User Profile

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%)

It is this extreme form of nationalism that’s been commercialized for more than fifty years. Shir Hever is one of the most insightful experts on the economic aspects of the Israeli occupation. Israeli arms manufacturers sell a particular message, he told me, that reflects the lived experience of brutalizing Palestinians. “If you listen to the [Israeli] arms companies themselves when they go to Europe to sell their products, they keep repeating the same mantra,” he said. “They say that these Europeans are so naive. They think that they can have human rights. They think that they can have privacy but that’s nonsense. We know that the only way to fight terrorism is to judge people by how they look and the color of their skin.” Israel’s status as an ethnonationalist state was there from its birth in 1948, but it’s been turbocharged in the twenty-first century. The Israeli leader who most successfully pursued this policy was Benyamin Netanyahu, a fervent believer in the endless occupation of Palestinian lands. He was the longest serving Prime Minister in the country’s history, though finally lost office in 2021 after more than twelve years leading the government. He won re-election in 2022 with the most right-wing coalition in the country’s history. His vision himself has won, since he convinced many other countries to use Israel as a model. Netanyahuism is an ideology that will outlive him.

— Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein (3% - 4%)

Israel’s claim to be a thriving democracy in the heart of the Middle East is challenged by the facts. All media outlets in Israel, along with publishers and authors, must submit stories related to foreign affairs and security to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) chief military censor before publication. No other Western country has such a system. It’s an archaic regulation that began soon after Israel was born. The censor has the power to block the story or partially redact it. What’s deemed valid is highly questionable, since the priorities of the national security establishment will be very different to what’s required for a healthy, democratic state. This contradiction is clear when Israel’s chief censor, Ariella Ben Avraham, left her position in 2020 and took a job with the country’s leading cyber-surveillance company, NSO Group.

— Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein (3%)

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. "The product of Zionism, the State of Israel, is not a Jewish and democratic state but instead has become an apartheid state, plain and simple," Amos Shocken wrote in 2021. "One can say many things about this, but one cannot say Israel is fulfilling Zionism as a Jewish and democratic state."

— Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein (3%)

Quand on quitte son pays, on ignore qu'on ne reviendra plus. Il n'y a pas de retour possible, car tout change tout le temps. Les lieux, les gens, les usages. Même notre façon d'appréhender la vie. Si on ne change pas, les autres, eux, changent, et de cette manière nous changent. Perpétuel mouvement. Mais on ne sait pas ce que le temps fera de nous. On peut visualiser l'espace plus facilement. Le temps, c'est le monstre invisible qui dévore tout sur son passage. Ce genre de choses arrive à notre insu. On débarque dans un pays. On y passe des années. On oublie tout ce qu'on a fait pour survivre. Des codes appris à la dure. Chaque mauvais moment annulé par la tendresse d'un inconnu. Un matin, on est du pays. On se retrouve dans la foule. Et là, brusquement, on croise un nouveau venu et tout remonte à la surface.

— Tout ce qu'on ne te dira pas, Mongo by Dany Laferrière (Page 13)