Tech Won't Save Us - How Israel Uses Occupation to Develop Military Tech w/ Antony Loewenstein

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

Paris Marx is joined by Antony Loewenstein to discuss how the Israeli weapons industry tests new military technologies on occupied Palestinians before selling them internationally. Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist who’s written for the New York Times and the Guardian. He’s the author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports The Technology Of Occupation Around The World. Follow Antony on Twitter at @antloewenstein.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.Also mentioned in this episode:Excerpts from Antony’s book have been published by In These Times, Declassified Australia, and Jamal Khashoggi-founded Democracy for the Arab World Now. Antony also wrote a good overview of the book for Middle East Eye.Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and Yesh Din have called Israel’s actions apartheid.Google and Amazon workers protested Project Nimbus. They also faced shareholder revolts over the project.Airbnb lists properties in illegal Israeli settlements.Red Wolf is deployed at checkpoints to scan Palestinians’ faces and add them to surveillance databases without their consent.Facebook has been criticized for removing Palestinians’ posts.The New York Times reported on Israel’s use of NSO Group surveillance tools for diplomatic leverage.The Committee to Protect Journalists found Israel killed 20 journalists.Support the show

I've got nothing to hide. Why do I care? So the argument goes, well, firstly, we all have secrets, so that's nonsense. And secondly, that's such a privileged position. Maybe a lot of people listening don't have life and death secrets. Maybe they don't. But if you're a journalist in vast parts of the world or an activist or just a human in Mexico or lots of other places, you do have secrets. You're trying to keep secrets away from people who want to harm you. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Anthony Lowenstein. Anthony is an independent journalist who's written for the New York Times and The Guardian, and he's also the author of The Palestine Laboratory, How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.

In recent years, we've seen a number of human rights organizations releasing reports saying that Israel is an apartheid state, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, as well as Israeli human rights organizations like Yesh Din and B'Tselem. Those reports provide even further context on kind of the unacceptable situation that we know is continuing in Israel, where the Palestinian people are under occupation by the Israeli government and the Israeli military and have been for a very long time. And we saw that yet again last week with another Israeli raid on the Janin refugee camp in the occupied Palestinian territories, where homes were leveled, hundreds of civilians were injured, and at least 12 Palestinians were

killed in that attack by the Israeli military. And this is just one example of the brutality that Palestinians continually experience under the occupation. So in this conversation, Antony wrote this book, The Palestine Laboratory, that looks at how Israel develops this technology through the occupation of the Palestinian people by testing all of this military and surveillance technology on this occupied population, and then uses that testing ground to kind of prove to buyers around the world that these technologies work, that they work really well, and that these other countries should also buy them to use them against their people or other people who they want to target. And that's obviously a serious concern, especially when we see the direction of travel globally,

where we see increasingly right-wing and far-right governments gaining power or getting close to power, where we see kind of the discourses in our society shifting more to the right. And of course, these technologies and these kind of surveillance tools have been used against many people around the world.

And we talk a bit about that in this conversation, including with NSO Group, which is probably the company that people are most familiar with when it comes to phone tracking technologies and things like that. But also when we think about the tech industry more broadly and how it has very close relationships with the Israeli government, including we saw a couple of years ago, Amazon and Google signed what was called Project Nimbus, which provided cloud and AI services to the Israeli government. And employees at those companies protested that decision and that deal because they're worried that those technologies could then be used against the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and

Gaza Strip. And of course, they're not the only companies that have close relationships with Israel and with the Israeli government where their technologies could also be deployed against occupied Palestinians. You know, we have companies like Airbnb that also allow listings on their platforms of properties in the illegal settlements that are in the West Bank. And so that's just to show that we have many tech companies that are still willing to engage with a government that is engaging in apartheid,

as many human rights groups and many people beyond that now recognize. And I think that there's a question we need to ask as to whether that is acceptable, but also kind of the broader impact that that has as Israel pursues weapon sales around the world. And as we say in this conversation, it's not that Israel is the only country that sells weapons abroad. You know, of course, I'm in Canada and the Canadian government sells tanks and jeeps and things to the Saudi Arabian government without considering how that's going to be used against its people and the people in Yemen. But I think it is worthy of consideration that this is a government that is explicitly kind of testing its technologies against this occupied population that is then being used

to prove that they work and being sold around the world, basically. And so I thought this was a really fascinating conversation. I was happy to have Anthony on the show. And hopefully this gives you a bit more insight into where some of these military and surveillance technologies come from. If you like this conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also share it on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you want to support the work that goes into making the show every week,

you can join supporters like Carl in Boston, Tom from Manchester in New Hampshire, and Marie in Kingston in Canada by going to patreon.com slash techwon'tsaveus and becoming a supporter. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Anthony, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to chat with you and to discuss your new book. You know, we haven't really done an episode looking at Israel and Israel's kind of tech industry and military industry.

And I thought that your book was a good way for us to talk about that and, you know, to kind of get a bigger picture of how this all plays out, because obviously Israel is in the news quite a lot. And, you know, our countries have close relationships to this country that has an ongoing and long-term kind of occupation of people that we too often, I think, ignore or prefer to, or kind of, you know, both sides that and all this kind of stuff. And so, you know, before we get into kind of the depth of the book, and, you know, the real topic of it, I want to ask about your evolution on this question, right? Because, you know, in the introduction, you talk a bit about your childhood growing up and kind of what you were told about Israel at that time, and then how your views kind of changed as you kind of visited Israel and were reporting from there and learned more about that country over time. So can you talk to us a bit about that?

So I grew up in Melbourne, Australia. I was a liberal Jew, which means for those who don't know someone who was not religious, particularly, I did go to synagogue, I would observe family Sabbath every Friday, most Fridays, I would go to Jewish holidays, Passover, etc., to synagogue. But Israel, I'd say then and now, is kind of like the unofficial religion of many Jews. This obviously wasn't the case for a long time, but I think in the last decades, Israel has almost replaced religion for many Jews. Many Jews who support Israel are not religious, but Israel is that religion. So when I was growing up, I understood very clearly,

like a lot of Jews do, that most of my family was killed in the Holocaust. My family came from Germany and Austria. So the vast majority of them were in death camps in Auschwitz and didn't survive. The handful that did escape in 1939 was spread around the world. You know, at the time, most countries didn't want to take Jews for mostly very sadly obvious anti-Semitic reasons. Some took a handful, Australia, Canada, US, etc.

And my grandparents came to Australia in 1939. When I was growing up, they would say to me and my parents would say to me that they were never hardcore Zionists. When they lived in Germany before Israel's birth, it was actually quite uncommon to believe in the concept of a Jewish state because before the Second World War and before the rise of Nazism in 1933, most Jews in Germany, it sort of sounds crazy to think this now, were integrated to an extent. There was anti-Semitism to be sure, but in general, they were seen as part of society. One of my relations fought on the German side in World War

I. So it was normal. It wasn't unusual. He was Jewish, but it wasn't particularly strange. Obviously, fast forward to the Holocaust, fast forward to after World War II, Israel is formed. And when I was growing up in Melbourne, Australia, and I was growing up in the 70s, but I think it's not that different now, although I think Jewish opinion is shifting, which we can talk about if you like. But in general, Israel was seen as a safe haven. God forbid something happens to Jews again, just for listeners who aren't aware,

as a Jew, if you can prove to Israel that you are Jewish, meaning that you have a Jewish mother, you can have documentation to prove that, you can become an Israeli citizen within a handful of months. And that was almost seen like a life raft for many Jews. Not that most Jews have taken that up, but it was the idea sort of held out as, God forbid something happens, we can always go to Israel if Hitler Mark II comes along. So I grew up with this myth, I guess. Israel was not necessarily perfect, but it was the cherished land. It was somewhere that we could always go.

Palestinians were generally demonized. Yes, Arafat, who was then the leader of the Palestinians, was a terrorist. So the thinking went, Palestinians were terrorists. That's just who they were. So we were told. And when I say we, this is either through my synagogue, through the Jewish community, through my parents, through family. So I have a distinct memory when I was having Sabbath meals with my family on Friday nights.

There may have been a suicide bombing that week or something may have happened in Israel or Palestine. And there was heated conversation because essentially Palestinians were said to be the new Nazis. And I heard this expression all the time. Palestinians are the new Nazis. Palestinians want to raise us. Palestinians want to kick us into the sea.

And we have to fight back. Fight back meaning we have to have a strong Israel, a strong military, a strong army. And I think one of the things that I think many non-Jews maybe don't know is after the Second World War when a lot of Jews went to Palestine to then, I guess, build up Israel, and this is also the case in Jews generally, the Jews who survived the Holocaust and survived the Nazi death camps

were often criticized by fellow Jews. Why? Because they were seen as not fighting back enough. They were seen as being too weak. Why didn't you fight back enough? Why didn't you rebel? Why didn't you take on the Nazis more? Now, to be clear, a lot of Jews did. There was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. There was lots of resistance. I mean, Nazis were a massive, powerful fascist army with huge amounts of influence and power. It's not exactly the easiest thing in the world to do. But that criticism was there, that Holocaust survivors, they were partly to blame almost for their own fate,

which sounds gross to think of that now in the 21st century, but that view was there. And the thinking of that therefore was never again can we as Jews be undefended. Never again can we be without protection. And Israel was that protection. Has to be a strong army, strong military, strong intelligence, strong ties with the world. And of course, as we'll talk about soon, that also meant making friends with as many countries as possible, whether they were democracies or dictatorships. So I grew up in that environment, but it always struck me as uncomfortable.

I mean, it's hard to pinpoint a particular moment when that happened. But I remember in my teenage years, I just found the really blatant racism against Palestinians profoundly problematic. I hadn't probably met a Palestinian then. It sounds bizarre in a way, but I think many Jews then and now actually don't spend time with Palestinians, don't speak to Palestinians, don't hear from Palestinians. They see and hear Palestinians filtered through either their family, their Jewish community, or through the media. And to be sure, in the last couple of decades, there has been some improvement in the Western media coverage of Palestine, which we can talk about later if you

want. But in general, for a long time, Palestinians were on one note, angry, aggressive, the new Nazis. But I felt uncomfortable about that. And when I got to university in Melbourne in the 1990s, I started reading, as any good leftist does, John Pilger and Noam Chomsky and Edward Said and many others, works that I maybe had heard of before, but never really appreciated, never really understood. I didn't study Israel, Palestine in university. I've never studied this particular subject per se. I guess I've studied it as a journalist just on the ground over there. But I guess over time, I started feeling not just frustrated, but incredibly angry that the Jewish community, and of course, I'm generalizing here. There are Jews who are critical decades ago now, obviously. But in general, the only way Israel has survived as long as it

has, 75 years now, with its massive power, influence, etc., is because of the Jewish diaspora. Of course, the US role is central, the EU role, etc. But it's a Jewish diaspora. They are key advocates, key funders, key defenders. But what they're often defending is an Israel that proudly occupies another people. And that to me over time became intolerable. So I started speaking out about it and writing about it. In the process, I lost Jewish friends. My parents lost a lot of their Jewish friends because I spoke out about this issue. It was because of the sins of the son.

They themselves were not speaking out particularly about it publicly. They weren't in the media or on radio or the internet. But I was speaking out about it because they had not condemned me. They themselves were condemned and therefore shunned by many in the Jewish community back then in the early 2000s and now. Her mother has passed away now, but her father is still alive. The same thing has happened. So I've had a real evolution on this, and you realize who your friends are pretty quickly.

It's unfortunate to hear that, and I'm sorry your parents had to experience that. That does give us a good kind of picture, at least some history, of how these things evolved and how this took place. So I wanted to ask you, the book is obviously about the arms industry of Israel and how Israel kind of uses that to get influence around the world. And so I wanted to start by asking you, you know, how does this arms industry get started in Israel? You know, when does it become clear that Israel is going to have to develop this industry and how does it kind of grow over time?

Look, right from the beginning in 1948, in fact, May 48 was when Israel declared independence. David Ben-Gurion, who was the first prime minister of Israel, made it pretty clear, this is often documents that came out years later in declassified information, but it was pretty clear that, realize that Israel had to have friends around the world. Now, it's sort of maybe obvious to say that, but Israel is not an island. Israel had what they thought at the time were various enemies. Many Arab countries didn't like them, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, et cetera. And those Arab countries weren't shy about that. They didn't accept Israel as a Jewish state. They didn't want Jews there. I mean, to be clear, Jews had had some presence in that area for a very, very, very long time, to be sure.

However, the vast majority of Jews that founded the State of Israel came mostly in the 20th century. There were some there that had been there, and that's historically accurate. Jews had been there a very, very long time, but Ben-Gurion realised they had to have friends. Now, obviously the US was a key ally, but the U.S.'s influence and power, although major, was not as big as it has become now in the 21st century. I talk about this in the book, but one of the big questions that Israel had near its birth was, how do we relate to

Germany? Now, Germany obviously was the site of the Holocaust, along with, I guess, Poland and Austria and elsewhere. I mean, Hitler was Austrian, but Germany was the beating heart of the Nazi empire. And there was a lot of discussion in Israel at the time and the Jewish community globally. How do we deal with Germany? Meaning, Germany was very keen after the war to make amends, to say sorry, to pay reparations. And in fact, Germany wanted to pay reparations to Israel as a way of saying sorry, I guess. I mean, it's obviously, it sounds like a very inappropriate word, sorry about that Holocaust, but it was basically a way to apologize and to make friends with

the Jewish state. Israel accepted that relationship and that friendship in the 50s. The reason I mention this is, this is where, to some extent, some of this logic within Israel began, finding a way to export Israeli defense equipment. Initially, it was literally guns. We're not talking about sophisticated missiles in the 40s and 50s, talking about guns, many of which had been used, in fact, in Israel's independence in 1948, some of which had come from the British, who, of course, used to occupy Palestine for a long time. And by the 60s, there was, to some extent, a growing and

flourishing defence industry. Most of these companies were state-owned or state-backed. There wasn't really a private industry of sorts. There wasn't an official occupation until 1967, although it's important to note that the Palestinians who lived in Israel itself between 1948 and 1967 were under a military curfew. This is why people, and this is why people often sort of talk about the occupation starting in 1967. Yes, the occupation, the West Bank and Gaza is now 56 years old and that's true, but Palestinians have always been treated

as second-class citizens from day one. That's sort of very much in the DNA of Israel. But the defence industry started growing in the 60s, growing ties with countries like France and Germany, the US, and also a growing awareness that the way that you could make friends, including at the UN, where there clearly was a sizeable Soviet-backed bloc that did not support Israel, that often aligned itself with certain Arab states

who despised Israel for a range of reasons, either political or other reasons. So Israel, in their view, had to make friends with often unsavory characters, nations in Africa. But a key ally that really was, I would say, central to Israel's development as a nation and continues to this day is the relationship with apartheid South Africa. Now, obviously, apartheid ended in 1994 officially, although I would argue apartheid still exists in that country, sadly, economically. But Israel and apartheid South Africa were the closest of friends for the entire history of that regime until it fell in 1994. And the reason that's important is that they didn't just support each other in defence terms

and provided diplomatic backing, often when even at the end, the US had decided to turn against South Africa. Israel was the last friend standing of apartheid South Africa, which speaks volumes. And why is that? It's an ideological alignment. Documents that have come out since 1994, and I detail some of them in the book and people can Google this if they want to see more, shows that both regimes admired each other deeply. They admired the way in which they treated each other's so-called unwanted populations. So South Africa, that was these awful blacks who were trying to override this glorious white Afrikaner's regime. And in Israel, of course, it was these terrible Palestinians who want to drive the Jews into the sea. And the defense industry both developed on that. They

both trained in each other's countries. Israel assisted, although it was not successful, to try to get uranium from South African apartheid regime to make nuclear weapons. Thank God that didn't happen. And the often South African military figures came to the West Bank and vice versa to black townships run by white South Africans to observe how each other was managing their Bantustans. Bantustan is like a managed area by an overlord. So in Israel, a lot of the West Bank settlements are essentially quasi-Bantustans. They have nominal Palestinian control, but in fact, they're controlled by Israel. And South African Bantustans were the same in the other way around. Usually what I think you see on these maps is that these are kind of small territories

that are really kind of broken up as well, right? Between territories controlled by whether it's Israel or apartheid South Africa during that period as well. Exactly, exactly. And South African apartheid regime said that, well, the Bandistan, that's their vision for what blacks deserve. They've got independence. What are they complaining

about? And Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli Prime Minister, regularly said, publicly and privately, his vision for Palestinians were the South African Bantustans. A good way to compare this would be almost what many Americans did to Native Americans, put them on reservations. So that relationship between Israel and South African apartheid was central to developing each other's defence industry. And also, I'd say it gave them confidence. And I think what it showed, importantly, which was very key as the Cold War developed and grew in the 70s and 80s, Reagan came in was Israel was often America's wingman, meaning that in many places during the so-called dirty wars in Latin America, even when the US Congress barred the US funding, arming or training the worst death squads in

Latin and South America, Israel was happy to be there. We're talking about Honduras, Colombia. Now, this is not to absolve American responsibility. Their hands were drenched in blood. But Israel was key there. And the US and Israel formed almost like an unofficial alliance around the world, Latin and South America, Africa and elsewhere. If one country wouldn't sell weapons to a dictatorship, the other would. This in some ways is how the Israeli defence industry hugely grew. It was public for a long time. It started becoming private. Elbert is the most famous company. These days, Elbert makes drones and various other weapons. And what happened after 1967, when the occupation began, just briefly, is that Palestine suddenly became the ultimate testing ground for weapons.

This is the key shift. So before 67, yes, obviously, as I said, Palestinians were hardly treated like equal citizens, but there wasn't a so-called official occupation. After 67, there was. And very, very soon, you have Israeli army officials, generals, and other Israeli figures using their experience in the West Bank and Gaza as soldiers or generals and taking that to the defense industry. And then when they promote those weapons to countries, to individuals around the world, they say, this is how it's worked in Palestine. This is how it actually works to control and oppress Palestinians. Now, let's not also forget, finally, for many, many years, the left loved Israel. Now, it's sort of hard to imagine that the left, in general general is not exactly a big fan of Israel. But for years

and years and years after 1948, Israel was the promised land. You had leftists going there to go on kibbutzes and that was celebrating the glories of Israel. Now, they didn't think too much about Palestinians or equal rights, which doesn't say much about those leftists. But nonetheless, that was a key left position. 67 changed that where the occupation became so blatant that many leftists have turned away from Israel and that has continued for the last half century. So that's how the defence industry kind of began, this disparate way. But I see this South African apartheid Israel relationship as a key way that the defence industry both grew in a weapons development sense, but also an

ideological sense. I think that historical perspective is really important, right? And I want to come back to the ways that, you know, Israel is kind of working abroad and selling weapons and kind of the consequences of that. And also, you know, what it means for Palestinians and all these things. But before we get to that, I wanted us to fast forward a little bit as well, right? Because the link between the Israeli military and the Israeli tech industry and kind of the larger global tech industry is very close, right? There's a unit within the Israeli Defense Force called Unit 8200 that is often closely associated with a lot of these tech companies. Can you tell us a bit about those relationships and what major global tech companies are working with the Israeli military as it develops these military technologies?

Pretty much all of them, but we'll get to that in a minute. It's almost hard to find major ones that are not. Hello, Google. But there are others. I'll get to that. Unit 8200 is essentially Israel's intelligence arm. So day to day, you have initially people often enter the army at 18, so it's young men and women who are joining the military at a young age.

Their job day-to-day is essentially to monitor Palestinians, surveil them. All communication in the West Bank and Gaza, occupied territory in East Jerusalem, is listened to and controlled by Israel. The equivalent would be the US NSA, but the US is a massive superpower with 340 million people. Israel is a population that's minuscule and unit 8200 in Israeli surveillance is not as powerful, but pretty damn close. And that speaks volumes about how Israel has developed that initially to monitor both Palestinians in its

own territory, but also the region, perceived enemies. So that could be Syria, Iran, Saudi, Jordan, any essentially regional enemies or friends. And of course, as America does, everyone surveils everybody. It's not like they're just surveilling their enemies. I mean, in fact, it's interesting. There was a recent report, this is a brief aside, that Israel was one of the most surveilled nations in the world by the US. This is a close ally. So it's not like, yes, they're close friends and they love each other on paper, but they don't really entirely trust each other in what they're doing.

And a recent report by William Arkin in Newsweek, and I have not seen a more recent figure than this, so I'm so much quoting him. He's a long time sort of journo, does work on these issues, said that he'd discovered there were roughly 400 US intelligence officials on a day-to-day basis, essentially monitoring everything that's done and coming out of Israel. Now, I can't question that. I put that in the book, I think, that figure because that's the latest that I read. I can believe that. I'm actually surprised it's not more, to be honest. Now, the NSA have a lot of people to do a lot of spying on friends and enemies. Anyway, so Unit 8200 essentially does everything from surveil communication and also do some pretty horrible things.

I mean, that's horrible enough, but I have this in the book and I interviewed a former Unit 8200 officer. I couldn't name him in the book, but he's in there. He gave some more details to flesh out because these people mostly don't speak to the media. Even when they've left the unit, they're still a bit cagey. They feel, I guess, a patriotism towards their nation and don't want to shit on them, basically. But one of the things

to me that was the most disgusting, and it's not unique to Israel, other countries do this as well, is basically try to entrap Palestinians. So they will surveil, for example, a Palestinian man who's married to a woman with three kids. I'm just making up an example. They discover that he's having an affair with a guy. He's sleeping with a man. And they will take that information to that Palestinian. They will say, you know, there's a lot of homophobia in the community. You wouldn't want that information to come out to your wife, would you, to your community. If not, you need to do spying for us. And you'd be not shocked to know that a lot of people go along with that because they don't want to be exposed. Now, this is sort of the moral collapse that is the occupation. This is what occupation does, that it almost requires people's personal

lives to be used as a weapon. Now, the reason I mention this is, this is what Unit 8200 does. It's not particularly glamorous. It's pretty grubby. In that example that you give, like, especially, like, it particularly stands out that, you know, Israel is a country that has traditionally kind of pinkwashed itself, right? You know, we're good for LGBT people. You know, they're welcome here. But then you see like,

which gay and queer people are they actually okay for? And which ones are they just taking advantage of as much as possible? Like, it's really disgusting. It is. And, you know, whenever Israeli officials or Israel supporters say, as they regularly do to people who criticize Israel, well, why don't you go and, you know, have a gay parade in Gaza City and see how that goes? Now, yes, it wouldn't go very well because Hamas is an Islamist organization. It doesn't like gay people. You know, newsflash, I don't support Hamas either. And a lot of people I know on the left don't. But the point is that Israel claims to be a vibrant democracy. It's a democracy for Jews. And as you rightly say, the way in which the occupation has seeped into every aspect of Israeli life means that Palestinians

who don't live in inverted commas normal heterosexual lives are potentially going to be victim to this kind of blackmail. It happens all the time, all the time. So Unit 8200 has developed some very sophisticated surveillance technology and tools. One of the aspects of that unit is to try to funnel that into then the private sector. So the aim is that when those people leave the unit, when they're 25, 30, whatever age they are, they set up organizations and companies that could be facial recognition, so-called smart

walls, spyware, whatever it may have been. In fact, as I show in the book, a lot of the major Israeli tech companies and surveillance companies have veterans from that unit. And the reason that's relevant is that it shows that a lot of these Israeli companies are only private in name. The most infamous, I guess, is NSO Group, Pegasus, the phone hacking tool. All listeners will have heard of this. Essentially now, technology which allows your mobile phone, Android or iPhone to be hacked without you even knowing or your information taken. Essentially, it's a silent hack, really, without your phone being checked.

You'll never know. And a lot of people who started that were veterans in the military in some unit 8200, Essentially, it's a silent hack, really. Without your phone being checked, you'll never know. And a lot of people who started that were veterans in the military, in some Unit 8200, some just in the IDF itself. And one of the things I say in the book over and over again because it's deeply frustrated me about this in the media coverage is that it's regularly framed as, oh, it's this rogue Israeli company selling all this crazy spyware to countries around the world. No, no, no, no, no. NSO Group is basically working on behalf and with the Israeli state. That's the

point. So essentially, yes, NSO Group is a very convenient front for what the Israeli government wants. So just briefly on this, I know we'll maybe get back to this later, but NSO Group is used and its Pegasus tool as a key diplomatic tool that Netanyahu over the years dangles over countries and says, you want to be friends with us? We'd love to be friends with you. If you vote for us nicely, the UN will give you some great spyware and you can spy on your dissidents or human rights activists or journalists you don't like. That's how it works. And that's why in the last roughly decade and a half, NSO's Pegasus has been sold to, we don't know exactly the number,

but dozens and dozens and dozens of countries, from dictatorships to democracies. The country that's used it the most by far is Mexico, previous governments and current government. So even the so-called new leftist government, not that new anymore, AMLO, big fan of Pegasus. They deny it, but the evidence is there. So it is too unattractive a tool for governments to give up. Now, the reason I mention all this is this is how the funnel of Unit 8200 works. this is how the intelligence unit in the israeli military then transitions into an export business that israel can then say as these companies often do

nso group and others some of these people have veteran experience in the military they've worked for years controlling palestinians so this is the language they use. They have developed these tools, often using Palestinians as guinea pigs. There's lots of evidence that Pegasus has been used against Palestinians in Palestine. And indeed, far as we can tell, some Israeli critics in Israel itself, it's principally exported, but it's also done internally and why wouldn't it be? But I think it's also important to note that Pegasus is just the tip of the iceberg, as I say in the book. Because of course, when you write a book, you don't know what events are going to overtake you after the book goes to print. Pegasus still exists. But if Pegasus

shuts down tomorrow, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference. There are already countless other companies that are doing exactly the same thing, Israeli companies, because the tool to hack people's phones is so attractive to so many countries and regimes. but is encouraged by governments, whether it's Netanyahu or someone else, to develop the most evasive tools, spyware, weapons, drones, whatever it may be. They're mostly used initially or tested in Palestine and then exported. And the material that these companies then use, they often show the so-called evidence of it being used in Palestine. You know, just one quick example, finally, the US-Mexico border is controlled by countless amounts of technology, but one of the key surveillance tools that the US government uses is Israeli surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border by Elbit, Israel's biggest defense company. Now, I'm not saying the US couldn't find these tools elsewhere,

but it's important to remember that people should understand this, that there was so much hatred against Trump about his border policy. It's not about to defend them, don't worry. But Biden has actually not changed as much as people might like to think. His rhetoric is different, mostly. But rather than building these crazy, ridiculous high walls that Trump seemingly was obsessed with, Trump wanted to build like a moat. You read about this, he wanted to maybe have a moat and crocodiles. I mean, Trump is a, wow, he really is quite a guy.

But what Biden is doing is continuing what Trump and Obama did before, which is essentially making the border wall, so to speak, much more technological. And Israeli defence tech is central to that, central to that. And the reason the US government would have wanted those surveillance towers is because they first used them in Palestine, sometimes along the Israel-Gaza border. In inverted commas, they work. I mean, I say they work.

I mean, obviously, the aim in the US-Mexico border is to, in theory, keep migrants out. I'm not sure how effective that really is, but that's the supposed aim. So they're the connections, I guess, that one tries to make, that what starts in Palestine never stays there. Yeah, and it's a very important connection, right? And, you know, before we explore more of that kind of global role, I want to know what this looks like in Palestine itself. Palestine obviously serves as a testing ground for many of these technologies, you know, weapons, but also military and surveillance technologies, as you're

saying. How are they deployed against Palestinians and how does it shape their lives you know as they live under this occupation look paris there's so many examples but one that comes to mind because some this has been the news just recently and i mentioned in the book um but it's worth letting people understand this hebron is one of the largest palestinian cities and it has for people who don't know the most insane situation there's roughly 800 to a thousand utterly fundamentalist not just far right but genocidal jewish set of living in the heart of the city and the israeli military protects these people against the thousands and thousands of palestinians who are living in their own. So the reason I mention that is that the surveillance tools

and technologies that Israel has deployed there, Hebron's often the model that then expands to other parts in Palestine. And one of the tools that Amnesty International put out a report recently in I think it was April this year, exposing something called Red Wolf, which was a tool of facial recognition, which essentially documents or tries to document all Palestinians coming in and out of various checkpoints. And the only way you could get to your home if you live in Hebron is to go through various entries and exits. So the Palestinians who were interviewed for this report,

and I spoke to some other Palestinians for my book last year, would say that when you arrive at a checkpoint, and so listeners understand, a checkpoint, Israel claimed, this is about security, but actually it's about controlling Palestinians' access and ability to move from A to B, literally to go from your home to a market, literally to go from take your kids to school. And you're living within an environment of hardcore, and I use the term genocidal because

I spent time in Hebron alongside some of these settlers. I mean, it's really hard to explain and convey how utterly crazy these people are. This is, if you think of the most extreme fundamentalist Christian evangelicals, if listeners can imagine this, in the US or somewhere, who are, I don't even know if they're genocidal, maybe some of them are, but people who just have such intense hatred for Palestinians that their vision is to essentially get rid of them all. I mean, they don't shy away from saying that. So it's important for people to understand that because they're the people that are being protected here by the Israeli state and the military.

And these tools and technologies like Red Wolf, the facial recognition, is not used against Israeli Jews. It's used against Palestinians. So if you want to go anywhere, essentially there are profiles built up about you, who you are, where you're going, who's your family, what is your workplace, all these details. And it emerged that the two companies that apparently are involved in this, one is European and one is Chinese. And this to me seems like two things. One, a pretty ripe company for boycott, by the way. But two, these kind of companies in general operate with impunity because so many other

countries are keen to take their technology in their own space. But so an element of facial recognition is one part. There's also other checkpoints that I've been through where there is obviously biometric data taken. I mean, all this, just to be clear, is done without consent. It's really important to say this. People's information, there are massive and growing databases being built by Israel without any transparency.

I mean, no one has access to this outside the Israeli military. You can't sort of put FOIs in. You can't sort of claim as a Palestinian, can I get my file? I mean, that just doesn't happen, right, obviously. It would be lovely if there was a Snowden-type leak of these files. Please leak it now, someone. But that just doesn't happen, hasn't happened so far. And weirdly, actually, there are very few leaks in the Israeli system

unlike the US, which is actually quite curious. That's maybe a slightly separate issue, but very, very rarely do you get leaks in the Israeli military. There is a, and I have a big chapter in the book about this, a growing war on Palestinians pushed by social media companies. I'm talking about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, so Google. And what does that mean practically? It means that Palestinian posts, videos, comments are routinely barred, censored, cut, deleted for no reason.

I'm not talking about Palestinian comments that are horrific that maybe should be pulled down. I'm not talking about comments or videos that are violent. I'm talking about, and I detail this extensively in the book, that there is not just an inbuilt bias within these systems. And I explain in the book that in general, the so-called Israeli point of view is front and center in these companies. I mean, Facebook in this so-called oversight board, which I know you've talked about in the past. I mean, on one hand, it's part of the oversight board, which are not too bad, but on other issues, it's very, very problematic. But nonetheless, they assisted in putting out a report not that long ago

assessing how Israel often covers. There was a horrible Israel-Gaza conflict, and I think it was May 2021, and a lot of Palestinians reported at the time a lot of their posts were just disappearing, being shadow banned. Why? God knows why. Of course, you can't reach Facebook. You can't speak to a human being. Usual story. Companies run by ghosts, very profitable ghosts. This report essentially found, surprise, surprise, that, oh, yes, there was an inbuilt bias against Palestinian points of view. So there's two issues here. One, if there's a human actually seeing content, they're not trained well enough to actually understand that we, for example, someone is talking about, the term

martyr is used routinely in Palestinian Arab society. It doesn't mean necessarily a suicide bomber. It could mean someone who is killed, who died, in whatever context it may be. Often those posts were just deleted because somehow it was, I guess, perceived that someone was celebrating a terrorist. I mean, that was the perception. So that's the human content moderator not being trained well enough. But of course, so much of the content moderation these days happens automatically. It's not done by a human being at all. And, again, as is so much the issue with AI and all these kind of questions, it depends what information the system has

in the first place. And there is massive pressure by the Israeli state on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube to make sure, and TikTok for that matter, for Palestinian content to be disappeared or reduced in visibility. And the evidence for that is overwhelming, that this was happening time and time and time again to various set of people. So when these companies are questioned about that or challenged on that,

and I have some details in the book about this, their responses are that's a plea to ignorance. I think one comment from someone was the Facebook spokesman said, look, we're just an entertainment company. You know, in other words, you can't expect too much from us. Where to begin with that? I mean, okay, yes, some people do use Facebook for entertainment. But as I detail in the book, Facebook has been found complicit in the genocide in Myanmar when they are amplifying genocidal posts in Myanmar.

They're amplifying genocidal posts in Ethiopia. This is not me saying this. I mean, people can find this out online. It's openly available. And what's interesting that I think reveals so much that most of these companies are often mirroring US foreign policy agendas. So when the Russian war on Ukraine began in February last year, there was lots of obviously Facebook posts and lots of obviously people talking about the war and how horrific it was and Russia's brutal invasion. But Facebook made a decision. They would allow certain kinds of posts to say it was acceptable for Ukrainians to say to kill Putin and kill Russians was okay. Those posts will be left up. They wouldn't be pulled down. Even though there was a call for violence, there was a call for humans to be killed. Now, I'm not defending Putin. I'm not

defending the Russian army by any means. But do you think that if a post of a Palestinian says that we should kill Netanyahu, we'll be left up? What do listeners think? Of course not. This is the difference. And Facebook was asked about this, and the response was, well, it's a complicated situation, and Russia's committing war crimes. Yeah, I agree. Russia is committing war crimes, but so is Israel. And again, there was a lot of documents I show in the book that it's very clear that over time, these companies want to align themselves with US foreign policy goals and the State Department agenda, and that also means supporting Israel. So when they're pressured by Israel to censor various posts of Palestinians, they're often

more than willing to do so. Yeah. And, you know, we see that time and again, right? There's not only the fact that these companies are, you know, often have offices in Israel and kind of have a relationship there, but Israeli authorities also have the resources to be flagging things and whatnot that Palestinians don't have. You gave us a good picture of what this looks like on the Palestinian side, right? As these technologies are rolled out, as all of this surveillance is used against Palestinians,

what it means for them to just kind of live in their day-to-day lives with all these checkpoints that they have to go through with all this surveillance that they're subjected to. I'm wondering as well, you know, obviously, as you described, the Israeli military and Israeli defense companies and, you know, even tech companies as well are developing these technologies by testing it and using it on Palestinians before selling it abroad. But I wonder if, you know, as this kind of occupation hardens and as Israeli society faces challenges to, you know, its this kind of occupation hardens and as Israeli society faces challenges to, you know, its limited democracy, as you've said, are those technologies also kind of being weaponized against the Israeli public as well as kind of the political mood starts to change there

and as the government takes a more kind of harder line stance? I mean, the short answer to that is possibly yes. And of course, I guess the context for that is, as listeners will be aware, in the last four or five months there's been massive protests in Israel against Netanyahu, hundreds of thousands of principally Israeli Jews. It's important to note that Bellini Palestinians are protesting. There's a reason for that because they don't feel a part of that movement. They're not that keen on saving Israeli democracy because democracy doesn't really serve them very well. But nonetheless, yes, there has been Israeli surveillance techniques used against Israeli Jewish protesters, yes.

Evidence that some people have been hacked by NSO Pegasus spyware. But the fundamental difference is that if and when an Israeli Jewish citizen in Israel is, say, maybe arrested, it is nothing like what happens to Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza. And even for that matter, if an Israeli settler in the West Bank is arrested, he's not treated, or she, is not treated in the same way as a Palestinian. I mean, just for listeners who are aware, Israel imprisons over currently a thousand Palestinians just in administrative detention. This is a euphemism which basically means you can arrest someone indefinitely. You don't have to charge them. You give some vague claim that they're supporting terrorism. I mean, Israel has arrested and imprisoned Palestinians

for writing Facebook posts. Now, I would argue most of the ones I mention some in the book are not calling for death to Jews. They're not. I'm not saying no one's ever written those posts. I'm sure people have. But the people who are often some prominent examples of people who are being arrested for Facebook posts is insane and goes, I guess, to the idea that Israel imposed a military occupation

in the West Bank against Palestinians. But yes, for sure, there are growing numbers of Israeli Jews, far too few though, let's be honest, who recognize the occupation always comes home. It always comes home. What happens over there, just so people are aware who don't know geography, if you're living in Tel Aviv, where a lot of so-called liberal Israeli Jews live, it takes you less than half an hour in a car to go to Palestine. Half an hour. And the vast, vast majority of Israeli Jews don't go there, have no interest to go there, don't care what goes on there. Now, yes, many serve in the military there, which of course is part of the problem, and very few Israeli Jews refuse service.

But I've rarely been to a country with such cognitive dissonance. I lived in East Jerusalem for four years between 2016 and 2020. I've been visiting Israel-Palestine now for close to 20 years, and I have a lot of Israeli-Jewish friends. The very small band of left-wing Israeli Jews, which you might like to think is getting bigger, actually is minuscule. There's no real Israeli left politically, sadly. There are people who claim to be Israeli leftists, but sadly the agenda of the opposition party,

Senetanyahu, are no different on the occupation. They're not interested in the occupation. The occupation for them, when you have a state of complete impunity, there's no reason to end it. It suits Israel just fine. They're not being punished for it. And in fact, as we're talking about here, the defense industry is soaring. After the Russian war on Ukraine the last year and a half, a lot of European countries are running to Israel, begging them, missile defense shields, spyware, help protect us from the potential

Russian invasion. I'm not minimising those risks in Europe by any means, but there's a reason why a lot of countries are going to Israel for that assistance. But yes, a lot of Israeli Jews are potentially at risk of being surveilled too. But there is still a real, it's cognitive dissonance, ignorance, willful blindness, that almost somehow for a lot of people, there is such a, and you get this from such a young age, both in the Israeli education system, but also, frankly, in the Jewish diaspora, that we have to protect ourselves no matter what

because of our history as Jews. And well, if Israel is doing that to Palestinians, maybe they deserve that. I mean, maybe this is what needs to happen. Maybe they're threatening us. Maybe we need to occupy them. Maybe we need to listen to their phone calls. Maybe we need to imprison them. This is the price of Jewish liberation. So the argument goes. And it's unbelievably dangerous and racist and ahistorical and also, frankly, as a Jew, contributes in my view to anti-Semitism against Jews. If you as a society say that Israel and Judaism are one and the same thing, which is what Israel essentially does and what the Jewish diaspora often says, then what about the many people, including Jews, who don't accept that connection?

So yeah, I am hoping, although I'm not expecting much, that more Israeli Jews wake up to what their country is doing in Palestine, how that's being exported globally. Yeah, it seems to have been a missed opportunity, you know, as all these protests were happening around Netanyahu's government and the Supreme Court reforms that they were trying to push through, you know, that there wasn't a recognition of the broader issues in the country and that, you know, you can't just have a democracy for one people and not for everyone, right? Asking that question, I want to broaden it out as well, right? Because you've given us many examples of how, you know, Israel sells

weapons in order to get favor with many other countries around the world, and how this is kind of a key part of its foreign policy and has been for many decades, right? In the book, you quote, Eli Pinko, former head of Israel's Defense Export Control Agency, who said, quote, it's either the civil rights in some country or Israel's right to exist, end quote. Putting that into context is the way that this is seen. Can you talk to us a bit about how Israel approaches arms sales and how this is part of how it sees defending itself? Israel will sell to anyone. It's the long and the short of it. There are some exceptions. They are, as far as we know, don't sell to North Korea, Syria, Iran. They have sold to Iran in the past before 79's revolution. And I suspect it's very conceivable in the years to come they'll sell to Iran again.

But as far as we're aware, there's a very few countries in the world they won't sell weapons to what they perceive as enemies of the state not that north korea particularly is much of an enemy but it's just such a pariah that they just probably don't want to piss off the americans but they'll sell to pretty much anyone now some listeners might say well the u.s sells weapons to anyone too true france germany does true but i guess there's a difference to me and i'm not i'm not supporting the american arms industry either or any other arms industry. Israel is now the 10th biggest arms exporter in the world. It's a tiny country. And Israel claims to be a light unto the nations. This is how it promotes itself, that it's somehow a moral beacon after the ashes of the Holocaust.

And the difference, I suppose, is although I think America did, for example, use the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as testing grounds for many new weapons, they weren't even shy about that. I mean, the wars were both complete disasters, but they were great for the defence industries, as listeners will be aware, I'm sure, that they did very well in the last 20 years, extremely well.

And they're very excited about the Ukraine war too, by the way. Yeah. And as you say about what happens in the war or the occupation zone coming home, that's exactly what we saw with Iraq and Afghanistan as well, right? Many of the technologies and weapons tested there ended up being deployed against the American public and people globally, basically. So Israel's arms industry is, if you ask them, we have checks and balances, we assess human rights. I mean, it is kind of funny when you speak to them about it.

The evidence is so overwhelming in the other direction. On paper, at least, or in theory, a company has to get an export license to sell weapon X to a country. That could be a spyware technology, drone, missile defense shield, whatever it may be. There obviously are a handful of large Israeli companies, Elbert's one, Raphael's another one, obviously NSO Group. There's a very interesting new company called Toka, T-O-K-A. I think I put this in the book, which is partly funded by Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, which essentially has the ability to change footage in security cameras. Now, just think about how potentially transformative that is to so many events.

Our societies are surrounded by security cameras. Everything's being filmed all the time. If there's an ability to change what is being seen, to insert other footage into that feed, that is a tool that is being promoted and sold by Israeli company called Toka, T-O-K-A. And you can imagine many countries would be pretty keen on that technology. A lot of probably local governments and a lot of people, police forces, would be pretty keen on that technology too. So anything dystopian you can imagine, Israel's invented it.

I go into in the book in obviously huge numbers of examples, but... Maybe it's good for me to note a few of those examples that, you know, I was looking over my notes before we talked, right? And I didn't make note of all of them, but just like, you know, some of the really egregious cases of where these weapons were sold, like, you know, to the Hutus during the Rwandan genocide. Israel was training death squads in Colombia, trained and armed the Chilean army under Pinochet, you know, arming South Sudan, arming apartheid South Africa, selling weapons to Iran under the Shah, as you said.

They worked with Suharto in Indonesia, selling weapons to Iran under the Shah, as you said. They worked with Suharto in Indonesia, armed Sri Lanka against the Tamil Tigers, Myanmar while it was committing genocide against the Rohingyas. Say what you will about arms industries, but these are many examples of times when you'd think that there would be like, even if you're going to sell arms to terrible people around the world, those are probably times when you probably wouldn't want to be doing that, right? Especially if you want to claim that there's any kind of human rights checks and balances and export controls and things like that. You know, obviously that's a long history there. That's not just in the past few years. Absolutely. And, but again, it comes down to Paris, one word, impunity. That's it.

They sell it because no one stops them. They sell it because there's a demand for it and they're going to get money for it and they are going to possibly get diplomatic support in the UN. I mean, Israel is aware in the last decades, and I have lots of quotes in the book, that a lot of the world doesn't like its occupation. It doesn't like it. It opposes it on paper. It opposes it on paper. Palestinians deserve human rights. I mean, the Arab countries for decades have been saying this, two-state solution, Israel has to end the occupation.

It's terrible. So what have we seen in the last 10 years or so? Israel has now become officially friends with UAE, Bahrain, and unofficial friends with Saudi Arabia. He's selling the most horrendous spyware to all those nations. I talk in the book at length about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist who I'm sure listeners will remember was killed a number of years ago in the Turkish consulate in Istanbul. There's strong evidence that Saudi knew where Khashoggi was going to be, when he was going to be doing his movements because of

Israeli spyware put on his phone and friends' phones. The company NSO Group has denied that, but in my view, their denials are bollocks. And it's not like his death really caused much of a policy change. Initially, the world was outraged and everyone was getting upset with MBS, the Saudi dictator. And I think for a few short weeks, Israel wasn't sure if they were going to keep on selling technology and spyware to Saudi Arabia. And you'll be shocked to know, didn't make a damn difference. Netanyahu, in fact, I have in the book, says, keep selling. You think Israel cares if they kill a journalist? In fact, this month, the Community Project Journalist has released a report, in fact, saying that in the last 20 years,

20 Palestinian journalists killed, the vast majority killed by Israel. Nothing's been investigated. There's no accountability. That's how they view journalists. That's how they view the media, expendable. And so, as you say, there is a long, long, long list of countries that Israel is selling technology to. And I guess what I try and do in the book is humanise it

because often this can be the numbers and can just feel a bit overwhelming. So I speak to a leading activist in Togo, a country no one ever really thinks about in Africa, where it's an awful dictatorship where a lot of her friends start disappearing and being arrested and they had no idea why that was. And why? Because the regime had NSO spyware put on people's phones. And of course, the regime could look at all their WhatsApp messages.

It also makes people realize, hopefully, reading this book, that as much as we get told and sold the idea that we should use secure apps like Signal, I'm not against Signal particularly, but just to be clear, if your phone is compromised, it doesn't matter what apps you've got, it makes not a damn bit of difference. So just so people are aware of that. The only secure way is not to use a phone. Now, I'm not saying that's a practical way to live our lives, but that's the reality. I also speak to, as I think I said before, Mexico is the biggest user of Pegasus spyware. Initially, it was bought as a way to fight the drug war, allegedly.

As a small side note, some listeners will remember when Sean Penn went to Mexico years ago and to find El Chapo, who was then the world's biggest drug lord. And in the end, El Chapo was captured and now he's in a US supermax prison and no doubt will die there in the coming decades. But one of the reasons that the Mexicans could find El Chapo through Sean Penn was the use of Pegasus. That's kind of an amazing, crazy story. That's not the moving story I wanted to recall briefly. I speak to a woman whose husband was killed. He was a respected journalist who did a lot of work reporting on corruption and cartel work in Mexico, and he was murdered. In the West, people often say, have you got nothing to hide? What do you worry about?

This argument you hear all the time. Sure, I don't love the fact that Facebook can read all my messages, but I've got nothing to hide. Why do I care? So the argument goes. Well, firstly, we all all have secrets so that's nonsense and secondly that's such a privileged position maybe a lot of people listening don't have life and death secrets maybe they don't but if you're a journalist in vast parts of the world or an activist or just a human in mexico or lots of other places you do have secrets you're trying to keep secrets away from people who want to harm you. So this journalist was murdered and I interviewed his wife

who just said this is the utter horror of, A, discovering not just that her husband was murdered but then discovering that her own phone was also surveilled. The authorities, probably the police, probably the government, there's never real transparency about what happened and why, wanted to find out who she was speaking to so her life is also in jeopardy because of what happened to her husband. So I interviewed people in India where India is also a massive user

of lots of other surveillance and people who are trying to investigate or challenge government corruption or repression are increasingly finding that they're up against governments with massive amounts of power. And until there is a real move to regulate these surveillance tools, the problem is no one wants to do it because no country wants to lose access to those tools. You know, just finally, the Biden administration a few years ago put export bans on NSO Group, which on paper sounded great. They said, we're against human rights abuses and this Israeli company and one other one is committing abuses and they shouldn't have the right to work in America. Okay, well, that sounds great on paper. A few problems with that.

A, a lot of other israeli firms are doing exactly the same thing and then b as the new york times has reported extensively the u.s government still works with nso group is using pegasus so as is so often the case they were going for the headline they being the u. US government under Biden. But in reality, and I can say also one thing on that, I think a lot of the war that the US is fighting on Israeli spyware is jealousy. The US wants to have global dominance through the NSA, and Israel is seen as a threat. Israel is a threat to its own intelligence gathering services. So they're trying to quash any potential competition.

I can definitely see that being the case. We know how the US is. And, you know, on that piece on competition, obviously, right now, we're seeing the US is very focused on China as a major kind of technological competitor, right? And, you know, some of the things that we hear very often is that, you know, Chinese technology needs to be sanctioned, needs to be kind of cut off so it can't develop any further. There's a lot of concern around Chinese selling similar or even more advanced technologies to many governments around the world who are then using them and deploying them in the ways that you've been talking about. What do you make of that? Yeah, there's something I really wanted to put in the book because what I found in the last years, when I started looking into this book,

China was kind of a friend. People often forget this now, but China was our great mate until not that long ago. Post 9-11, the US and Britain and China were having regular meetings to talk about how to fight terrorism. This was the case until 2015, 16, 17, really. No one cared about the Uyghurs. I'm not saying no one. I mean, I'm talking about the governments didn't care. I'm not saying people didn't care, but in general, governments didn't care. Obviously, things changed during the Trump era and with COVID. Sure, they won't go into all the details of that, but things have certainly shifted. And you're right, now there is a new Cold War, which I view very cynically and with concern. And as I say in the book, there's no doubt that China has developed probably now the most sophisticated forms of surveillance on the planet against its own people, everything from spyware, facial recognition, biometrics, all this goes on and on and on, both deployed against just all citizens but also particular minorities they don't like. And that is, as I say in the book, exported to other countries around the world now

too, and that is a deep concern. But what I say in, why isn't there equal concern about Israeli technology? Repression doesn't really care if it has a Chinese or Israeli flag. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. And to me, there is unquestionably no comparison between the number of countries that Israel has sold and is selling repressive tech compared to China. Israel is way ahead by a mile. Now, could that change in years to come? Obviously, China's massively powerful, much bigger. It's possible, sure. But right now, where it stands in 2023, to me it's incomparably true that israeli repressive tech is as much if not more of a threat to global democracy and privacy and human rights than chinese repressive tech which is also a threat but is not in the media viewed and even close to

the same way yeah no i think, I think it's a really good point. And, you know, certainly we've seen a bunch of media reporting on, you know, unit 8200 in the past and all of the startups coming out of Israel and, you know, framed in this really positive way. Obviously we had the backlash on the NSO group stuff, but, you know, not a wider kind of backlash or kind of criticism to a lot of those surveillance technologies that are being deployed and sold from Israel. We've talked about the export of weapons, but one of the things in the book that you say is really important is also kind of the export of an ethno-nationalist ideology that has taken root in Israel and that is increasingly kind of being adopted

well beyond Israel as well, right? We can see places like Hungary, we can see it taking root in the United States, we can see many European countries heading in that direction. I guess we could say India as well with kind of the Hindu nationalism that is going on there. You know, describe this ideology for us and how Israel's actions, you know, help to ensure that other countries are moving in this direction as well. So Israel has always been and is becoming increasingly so a Jewish ethno-nationalist state. It proclaims that it's a Jewish state. If you're not Jewish, you're not treated the same way. You're often a second-class citizen. A few years ago, a Jewish nation-state law declared that

Judaism is the primary identity of the state. So if you're not Jewish, then you're not an equal citizen. So Israel is not ashamed of that. In fact, it's proud of it. And what I sort of try to do in the book is explain, and it's the concern that I've had for a long time, is that I see increasingly not just countries admiring Israel and wanting to copy it. So when you mention Hungary or India, that's true. Hungary under Orban is, how would you describe it, quasi-democratic. It's not a full-blown dictatorship, but it's certainly only quasi-democratic. It increasingly wants to be a Christian ethno-nationalist state. Orban and Netanyahu are very close. They see an ideological alignment with each other. They also both loathe Palestinians and Muslims. So that helps. India under Modi, as you rightly say, is a Hindu

fundamentalist state. Again, quasi-democratic, not a full-blown dictatorship, but certainly going in that direction. There are anti-Muslim pogroms. It's important to note, though, that I'm not saying that India or, for example, Hungary needs Israel to do horrible things. Modi is going to Modi. Modi is going to do his thing. But it's very interesting in the last years, and I give details of this in the book, a growing ideological affinity. You know, a few years ago, there was Indian officials saying that they deeply admire what

Israel is doing in the West Bank, namely bringing in a lot of Jewish settlers to settle Palestinian land. And they want to do exactly the same thing in Kashmir. Kashmir is a Muslim majority area. And what they're increasingly doing is bringing in Hindus from the southern part of India. Now, does India need Israel for that alone? No, they don't. But Israel sort of held up as a model because Israel can say, sadly, with some justification, no one's stopping what we're doing. We can act with impunity. The world essentially has accepted us. Yes, there's opposition and there's noisy people on the left who don't like us. Who cares? Bottom line, we can do what we want.

And what disturbs me is obviously that, but also the growth in elements of the global far right, who traditionally don't like Jews. When you have neo-Nazis at their rallies, often waving the Israeli flag, now some people might go, sorry, what? How does that even compute? It computes not because they like Jews, because for them, their vision, not that one can say all neo-Nazis have the same vision, but their vision in general is of a ethno-nationalist, probably Christian state. And they love what Israel's doing. Not because they're Jews, because they're pursuing what they view as a Jewish supremacy agenda. And they want to do exactly the same thing with the Christian ethno-nationalist agenda. So Israel, again, is a model. And also they love the war on terror rhetoric. I mean, I say this in the book, but after 9-11, when the US adopted a war on terror,

both policy-wise and rhetorically, Israel had been there for decades. And a lot of what the US did post 9-11 was modelled on Israel's so-called war on terror against Palestinians and Lebanese decades before. So when you have people like Richard Spencer, who is not as well-known as he was a few years ago, who's an alt-right so-called leader, if that's not a contradiction in terms, who openly says, I'm a white Zionist. Now, that's a very revealing line. Now, I've never spoken to Richard Spencer, thankfully, but I suspect he doesn't like Jews very much, but he loves how Israel is dominating the land, doesn't care what Western human rights organisations say,

is proudly pushing their agenda. That's what he wants in America. Now, these views in the US and many Western states are on the fringes, but as you rightly say, they're actually becoming far more mainstream. And that's why when you have, for example, in Germany, the AfD, who is in the parliament there, it's a minority, but it's the far-right German political party, who might say openly, often anti-Semitic, openly anti-Semitic with Nazi overtones, big fans of Israel. Now, if Israel was rational, which arguably they're not, they'd be pretty worried about that. They would say, hang on a minute, we don't want to be friends with political parties that have neo-Nazi backgrounds.

But sadly, Israel, and not just under Netanyahu, he accelerated, but it wasn't that different when he wasn't in power, are happy to foment those kinds of relations this kind of it's a loose quasi-global coalition of either religious supremacists and those who completely reject the so-called western ideas and not that i'm uncritical of this i am but so-called western ideas of democracy, human rights, equal rights, rights for all citizens, gay rights, all those kinds of rights. And a lot of these states reject it. They say, we don't want that. Not interested in that. We reject all that. And as you said before, yes, Israel likes to proclaim that it has gay rights, but let's be very clear about that. A, it doesn't apply to Palestinians, and B, one thing that Israel

is now facing because it has allowed this cancerous mutation to grow for decades within its own borders and in the West Bank is a settler movement which is a minority of the population but has a much higher birth rate than so-called liberal Jews that has now essentially taken over the country. And I'm not just talking about Netanyahu's time, I'm talking about in the last, frankly, 50-odd years. That's where Israel is going, I fear, a trajectory towards

the great fear is ethnic cleansing. There is a growing constituency amongst Israeli Jewish population to ethnically cleanse Palestinians to finish what they claim wasn't done in 1948. Kick out as many Palestinians as possible to where Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, God knows. And years ago, you know, Paris, I would have said, oh, the world wouldn't accept that. That's just an outrageous thought. Now I think, really, who's going to stop them? Now, I'm not saying no one would. I mean, it's hard to predict how that plays out. But the Arab countries would complain, but be happy to take Israeli spyware. EU would

release a stern press release. And the US, well, depends. If Trump was president, he'd be celebrating and clapping. If it's a Democrat like Biden, who knows what he would do? I'm not sure. But this to me is the mood within Israel, and that's what many in the global far right, they admire that. They admire the fact that ethnic cleansing is on the agenda, which it is in Israel. It's not like it's a view held by two or three people. It's not. Most of the polling there suggests a sizable and growing minority of Israeli Jews support ethnic cleansing. I mean, it's scary stuff. So yeah, it's a pretty grim way to end it, but that's the situation. Yeah, it is pretty grim, but I think it's a

sobering conversation more generally, right? Not only to understand what is really going on in this part of the world, but also the relationship between the military that is enabling this occupation, undertaking this occupation, and the technologies and the tech industry that is very much supporting that, very much profiting from it, and using it to test and develop and sell more weapons. And I think that is something that we need to understand, not just in the Israeli case, you know, as we talk about in this podcast very frequently, how the US tech industry has its roots in the US military and comes out of the defense industry. And so these relationships happen everywhere. But I think it's particularly important right now, you know, as you have an apartheid state like Israel, and we need to be paying attention to that, right? Anthony, I really

appreciate you taking the time. There's so much more we could have talked about from the book, but thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Anthony Lowenstein is an independent journalist and the author of The Palestine Laboratory, How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World. You can follow Anthony on Twitter at Ant Lowenstein. You can follow me at Paris Marks, and you can follow the show at at Tech Won't Save Us. Tech Won't Save Us is produced by Eric Wickham and is part of the Harbinger Media Network.

And if you want to support the work that goes into making the show every week, you can go to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and become a supporter. Thanks for listening. សូវាប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់� Thank you.