Palestinian cause. There is no doubt that global awareness of the occupation has soared, and that this has been partly assisted by the raw, unedited vision of Palestinians interacting with settlers or the Israeli army. Yet there is also a large body of evidence that hard, visual imagery has been co-opted by the Israeli state to deny the reality of what Palestinians say they are experiencing. The Israelis claim that Palestinians are lying about their circumstances despite what we're all seeing. Being able to see Israeli atrocities against Palestinians doesn't work with people who do not view Palestinians as human beings (...). As the Israeli population has moved to the right, moral discomfort is rare.

— Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein (28%)

What's appealing to growing numbers of regimes globally is learning how Israel gets away with politicide. That term was adapted to Israel/Palestine by the late Israeli scholar and professor of sociology Baruch Kimmerling, who argued in 2003 that Israel's domestic and foreign policy is "largely oriented towards one major goal: the politicide of the Palestinian people. By politicide I mean a process that has, as its ultimate goal, the dissolution of the Palestinian people's existence as a legitimate social, political, and economic entity. This process may also but not necessarily include their partial or complete ethnic cleansing from the territory known as the Land of Israel."

— Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein (26%)

AnyVision is an Israeli start-up that secretly monitors Palestinians across the West Bank with a range of cameras, the locations of which are not acknowledged by the company or Israel. Artificial intelligence thus merges with biometrics and facial recognition at dozens of Israel checkpoints throughout the West Bank. AnyVision claims that its technology does not discriminate on the basis or race or gender and that it creates only "ethical" products. When asked by NBC News in 2019 about its work in the West Bank, AnyVision CEO Eylon Etshtein initially threatened to sue them, denied there was an occupation, and accused the NBC reporter of being paid by Palestinian activists. He later apologized for the outburst.

— Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein (24% - 25%)

It was inevitable that the Israeli occupation would become increasingly privatized. With so many Israeli companies involved in maintaining the infrastructure around the occupation, these firms found innovative ways to sell their services to the state, test the latest technology on Palestinians, and then promote them around the world. Israel embraced neoliberalism from the mid-1980s and privatization of major state-owned enterprises accelerated in the 1990s. Nonetheless, while the defense industries are increasingly in private hands, they continue to act as an extension of Israel's foreign policy agenda, supporting its goals and pro-occupation ideology. The human cost of this neoliberal shift has been devastating: Israel has the highest income inequality of any nation in the OECD. The poverty rate in 2020 was 23 percent of the Israeli Jewish population and 36 percent of the Arab population. [...] Many Palestinians are unaware of how the occupation has been privatized because it makes no difference if a state officer or private individual harasses or humiliates them. Neither entity is accountable to those over whom they rule. I saw this constantly when working and traveling across the West Bank beginning in 2005. Many checkpoints through which Palestinians are forced to travel to access their schools, workplaces, or Israel if they are fortunate enough to get of the few work permits handed out by the state, use facial recognition technology and biometric details to document their every move.

— Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein (22% - 23%)

Israeli history can be split into two eras: before and after 1967. Before the Six-Day War, Israeli policy was not noble but at least gave the rhetorical impression of (sometimes) opposing repression. In 1963, Foreign Minister Golda Meir told the United Nations General Assembly that Israel “naturally opposes policies of apartheid, colonialism and racial or religious discrimination wherever they exist” because Jews understood what it meant to be victims. Israel bonded with newly independent African states, enjoying their postcolonial freedoms, and African nations backed Israel at the UN. Many Israelis then and now viewed their country as a liberation struggle akin to being freed from colonial bondage. They had no time for the view that Zionism was tinged with colonialism. (…) Journalist Sash Polakow-Suransky recounts in his book on Israel’s secret relationship with apartheid South Africa, The Unspoken Alliance, that 1967 saw a watershed in Israel’s defense posture. Assisted by Soviet and Arab propaganda, “Israel’s image as a state of Holocaust survivors in need of protection gradually deteriorat[ed] into that of an imperialist stooge of the West.” Thereafter, many Third World nations turned away from Israel and the “Israeli government abandoned the last vestiges of moral foreign policy in favour of hard-nosed realpolitik.” Partnering with the world’s most brutal tyrants followed. Israel’s relationship with Iran under the Shah was an early example.

— Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein (13%)

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 (primarily) Israeli and US weapons. Neither anti-Semitism nor extremism have been an impediment to collaboration with states that plunder assets or people.

— Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein (12%)