Whether it’s drone technology or the infamous Pegasus spy software, Israel has long developed and refined repressive technologies used by governments around the world by testing them on Palestinians. Antony Loewenstein, journalist and author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, joins The Chris Hedges Report for a deep dive into the disturbing links between Israeli Apartheid, the arms industry, and global repression of civilian populations.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Adam Cole, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Adam Coley, Kayla Rivara
Opening Sequence by: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Chris Hedges: The Palestinians are human laboratory rats to the Israeli military intelligence services and arms and technology industries. Israel’s drones, surveillance technology including spyware, facial recognition software, and biometric gathering infrastructure, along with smart fences, experimental bombs, and AI-controlled machine guns are all tried out on the captive population in Gaza, often with lethal results. These weapons and technologies are then certified as “battle-tested” and sold around the world.
Israel is the tenth largest arms dealer on the planet and sells its technology and weapons to an estimated 130 nations, including military dictatorships in Asia and Latin America. Israeli weapons sales totaled $12.5 billion last year. Its close relationship with these military internal security surveillance, intelligence gathering, and law enforcement agencies explains the fulsome support Israel’s allies give to its genocidal campaign in Gaza.
When Colombian president, Gustavo Petro refused to condemn the October 7 attack by Palestinian resistance groups as a terrorist attack and said, “Terrorism is killing innocent children in Palestine,” Israel immediately halted all sales of defense and security equipment to Columbia. This global cabal dedicated to permanent war and keeping its populations monitored and controlled has hundreds of billions of dollars a year in sales.
These technologies are cementing into place a supernational, corporate totalitarianism: A world where populations are enslaved in ways that past totalitarian regimes could only imagine. It is not a far cry from Gaza to the camps and detention centers set up for migrants fleeing to Europe from Africa and the Middle East. It is not a far cry from the carpet bombing in Gaza to the endless wars in the Middle East and the global south. It is not a far cry from the anti-terrorism laws used to criminalize dissent in Israel to the anti-terrorism laws introduced in Europe and the US. Joining me to discuss this use of Palestinians as human guinea pigs for the Israeli weapons and technology industry is Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.
So your book, which is a great read, lays out the rise of this arms industry, which originally was a state industry and then privatized. One of the points you made at the end of the book, which is very fascinating, is how much of the apparatus to keep the Palestinians under control is essentially now handed over to private firms. I want to quote Elliott Abrams, whom I’ve interviewed, “The role of Israel is to serve as a model, an example in military might, in innovation, in encouraging childbirth.” This is one of the themes of your book that much of Israel’s support and power derives from its connection to this global arms network. So let’s lay out some of the innovations that Israel has pioneered. We can begin with Pegasus and drones. They’re at the forefront of some of the most advanced technologies and weapon systems that are used to control subject populations.
Antony Loewenstein: In some ways, the genesis of the book was partly due to some of the reporting around Pegasus a few years ago. Listeners or viewers will be aware that Pegasus is a spyware tool that is made by NSO Group, which is an Israeli company and it was started to be used about 15 or so years ago by a range of countries. The country that it was first mostly used in was Mexico as various governments there were desperate to fight a failed drug war, and it only made the violence worse. But what’s interesting back then and also now is Mexico remains, Chris, to this day, the world’s biggest and most obsessive user of Pegasus. Obsessed.
Whether it’s the right-wing government or nominally left-wing government, Pegasus is now in dozens of countries. I don’t even know how many, I think about 70, 80, or 90. In some ways, the reason I partly wrote the book was to say that the media was obsessed with Pegasus. Pegasus is an important investigation; It’s a tool that is put on the phones of activists and human rights workers in countless countries. And it breaches human rights. That’s terrible. But the problem was that it was too often framed as this rogue Israeli company doing terrible things. As I show in the book, it’s not that: It’s an arm of the state as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are arms of the US government. Now, Lockheed Martin is a private company. It has a board, sure, and it makes profits or not. But essentially it’s an arm of the state. Right? It’s used by the government in various foreign policy agendas or goals.
Pegasus is the same. I started looking at that issue by saying that now probably, Israel is number one or two in the world for spyware, and Pegasus and NSO Group in some ways are a smokescreen. Because there are so many other companies that are doing the same thing. So if NSO Group goes bust tomorrow – And it’s in a bit of financial trouble at the moment – It’s not going to make any difference. There are so many other companies doing the same thing using that whole allure of being able to spy on pretty much anybody, which is why to this day no country wants to regulate this, no country. They’re all obsessed with it. That’s been the fundamental problem at the moment.
Chris Hedges: Explain how Pegasus works. We should note that it was also used on Jamal Khashoggi’s fiance, Jamal, who I knew being a Saudi journalist who was dismembered in the Saudi embassy and a consulate in Turkey. But explain how it works.
Antony Loewenstein: Pegasus is a silent tool. It can be installed on your iPhone or Android. It doesn’t matter what phone you have. Years ago, a lot of us used to get random text messages. You’d click on the link, you’d forget about it, and you’d move on. That was the way it used to work. So country X or intelligence agency Y would have this tool, let’s say, in India, in some other country. They would then send a message to the phone of an activist, human rights worker, or a lawyer, that person would click on a link, their phone would be infected, and they wouldn’t know.
There’s no way to know yourself without it being forensically checked. These days it doesn’t even require a text message. All it requires is someone knowing your number. That’s it. And it can access all your information. It can even access your phone and microphone when the phone is off. So it can be used as a weapon against you. As I show in the book, I interviewed huge amounts of people in Mexico, India, and elsewhere. These are people often lawyers who are challenging the state.
In Mexico, I interviewed a woman whose husband was murdered by, almost certainly, Narcos. Then after his death, her phone was being surveilled by the Mexican state. It’s never entirely clear even to this day why in her case it was surveilled. But it shows that there is this utter obsession with various intelligence services to get access to all this personal information. It’s important to note that one thing that was clear in researching this particular tool is that Pegasus and tools like this have become – And it was said to be in The New York Times a few years ago, and I questioned some of this in the book but two journalists wrote – The most powerful weapon in the world since the invention of the nuclear bomb.
Now, I would question that because nuclear bombs clearly can cause carnage, to put it mildly. Pegasus doesn’t directly kill anybody per se, but what it does is it means that privacy is close to dead. At the moment there is this massive proliferation of these tools. Israel of course – This is the key point – Uses Pegasus and other tools as a key foreign policy agenda. I show in the book Netanyahu and Mossad, over the last decade, would go to countries where Israel had no close relations: Rwanda and India when Modi came in, and others: Saudi, UAE. They hold Pegasus up as a diplomatic carrot saying, we will sell you this amazing tool which you can surveil your citizens, whatever you want. But in return, we would like you to vote in a certain way in the UN or buy certain weapons. That’s how it works. I show a timeline when Netanyahu goes to Hungary to visit Orban or Modi in India, and 6-12 months later, Pegasus is in use. This is not accidental. This is a key part of Israeli foreign policy now.
Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about the drone program. They pioneered drones. As I remember from the book, India is maybe their largest drone customer. These drones are used against migrants fleeing towards Europe, particularly Greece as well as the US-Mexico border.
Antony Loewenstein: I have some interesting declassified documents from the ’80s where Israel was using drones in its war in Lebanon. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, it was before the digital era, but Israel was using drones. In this amazing document that I have in the book from the CIA, they’re shocked and amazed at how incredible – That’s their words – These drones are, how effective they are, and they wonder – Back in the ’80s – How Israel will be a global pioneer of drones. Fast forward to the last decade or so, and as I show in the book, I have spent a lot of time in Gaza as a reporter in the last 15 or so years there has been a proliferation of testing of drones, particularly around Gaza.
I’m putting aside what’s happened since October 7, although it’s happening since then too. But in the last 15 years huge amounts of drones are being tested above Gaza, some armed, some not, used in the various Israeli invasions, incursions, or whatever you want to call it in Gaza. Those drones are then called “battle-tested” and then they’re sold to huge amounts of nations around the world. The part that shocked me the most was the use by the EU. The EU is buying Israeli drones. They’re unarmed, yes. And viewers will be aware that in the last 10 or so years, there’s been a huge influx of migrants coming from Africa and the Middle East, after 2015 when the Europeans said they didn’t want to repeat that huge influx of people coming. Of course, if you’re Ukrainian and white, they’ll welcome you in. And I have no problem with Ukrainians being welcomed in. But clearly, if you’re Black or Brown it’s not going to be the same.
EU created this fortress, and European and Israeli drones are part of that. Frontex, which is the European border force, uses Israeli drones 24/7 in the Mediterranean, circling the Mediterranean, sending back real-time images to Frontex, which is based in Warsaw, Poland of what’s happening. The EU has made a clear decision to let people drown; That is obvious. They barely issue rescue boats and they criminalize people who are trying to rescue migrants. Israeli drones are a key part of that infrastructure and eye in the sky and Israeli drones have appeared in India and various other countries. In the last years, Israel remains one of the key drone makers of the world, and increasingly, so is Turkey. Turkey makes a cheaper version of what Israel has been developing and therefore Turkish drones are now also appearing in many nations around the world in many conflicts.
Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about who Israel sells to. It’s easier to tick off the list of who they don’t sell to. I covered the conflicts in Guatemala and El Salvador in the 1980s. Israel was supplying weapons, including napalm, to the Salvadorans and the Guatemalans. They were one of the most fervent supporters of the apartheid regime in South Africa, they worked with Pinochet’s Chile, and the Rwandan genocide was perpetrated with Israeli weapons. They will provide military equipment to the most heinous regimes, including the latest ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. You mentioned three countries: Iran, North Korea, and I don’t know who the other one was.
Antony Loewenstein: I think I say Syria.
Chris Hedges: Maybe Syria
Antony Loewenstein: As far as we’re aware.
Chris Hedges: Right. As far as we’re aware.
Antony Loewenstein: As far as we’re aware. It’s interesting to note though, that before 1979 and the Islamic Revolution, Israel and Iran were incredibly close. The fact that Iran was run by a dictator did not impede the selling of weapons. They were worried that the rise of the Islamic Revolution would impede their sales, which it did. On the one hand, I shouldn’t have been that surprised. It’s important to note America remains the world’s biggest arms dealer. 45% of the world’s arms come from America, so they are leaders by far. Israel is tenth. One of the things that shouldn’t have shocked me but did was Myanmar, in the last years, has been committing genocide against its Rohingya population – Many of them have been killed and many have been kicked out into Bangladesh – Even after the UN found that Myanmar was committing genocide, Israel was still selling surveillance and weapons to the Myanmar regime.
As you say, it’s hard to list. There are so many of them. It’s also worth saying that India – And India is a big focus of the book because India is now the world’s biggest country population-wise, the world’s biggest self-described democracy. Although I would very much question that. A key ally of the US and certainly my country, Australia, and most Western nations, because it’s not China – India is building a Hindu fundamental estate under Modi, a proudly chauvinist nation where Muslims are discriminated against openly. There are pogroms against Muslims. Now, India and Israel didn’t have a great relationship before Modi came in. There was a relationship in decades past. Modi comes in 2014 as Prime Minister and there’s a love affair between Netanyahu and Modi. There’s this image that some viewers may have seen of the two of them stepping onto the beach, getting their feet wet, talking about how much they love each other, who knows, no audio was recorded.
But this relationship is central to why I wrote the book. There is a growing global ethno-nationalist surge, India being the most obvious example, of nations that proudly discriminate against non-majority populations. In India, it’s against Hindus, against Muslims. In Israel, it’s Jews against anyone who’s not Jewish. And I say this as someone Jewish myself, that the whole alliance between Israel and India reminds me very much of Israel and South Africa: Nations that proudly discriminate against non-so-called acceptable populations and are therefore inspiring others. Israel has become the inspiration to so many countries and far-right and rightists around the world, putting aside liberal Zionists for a minute, who over the years have had a love for Israel. I’m talking about India, Hungary, and various other nations, not selling weapons but selling the idea of getting away with it.
That’s something I talk about a lot in the book, that the idea that Israel can get away with it, each being occupation, endless colonization, brutalizing Palestinians, selling weapons to God knows who and God knows where, goes to the heart of why Israel is, to me, a danger. Not only to Palestinians, which is bad enough, but a model. Finally, Chris, I say in the book that you often go to far-right rallies – And I go there for work, to be clear. For work purposes – In the US, Australia, and elsewhere, the Israeli flag is a constant presence. It’s not unusual and these are not groups that traditionally like Jews. They don’t. I quote in the book Richard Spencer, that hideous alt-right leader in America who said a few years ago, I’m a white Zionist. He doesn’t like Jewish people but he loves the idea of creating, for him and many like him, a Christian ethno-nationalist state.
You’ve written a lot of incredibly important work on Christian theocracy in the US and its potential growth and rise in domination. Israel is a touchpoint, as you would well know, for many of these groups. Not all, but many. And it’s not because lobbyist groups like Jews; Many of them do not. But they like what Israel is doing to Palestinians to unbelievably dominate and control them. And they’re proudly Jewish chauvinists. They’re Jewish supremacists. That’s what they want to create for Christians in America or Hindus in India. That to me is the danger.
Chris Hedges: This is from your book according to Netanyahu, Jewish writer Peter Beinarr explained, “The future belonged not to liberalism as Obama defined it – Tolerance, equal rights, and the rule of law – But to authoritarian capitalism: governments that combined aggressive and often racist nationalism with economic and technological might. The future, Netanyahu implied, would produce leaders who resembled not Obama, but him.” It fits in with what you said. And unfortunately, I fear – I don’t know what you think – That he’s right.
Antony Loewenstein: I fear that too because it’s worth saying that Obama wasn’t exactly a big believer in –
Chris Hedges: No, he wasn’t.
Antony Loewenstein: – Democracy and human rights either. Putting that issue aside, I fear that that is correct. And Netanyahu, I suspect, possibly hasn’t got a long life left as leader of Israel. It’s unclear because so many Israelis, even many who supported him, are understandably angry with him after what happened on October 7. He may not last long as a leader himself but his general analysis, I fear, is correct. Absolutely. There is this sense of country after country after country becoming enamored, not just with technological repression either from Israel or the US or others, but this idea somehow that you can maintain that domination forever.
October 7, as I touch on in the book or imply, although the book came out before October 7 is arguably a delusion. If you believe as a nation that you can repress people through technology forever, it’s a lie that will not work. Gaza is a key example of that; Even though Gaza was the key laboratory of Israel, they spent billions and billions in building walls and drones and surveillance. Hamas was able to breach that relatively easily. It took years of planning to do so but I fear the lesson will not be learned.
Gideon Levy, who’s a good friend of mine and an amazing Israeli journalist in Israel, has said that he fears that even now the lessons are not being learned by Israel and other leaders. What he means by that is that the lesson that Israel is taking from October 7, and the US took from 9/11, was the wrong one. It was that we need to invade and bomb and dominate even more which is born out of insecurity, not strength. Nonetheless, that’s the lesson that Israel is taking, not so much that we need to talk to Palestinians or negotiate with Palestinians. Those Israelis, some are saying that, but it’s a tiny minority.
Chris Hedges: In your book, you talk about Sri Lanka. You can explain what happened. They destroyed the Tamil Tigers and the Israelis were full partners in that project. That fascinated me because I wondered if that was in the playbook for Gaza.
Antony Loewenstein: A bit of background: 2009 was the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. It’d been going on for decades between the majority of the Sinhalese population and the Tamil Tigers who were a resistance movement for more Tamil rights and a Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka for years. Israel had been supporting the Sri Lankan government in selling planes, fighter jets, and other forms of technology weapons. 2009 happens and as some viewers remember, the Sri Lankan government was able to target the Tamils in a smaller, and smaller, and smaller part of the northern part of Sri Lanka.
Probably 40,000 Tamils were killed. We don’t know the exact number. There’s never been any real accountability for that. I do look at what’s happening in Gaza and I have thought of quite a lot about Sri Lanka since October 7. I don’t think there’s one united plan, there is to some degree a discussion, although within very narrow bounds in the Israeli political and military establishment. Northern Gaza is obliterated. It’s apocalyptic. It’s probably very likely there will be a resumption of some fighting in Gaza. I don’t know when, but soon. I have, as I’m sure you do, Chris, Palestinian friends in Gaza who are sheltering in refugee camps in their own country and now in the southern part of Gaza, who are struggling. Their homes have been destroyed. They have no connection to Hamas.
These are civilians living in Gaza. If Gaza’s infrastructure is completely obliterated that leaves only a handful of options: Permanent tent cities in Gaza, or the dream of many of the Israeli political elite – And also let’s be clear, many in the Israeli public based on public opinion polls – Kicking the Palestinians out. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon. So far, Egypt, despite bringing dictatorship, has not acquiesced to that. They have not opened the borders enough to allow that many Palestinians into the Sinai. That could change. The Egyptian economy is on its knees. Will they accept lots of money and bribes? I very much hope not, but we don’t know. I do fear the plan in Gaza is not dissimilar to what Sri Lanka did in the northern part of that country. And the outcome in Sri Lanka is that the war is over but Tamils are still regarded as second-class citizens in their own country.
Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about the Alpha Gun Angels. It’s a little sidelight but something disgusting that I didn’t know existed until you wrote it and until I read it.
Antony Loewenstein: Yes. Well, there is a side industry, you could call it, of Israeli and Jewish women. They’ve often been in the military. They have fetishized or sexualized the Israeli military. You have these groups of women who are scantily clad, often holding guns, and posing in photo shoots as if they’re at war in Gaza or somewhere else as an idea and a way to show two things: One, the IDF is female-friendly. You can be an incredibly sexy woman and still be in the IDF and kill Palestinians. That’s the implication. Secondly, that Israeli women are cool. That’s the message they’re trying to send. I don’t know if it’s particularly effective but that’s the message they’re trying to send. For years I’ve been following this story and there’s been a real push by the IDF Israeli army to show how gender-friendly they are, how gay-friendly they are, how trans-friendly they are, and how vegan-friendly they are.
We laugh in a way by saying this but I have a big section in the book talking about how this is such a key part of Israeli messaging, so-called Hasbara. I’m not entirely convinced it’s massively successful. People can argue that either way but a lot of Israel’s social media in the last 10 or so years has focused on this issue. We give vegan meals to soldiers who want them. We are trans-friendly, we are women-friendly, we are gay-friendly. You can wave the rainbow flag. About two weeks after the Israeli invasion of Gaza, there was this Israeli soldier in Gaza – The background was apocalyptic – Holding the rainbow flag. This image went viral. I did a story about it. The message was very clear: We want to liberate Palestinians in Gaza who are gay to be themselves.
Now, the mocking that this got, justifiably, was clear. As if people were saying, right, so you’ve decimated Gaza and it’s apocalyptic, but gee, you can be a gay Palestinian and some may have freedom in Gaza. The cognitive dissidence to believe that. And that ties into these girls you’re talking about. These women over the last few years have been traveling around Israel and the world promoting an image of Israel as liberal, but also militaristic. Pro-feminist, but also gun-friendly. That’s why a lot of pro-gun groups in the US – Mostly men, let’s be honest – Are into the sexualization of Israeli gun-wielding women.
Chris Hedges: We should note that one of the uses of Pegasus or the spyware was to entrap gay Palestinian men, as you write in the book, and turn them into informants.
Antony Loewenstein: Indeed. There’s a big part of 8200, which is the equivalent of the US’s NSA. Its whole base injector is to monitor Palestinians 24/7 across the occupied territory. So one thing they do is to try to find, so-called weak spots: A man who’s married to a woman who might be gay, a man who might be having an affair with a woman. In other words, someone who is “doing something unconventional.” I use that term loosely. When they get that information, they will then try to turn that person into a spy. We don’t know how many Palestinians are collaborators. Some are. It’s a tiny minority, but some are. In Gaza too. And it’s often, as I say in the book because there’s been a siege on Gaza for close to 20 years, enforced by Israel and Egypt to get out of Gaza.
I’ve spoken to Palestinians who have been offered this but refused it. To get out of Gaza on the Israeli side, they’ve been told you can leave to go to study overseas or go to a hospital in Israel or elsewhere, you have to spy for us for Israel. And that’s how they blackmail people because they gather information from this 24/7 global surveillance network. Interestingly, October 7 shows that not only did the Israeli intelligence fail, was arrogance and hubris, but also the American intelligence failed. It’s interesting to note since speaking to the various sources I have – And there’s been some decent reporting in the last six weeks – That although the US after 9/11 is spying on Israel a lot… I talk in the book that there are about 3-400 NSA employees in the US whose everyday job is to spy on Israel. That’s their job. So they’re an ally, but also America doesn’t entirely trust them. I’m sure that works both ways, but America was not particularly “helping” Israel to detect so-called terrorist threats.
I want to add this if I could, that I’m the co-editor and co-founder of a group called Declassified Australia, which is a news-gathering organization. We did a story a few weeks ago that showed that Pine Gap, which is a key US intelligence gathering center in my country, Australia, is used as a key intelligence-gathering venue the US used in Iraq and Afghanistan to target so-called terrorists but kill huge amounts of civilians. It’s been used by the US since October 7 to give intelligence to Israel in its so-called targeting of Hamas. Now, the reason that’s relevant is – Apart from the fact that you have a massive US intelligence base in the center of Australia, which is being expanded in the US expansion in my part of the world to target China. And Australia, sadly is a key ally in that madness – To have a US and Australian spy base in the center of Australia, being used to funnel information to Israel – How they’re using that information is not entirely clear – It makes legal culpability very clear.
On the US side and the Australian side as it was when the US was targeting so-called terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria or elsewhere – I say so-called because huge amounts of civilians were killed – That global US intelligence infrastructure is being used as is the F-35A. F-35A is a weapon that Israel is using over Gaza. The global supply chain involves many countries. At Declassified Australia we also had a story showing that a key part, of when the door is being opened at the bottom of the F-35 to drop weapons on Gaza, that part is made here in Melbourne, Australia. So you have a global supply chain of companies that are directly complicit in what Israel is doing which seems like, if the ICC is listening, hello, there’s a lot to be done.
Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about privatization. You talk about the neoliberalism that transformed Israel, which was a socialist state, major state-owned enterprises were sold off, and privatized, especially in the 1990s. Israel has very high-income inequality: The poverty rate is 23% in Israel and 36% for the Arab population. And you write, “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.” You go on to write, “Many checkpoints through which Palestinians are forced to travel to access their schools, workplaces, or Israel – If they are fortunate enough to get one of the few work permits handed out by the Jewish state – Use facial recognition technology and biometric details to document their every move.” But these are private companies. So explain that. What’s happened to how private for-profit firms are managing the occupation?
Antony Loewenstein: It’s worth saying obviously that Israel was a self-described socialist country, but a socialist country for Jews. It’s obvious to say that.
Chris Hedges: Well, yes. That’s right.
Antony Loewenstein: As some older viewers will be aware, it’s amazing to think now that so much of the global left was enamored with Israel for the first 20 years of its existence. Anyway, that was a bit of blindness that we can talk about some other time. But Netanyahu was a key factor in this, that yes, Israel had a quasi-socialist background. In the last 20 or so years, there’s been a shift, not just neoliberal policies within Israel itself, but also outsourcing the occupation. And in some ways, it goes along with the massive expansion of settlements. You now have roughly three-quarters of a million Jewish settlers living in occupied territory, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. A lot of the guards or security officers who are working on both settler checkpoints but also Israeli checkpoints are run by private companies. I lived in East Jerusalem between 2016 and 2020 and have been visiting there for close to 20 years. I’ve spent a lot of time looking into these issues and it’s worth saying that it’s been outsourced and the accountability was zero. Even if an Israeli soldier commits an abuse, let alone if a private interest does.
It’s important also to say that a lot of these companies are Israeli, but many of them that are doing this are foreign and international. That’s relevant because the UN had tried for years to release this list of global companies and Israeli companies that were directly complicit in the occupation, and therefore they should be boycotted. They released a list several years ago, it caused a big scandal in some circles, and about 20 or so of those companies then removed themselves from being involved in managing the occupation, so to speak. But there are still around 100 companies, Israeli and foreign, that are directly involved day-to-day in so-called managing the occupation. That to me is not only illegal and immoral, but also right for a boycott campaign, which I suspect will increase in the coming years after what we’ve seen the last six weeks.
Chris Hedges: Can you talk about AnyVision? It’s changed its name to Oosto and then Unit 8200.
Antony Loewenstein: AnyVision, which has changed its name, is a facial recognition company, an Israeli company that was testing this at Israeli checkpoints. So what that means is that when Palestinians want to, say, move around the West Bank, if they want to potentially go from the West Bank into Israel proper, they have to have their details checked, their irises often checked now, and they were gathering all this information. We don’t exactly know where that information was going. Still, it was going into Israel in a massive database that they were using to gather personal data on every single Palestinian, in the occupied territories. Those tools are then marketed globally. They have appeared in huge amounts of infrastructure from airports to other places around the world. And when those companies promote it, whether AnyVision uses the term “battle-tested” I’m not sure, but they are saying it’s been tested in Palestine “successfully.”
And that does tie into Unit 8200, which is, as I said, Israel’s NSA. It is the body that gathers intelligence on Israelis and Palestinians. I should say, that there is a lot of evidence that the occupation is coming home, that a lot of Israeli Jews who for years believed that this was only happening to Palestinians down the road, are increasingly being surveilled themselves. And I’m not talking about since October 7, although particularly since then. There is a move within Israel to criminalize dissent entirely, whether it’s by Arabs or Jews.
But Unit 8200 has become this quite infamous funnel of people who have worked in the military for years, developing all these tools and methods to surveil Palestinians, which they then take to the private sector to develop various forms of repression which they can then sell around the world. And by maintaining those close ties, that’s how it goes to my point earlier on, the NSO Group was essentially an arm of the state. Many of these companies, these surveillance companies, repressive tools, and biometric companies operating in the occupied territories or Gaza, are then used by Israel as a key selling point to make new friends, so to speak. It’s a transactional friendship, a transactional relationship.
And it’s why I think the Israeli armed industry is an insurance policy. It’s an insurance policy because some countries oppose what Israel is doing. Not many, not enough, but even the countries that publicly do oppose what Israelis are doing, many of them are still buying Israeli repressive technology. Mexico is one example amongst many. Often I think words matter, sure. What a government or prime minister or president says, it’s not irrelevant but what matters more is what you are doing, what you are buying, what you are deploying in your own country. So when you have 130, 140 nations in the world that in the last decades bought some form of Israeli defense technology, drones, missiles, spyware, whatever it may be, that’s what matters. Israel believes, probably with justification, that those nations, at least for now, are unlikely to turn on Israel while they’re so reliant on those tools of repression.
Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about Blue Wolf or the Wolf Pack database.
Antony Loewenstein: So this is a system that has been developed in the last five or so years that every Israeli soldier operating in the occupied territories has. The aim is to get personal information and data on every single Palestinian man, woman, and child. It’s entered into a massive database. That is then used to discriminate against those people potentially. What does that mean practically? Person X wants to go from the West Bank to Israel to work to get medical care. A Palestinian does not know what information has been collected on them, there’s no consent.
There’s testimony given usually anonymously, by Israeli soldiers, where it’s almost like a game. How many Palestinian personal details can we get on our mission tonight when we’re serving in the occupied territories? It goes without saying, but there is no transparency in this process. Zero. So Palestinians living in Hebron or Nablus or somewhere else, don’t know what information is being gathered, but we do know that it’s impacting their freedom of movement from place to place within the West Bank and also potentially further afield into Israel or overseas.
Chris Hedges: “Israel innovates all sorts of crowd control,” you write. Sea of Tears, a drone that dropped tear gas canisters over a broad area, skunk water, the skunk water drone, a form of liquid emitted from a water cannon that left a foul smell on clothes and body for a long time. They were used on the Great March of Return, which was a largely nonviolent protest movement in Gaza where they went up to the border. Many of them, of course, were shot. Talk about some of the forms of crowd control that have been pioneered by Israel, that we have seen in places like Ferguson.
Antony Loewenstein: Yeah. Well, this is something I talk about in the book, Chris, that there is a sense that Israel is using the West Bank, particularly East Jerusalem and Gaza, as a testing ground. Some of those examples then explain what they are. The Great March of Return, as you said, was Palestinians trying to march for their freedom and for the right to return to Israel where their ancestors used to live. The Sea of Tears was a drone that was dropping tear gas on people. It didn’t kill them but it certainly caused huge damage. And literally, while the March of Return was happening and while that drone, the Sea of Tears, was being used – I document this in the book – Other countries were wanting to buy it because it was being tested, so to speak, in real-time.
The connection between the US and Israel is key here. Soon after 9/11, there was a massive attempt by the pro-Israel lobby in the US, the Anti-Defamation League particularly, but other groups as well to have information sharing. So huge amounts of police forces went between Israel and the US and vice versa, training in tools of “people management.” They’re examples of police officers who have these quotes in the book going to Israel after 9/11, being inspired by what Israel is doing to Palestinians. Let’s be clear, as I say in the book, American police don’t need Israeli training to be repressive against Blacks and minorities. I’m not arguing that. But what I am saying is that they’re getting new tools of repression to the point where quite recently you had major Israeli border security individuals on the US-Mexico border looking at how the US “maintains” its border.
And it’s worth saying, you mentioned this before, I didn’t fully answer that, that on the US-Mexico border, there is a key part of that infrastructure, which was started by Obama, deepened by Trump, and continued by Biden now, of Israeli surveillance. There are massive Albert surveillance towers all across the US-Mexico border. Elbit is Israel’s biggest defense company. The reason the US initially was interested in this technology was because it had been tested and tried in Palestine, and “it works.” So you have all these massive surveillance towers. The aim is to both surveil potential migrants crossing the border and importantly Native Americans who live on their ancestral territory. And I have quotes in the book saying they can’t live securely in their territory because of these surveillance towers.
So again, it’s worth saying that there is this ideological alignment between many in the US who view Israel as almost on the frontline, I hate to use the term, the Wild West of crowd control, crowd management, crushing any resistance to overwhelming force. And they take those examples back to the US and vice versa. It’s like a feedback loop. It goes both ways. So as you say in Ferguson there was a lot of evidence that some, particularly, police in Ferguson had gone directly to Israel. That’s not necessarily the case. But some of the training that police forces in the US had used, including in Ferguson, had partly come from Israel.
Chris Hedges: Talk about Frontex and how this Israeli technology is used to break into encrypted messaging apps, especially on refugee mobile phones.
Antony Loewenstein: Yeah. Frontex is the EU’s border “security force.” And there was a real trauma inside Frontex, not that I feel sorry for them, but trauma after the 2015 refugee surge, mostly from Syria and elsewhere. Let’s not let that happen again. So now you have a situation where huge amounts of migrants are still trying to come from mostly Africa and the Middle East, escaping walls or conflicts or climate crisis disasters. And their phones, which are their smartphones – And are a vital way of knowing how to get there, people have maps on their phones, and personal details, and photos – Are often taken from people at EU border crossings. Information is taken from them. We don’t know exactly what information is taken but presumably, I sense that contacts in European nations – In an attempt to try to break up what they would call people smuggling networks, what I would say is humanitarian paths to a better life – And Israeli technology is part of that. It’s important to say that those Israeli drones are part of that infrastructure, but also the EU, which is Israel’s biggest trading partner.
It’s worth saying that. So when you have all these European nations in the last years expressing, now and then, concern about the occupation and concern about settlements. Just this week, one of the heads of the EU said, and I’m paraphrasing, in times of war, it’s outrageous that Israel would spend huge amounts of money on building more settlements because Israel has released its latest budget and there are huge amounts of money for settlements. I responded on Twitter, and what are you going to do about it? Because history suggests nothing. They’ll do nothing about it. Apart from the fact that I’m a German citizen and an Australian citizen, obviously in Germany, this issue is toxic: Germany is using its historical calamity, and disgusting actions during the Holocaust, including much of my family who were killed in the Holocaust, using that to support Israel’s historical absolution to somehow say that to be madly pro-Israel is to atone for our sins during the 12 years of Nazi Germany.
That has a practical impact because Israel is not only selling lots of weapons to Germany, but the Germans are also selling huge amounts of technology to Israel. Since October 7, there’s been a tenfold increase in weapons that Germany is selling to Israel, to assist in its horrific war in Gaza. This is what it means. So EU support for Israel. Gideon Levy, the journalist I mentioned before from Haaretz, went to a meeting with Netanyahu several years ago. Netanyahu looks at a map and says the whole world’s basically in support of Israel. There are a few nations in Europe, he pointed to Belgium, that gives us a bit of trouble, but overall we’re fine. Meaning occasionally the Belgian authorities express concern about settlements, which Israel doesn’t care about, but ultimately the EU has decided that they will not challenge Israel, even though EU infrastructure, Chris, is being destroyed in the West Bank constantly. And I wonder how and when that will change because it hasn’t changed yet.
Chris Hedges: I want to close your last chapter. You quoted an Israeli human rights lawyer “Because of surveillance tech, a country can avoid massacring protestors now. Today, we’re able to identify and stop surveillance of the next Nelson Mandela before he even knows he’s Nelson Mandela.” What you describe in the book is the formation of a frightening, dystopian, Orwellian world that extends far beyond Israeli borders. But that, of course, Israel is integral to creating.
Antony Loewenstein: I certainly don’t suggest that Israel is not able to commit massacres. And obviously, we’ve seen that since October 7. That quote was from Eitay Mack who is a great Israeli human rights lawyer. He spent a lot of time trying to uncover the Israeli arms industry. A lot of his work is in my book. I have quotes from people in Togo, for example, and various other nations across the globe that are often run by US-backed or Israeli-backed dictatorships back in the so-called bad old days, there were repressive regimes that were able to surveil people through various forms. Of course, that’s existed forever. But the difference now is that we are so, frankly, overly reliant on phones and the internet that all this technology is monitored 24/7. It doesn’t mean all information is always captured. The US issue after 9/11 was they were getting so much information, they couldn’t process it. Israel has a similar problem as we saw on October 7, but as you say, Israel to me is becoming, and has been for years, one of the global inspirations for repressive tech. Long before 9/11 and long after 9/11.
The danger of that is clear, that it becomes a model for repression. Israel shows countries how to do it. You can also repress your people if you buy this technology, this spyware, this drone, whatever it may be. The technology is not perfect – They of course don’t say that, but that’s what I’m saying – But it can create a global, almost architecture of control that is close to unbeatable, and the impact of that at a time where democracy is in decline. You could argue that even self-described democracies aren’t democracies anyway, but nations that claim to be democratic are increasingly moving more and more to an Israeli-style model. I’m not talking about an occupation, particularly. I’m talking about language. I was also talking about surveillance. The whole US rhetoric after 9/11, the so-called war on terror, was the Israeli playbook. It wasn’t the same but it was remarkably inspired by what Israel had been doing in Lebanon in the ’80s and onwards. Hugely similar.
Similar rhetoric about, so-called terrorism, they call it collateral damage but I would call it collateral murder. Something that a mutual friend Julian Assange – A fellow Australian, a great huge hero of mine, I’ve known Jillian since 2006, right at the beginning of Wiki Leaks – What people like him and many others have been saying for years is this is the threat, the idea of a complete architecture of global surveillance, which is close to unbeatable. Israel is a global leader in that. Alerting people to that is the first step. The next step is how to challenge that. A lot of the global response to October 7, both the attack by Hamas but also the insane, overwhelming, brutal war crimes that Israel is committing in Gaza, is bringing out a civil society action that I have not seen on this issue in my lifetime. I have Palestinian-Israeli friends, and I’m talking about mostly globally, not so much in Palestine, Israel itself, including fellow Jews and many Palestinians. And that to me is the only sliver of hope in what is a very dark time.
Chris Hedges: Great. That was Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World. I want to thank The Real News Network and its production team: Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley, David Hebden, and Kayla Rivara. You can find me at chrishedges.substack.com.
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