'The Palestinian Laboratory' explores key issues in Israel-Gaza conflict

The book seeks to answer a crucial question: Why does violence against Palestinians fail to elicit meaningful empathy from powerful nations?

The Palestine Laboratory 

Author: Antony Loewenstein

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Pages: 304

Price: Rs 699

As the world witnesses the brutal ethnic cleansing in Gaza under the formidable military technology deployed by the Israeli Defence Forces, why are certain countries either mum or supportive of one the biggest mass killings of the 21st century? In The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, award-winning journalist and writer Antony Loewenstein reveals how the occupied territories of Palestine are used as a testing ground for Israeli weapons and then sold around the world, irrespective of the consequences.

In 2021, the news of Pegasus spyware being used to spy on Indian activists, journalists, politicians from opposition parties and other individuals underlined the influential ambit of Israeli tech and weapons. The author shows through numerous sources how and why this extremely profitable system exists. Digging deeper into the settler colonialism project that is Israel, it is easy to see how the country has refrained from taking a moral stance on several humanitarian issues, though, ironically, it was the traumatising genocide of the Holocaust that accelerated its creation. During the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, for example, the Israeli government was found sending ammunition to the ruling Hutu regime, which went on to kill 800,000 Tutsis in 100 days by deploying weapons such as Uzi submachineguns and hand grenades. When a minister in the Israeli government was questioned on this, he shrugged off responsibility by stating, “We have no control over where our weapons go.” The silence that had engulfed the world since then has continued till today even when a genocide is being live-streamed for everyone to witness.

Israel’s gradual ascent to its status as a weapons export giant was established even before the inception of the state by Zionist groups selling arms in the 1930s. The author chronicles this indiscriminate trade in the first chapter, explaining how, in many cases, such practices emboldened dictatorships all over the world. From Guatemala to Argentina, every single regime found a comfortable ally in Israel. The fact that Israel displays videos of their weapons killing Palestinians as a marketing tactic to the buyers underlines the amoral practices that it condones and explains why it prefers conflict to exist.

In 2008, Benjamin Netanyahu famously said at a public event, “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon and the American struggle in Iraq.” This is one of the many easily available pieces of information that confirms America’s military-industrial complex collaborates with its client state Israel to destroy the lives of many, especially those that are black and brown.

In the 21st century, surveillance technology is one of the key threats that widely impacts people. Mr Loewenstein helps the reader understand how different nations use such technologies to racially differentiate people. Living in Palestine means to be living under constant surveillance of the settler colonial forces, and this isolation is replicated against other dissidents in different countries or refugees trying to seek asylum  — whether it’s the drones that are deployed to keep an eye on the migrants seeking refuge in Europe or the use of spyware by oppressive regimes to target people (journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder being a prime example). Under the grand scheme of the military industrial complex, such lives are dispensable and the so-called harbingers of democracy and peace in the West say nothing much, letting the business of killing continue as usual.

Colonisation is often considered a thing of the past but people often miss the systems and organisations in place that further the same objectives. The author also highlights how far-right politics has vitiated the minds of the local Israelis, though there are many dissenters as well, as the recent protests against Mr Netanyahu’s attempt to limit the powers of the court confirm. It’s soon going to be a year since Gaza has faced brutal and relentless ethnic cleansing, leading to the deaths of more than 40,000 people, over half of them women and children. Hospitals, schools, libraries, along with innumerable homes and religious sites — some even older than the state of Israel — have been destroyed.

The Palestinian Laboratory simplifies the Palestinian quest for freedom and focuses on why violence against them fails to garner meaningful empathy from powerful nations all around the world, even though the public might be outraged about it. As a Jew, Mr Loewenstein’s revelation portrays the bleak and horrifying reality of the export of violence and dominance all over the globe to maintain a world order that is, ultimately, subservient to the colonisers.

The reviewer is an independent writer, journalist and translator based in Allahabad. They can be reached at chittajit.mitra@gmail.com