The Palestine Laboratory: Exporting Occupation Technology (w/ Antony Loewenstein) | The Chris Hedges Report

Gaza has become a testing ground for Israeli and Western weapons and surveillance tools — technologies that will inevitably be used to target populations across the globe.

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Filmmaker, author and journalist Antony Loewenstein documents how Israel has used Gaza as a weapons showcase. Spyware, killer drones, robot dogs and other weapons are debuted in Gaza and field-tested on the civilian population, demonstrating their effectiveness to regimes around the world that await their chance to purchase them.

Loewenstein joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to chronicle what he has learned from writing The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World and producing The Palestine Laboratory, a documentary based on the book.

“I think the whole idea of what Israel…has been showing the world, I say two things. One, what weapons you can use to murder, kill, target Palestinians but also how to get away with it. I think Israel sells that concept,” Loewenstein explains.

As spyware companies like Pegasus and Paragon and arms companies like Elbit and Rafael see business boom, Loewenstein argues countries have a moral imperative to end trading with Israel. These same technologies perpetuating the genocide in Gaza, Loewenstein explains, will come back to haunt the citizenry of purchasing countries.

“All these governments around the world, whether they’re so-called democratic or repressive, are obsessed with these tools. They can’t give them up. They’re desperate to listen to their opponents, to the journalists, to activists,” Loewenstein remarks.

“It’s very hard for these regimes to give them up because there’s no regulation. There’s just none. It just doesn’t exist.”

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Host

Chris Hedges

Producer:

Max Jones

Intro:

Diego Ramos

Crew:

Diego Ramos, Sofia Menemenlis and Thomas Hedges

Transcript:

Diego Ramos

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Transcript

Chris Hedges

The film series, The Palestine Laboratory, adapted from Antony Loewenstein’s book of the same name and broadcast on Al Jazeera English, documents how Israel uses Palestinians trapped in Gaza and the West Bank as a weapons testing laboratory before selling these weapons systems.

Israeli drones, surveillance technology including spyware, facial recognition software, and biometric gathering infrastructure, along with smart fences, experimental bombs, AI-controlled machine guns missiles and satellites are used around the globe by governments seeking to control their own populations and those attempting to cross their borders.

Israel is the 9th biggest weapons producer in the world.

The genocide in Gaza has only fueled its booming arms industry. The Palestinians are the human laboratory rats used by the Israeli military intelligence services and arms and technology industries to test out its weapons systems and surveillance technology. Once used on a captive population in Gaza, often with lethal results, these weapons and technologies are certified as “battle-tested” and sold.

Israel sells its technology and weapons to an estimated 130 nations, including military dictatorships in Asia and Latin America. Annual Israeli arms sales reached a new record in 2024, for the fourth consecutive year, amounting to double the value of exports of five years ago. Weapons exports totaled nearly $14.8 billion last year, up from $13 billion in 2023 — the previous record high. Between 2018 and 2020, that number hovered between $7.5 billion and $8.5 billion.

Israel’s weapons trade is also about selling an idea, one embraced by the climate fortresses in Europe and the United States. Populations, whether Palestinian or North African migrants, considered superfluous can be trapped, monitored and controlled with Israeli weapons and technologies.

Joining me to discuss this use of Palestinians as human guinea pigs for the Israeli weapons and technology industry and the consequences for the rest of us is Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.

So Antony, many of the weapons systems, surveillance systems, technologies that you write about in the book and that you document in the film are now ubiquitous on the Mexican border. You have a scene in the film where Sikh farmers are protesting and they’re suddenly over their heads are Israeli drones firing tear gas canisters.

And then after that I really want to talk about the very sophisticated surveillance technology that’s been used on Palestinians and not just Pegasus as you point out there are many systems of monitoring the facial recognition everything else but let’s start with these technologies that have been first used in places like Gaza and the West Bank, that we are now part of our own landscape.

Antony Loewenstein

You know, one of the reasons I wrote the book, The Palestine Laboratory, initially, which came out in May 23 [2023], which obviously was before October 7, was to show that Israel for decades, and this started long before 9/11, I really argue that it started in 1948, if not before, it accelerated after ‘67 when Israel took control, of course, of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, where they had far more Palestinians to control or manage, so to speak, that the huge amounts of technology they were using, as you say in the modern era, we’re talking about drones in Gaza since October 7, quadcopters, killer drones essentially, AI [artificial intelligence]-enabled warfare.

I mean, the whole argument of using AI for warfare, of course, those who argue for it say it makes war cleaner and nicer when in fact the reality was, as we saw in Gaza, and this came from sources that I spoke to within Israel who were saying the aim wasn’t pinpoint targeting, it was mass destruction.

I mean, clearly we saw that in the first months especially, that huge amounts of Palestinians, the vast, vast, vast majority of were civilians, men, women and children, were killed, vast areas destroyed. And a lot of the so-called targeting, when I talk about targeting, I’m talking about, in Israel, this is what Israel claims, which I question, were going after Hamas leaders of any rank from the lowest to the highest.

The problem is that Israel views anyone who’s associated with Hamas in Gaza as a terrorist when the fact is the vast, vast majority have nothing to do with military infrastructure. They may be working in a government building or a government office. And Hamas has controlled Gaza for many years before October 7, and frankly still does in at least half of the territory.

So AI warfare, and I have this scene in the film by one of the journalists who broke this story, Meron Rapoport, who essentially says, and I’m paraphrasing him, and for those who don’t understand this, when an Israeli journalist wants to report a story on anything to do with military or intelligence, it needs to be approved by an Israeli censor.

There’s no other Western country in the world where this is required. So they submit a story, TV, print, online, radio, whatever it may be, and it may be approved or it may not be approved. I mean, it’s an insane situation, utterly draconian and authoritarian.

And this story on AI was approved, it was therefore published and got a lot of attention, but he said one of the reasons he thought it had been approved was because the Israeli military wanted the world to see what they had been doing in Gaza and therefore other countries may want to buy it. And I think the whole idea of what Israel — again, long before October 7 but certainly since — has been showing the world, I say two things. One, yes, what weapons you can use to murder, kill, target Palestinians but also how to get away with it.

I think Israel sells that concept. And since October 7, frankly, I would argue that Israel has gotten away with it. There’s no, and we can talk about the slow public opinion globally, which is turning against Israel, to be sure. But in terms of Western governments, with a few exceptions, it’s been rock solid.

Chris Hedges

I want to talk about AI because it’s built, as you write in the book and as you document in the film, on very sophisticated profiles that are gathered about Palestinians. You can explain, I forget, it’s wolf something, red wolf and something else, I forget. But what’s interesting is that then those profiles are fed to AI.

So there’s no human decision there. This may be, I may be paraphrasing, but what you’re doing is killing people for suspected intentions. You’re not actually targeting or killing people for anything that they’ve done. But let’s talk about the systems of monitoring, control, and surveillance, because they’re extremely sophisticated and extremely detailed. And again, these systems are being picked up by all sorts of governments around the world. But tell us how they work.

Antony Loewenstein

So there’s two systems briefly. In the West Bank, what you are talking about is Red Wolf, Blue Wolf. Essentially, it’s a system where Israeli soldiers which are maintaining the occupation have a system on their phone. They document every day details of Palestinians. So that could be what they do, where they go, what they say, where they work, what they look like. They take photos of their faces. It’s put into a database.

Not that anyone has access to that, of course, but it’s a database that essentially is monitoring and documenting every single Palestinian without the knowledge of the Palestinians themselves but it impacts if they want to, for example, go from point A to point B.

A Palestinian might want to go outside the country to study in the US, which is unlikely now under Trump, but study somewhere outside Palestine. But it requires Israeli permission to do so, to get a permit to leave and often they are rejected. And the reason Israel will give is security reasons, which is usually nonsense.

And essentially that’s been gathered based on some random piece of information that Israel has gained from this intelligence gathering. In Gaza, after October 7, Israel was clearly desperate on revenge. There’s no other way to put it. And what they had been gaining for years of gathering intelligence on Palestinians in Gaza, not just Hamas, but any Palestinian, there was roughly 2.3 million Palestinians in the territory, far less now of course, and they would be gathering a range of information.

If any Palestinian wanted to leave Gaza before October 7th, and I had some friends who wanted to leave to study, to work, you needed to go through this insane process of permissions and then interrogation by Israel, which often Israelis would ask, even friends of mine, they said no.

Will you be a spy for us? If you do, we’ll give you more permission. It’s a deeply ugly occupation. So when October 7 happened, Israel was desperate for new targets. Who are we going to bomb? Who are we going to attack? Who are we going to get revenge on? And as you say, they’re fed into an AI system, which was importantly backed by a cloud system supported by Silicon Valley companies — Amazon, Google, and others.

Israel could not survive this system without Silicon Valley help. And that accelerated after October 7. Microsoft, Palantir, all these firms have offered and provided massive cloud space because Israel wants to save and document all this information about all Palestinians in Gaza, essentially.

So it’s fed into a system and it spits out so-called targets. And as you say, as far as we know, and of course, there’s never been an open and transparent investigation into how the system works, there is maybe a 15 to 20 second human interaction.

A target appears on someone’s screen, they say yes or no. Does that person live, Chris, or does that person die? And what we saw after October 7 was mass destruction. This idea that Israel was arguing falsely from the beginning, clearly now we know it was complete bullshit, is that they were looking for mass targets. They were looking for mass destruction.

As we say in the film, or one of the journalists talks about it, whereas before legally Israeli lawyers would give permission to maybe go after a Hamas leader and kill five or six or seven civilians. That was justified under collateral damage, a term that I never used because I think it’s an insanely disgusting one. Killing civilians, basically.

After October 7, the legal limits were off. You could go after or justify going after some alleged Hamas leader, militant Hamas member, whoever it may be and therefore justify killing hundreds of civilians, including their families, who have nothing to do with anything.

So AI targeting has become in Israel or Gaza ubiquitous. And I know that other countries will want to use the same system and want to get advice from Israel on how to do it, including, which is why I think the Palantirs, the Amazons, the Googles and others were so keen to provide that service of cloud support for Israel.

The money for them wasn’t that huge. Israel is a relatively small country. There are many countries with bigger populations. But they used it also as a model to show what massive cloud services can do in the act of mass killing and mass targeting. And finally, those companies to me are legally liable. No question about that in their direct involvement and complicity in genocide.

Chris Hedges

Let’s talk about cameras. So you have scenes in Hebron where, I mean, they’re putting cameras on rooftops, there are sensors in the ground. They even have a shot at one point of, I don’t know whether it fires grenades or whatever it is.

Talk a little bit about that system. So it’s not just that they’re tracking and have profiles, but they’re also just constantly surveilling in real time.

Antony Loewenstein

Well in a place like Hebron, which, for those who don’t know, is a city in the West Bank, which is probably the most extreme example of apartheid, where in the centre of the city you have hundreds of Israeli settlers, fundamentalists, the most extreme genocidal fanatics, many of whom have moved in fact from the US and Australia to be there, and thousands and thousands and thousands of Palestinians.

So in that tiny tinderbox, you have a combination of cameras put in by the Israeli military and different cameras put in by the Israeli settlers. So there’s two different systems. And we have in there Issa Amro, who’s an incredibly brave Palestinian activist. He lives there. He refuses to be kicked out. Eventually, I fear he will have no choice.

But he has remained there steadfast to stay, to document, to talk about what’s going on. And yes, there’s a combination of monitoring people’s movements, but also it’s gathering biometric data about an individual, which goes back to what I said before, that Israel is gathering all this information, putting it into a huge database, it’s the architecture of control.

And I think what a lot of people who don’t know how the occupation works need to realise that this is what can decide whether you have any kind of freedom to go from a village to another town. Israeli soldiers will block you going if they have some information on their phone when you get to a checkpoint that says this person’s a security threat, which in 99.9% of cases complete bollocks of course, but that’s what the soldiers are seeing.

It’s a system that by definition dehumanises Palestinians. So in Hebron itself, it’s at its most extreme, the most extreme example of dozens, if not hundreds of cameras impacting people’s ability to get even to their own homes. I mean, Hebron itself, and some people will have maybe seen this footage, not just in my film, but in general.

In the major parts of the old town where Palestinians used to live and thrive, all the doors have been essentially blocked off. Palestinians can’t get into their own homes. They can’t walk down their own streets. I mean, there’s no greater example of what apartheid is when you literally can’t walk down your own street.

While an Israeli settler who may well have moved from New York last week or Sydney can. So Hebron, within the West Bank, that is the laboratory. There’s actually a film a few years ago made about this very subject, not mine, but a different Israeli filmmaker, which said that Hebron is the model for Israel.

They test various forms of control within Hebron, which then export around the West Bank. And you see that when you go there, it’s the most extreme form of... I mean, when you go there, it’s completely suffocating. I’m a visitor. I don’t live there. I’m not comparing myself at all to a Palestinian who has to suffer that every day.

And the impact of that, Chris, is, of course, the many Palestinians have left, which makes sense, because you cannot... How do you live in that hothouse 24/7. It’s kind of impossible, which is exactly what the Israeli settlers want.

Chris Hedges

Let’s talk about not just filming, but these cameras based on movements, there’s a description where somebody said, you may have had a fight with your brother or something and walk out in the street and you appear angry. Then these systems react.

Antony Loewenstein

Yeah. One of the things, that was Mona Shtaya, who’s a Palestinian activist from Ramallah, who essentially was saying that what these systems do is they’re able to, I mean, in some ways it plays into the most ugly stereotypes of how many in the West and Israel view Arabs. They’re always angry. This is how the argument goes. They’re always angry. They’re always pissed off about something. And therefore they’re a threat to us.

This is how the language or the ideology works. And these systems essentially, and she says, and it’s an important part of this conversation, essentially says that we need to, we being Palestinians, therefore need to look not angry, kind of normal, kind of not pissed off, which of course also actually says impacts what you can write on social media.

If you are seen to be angry, if you are seen to be critical of Israel, and there’s lots of examples, right, of huge amounts of Palestinian civilians and journalists being arrested for what I would call pre-crime. They haven’t killed anyone, they haven’t harmed anyone.

They may write something critical of Israeli occupation and the impact of post-October 7 and many Palestinian friends of mine who still live in Palestine say we have self-censored. We’ve self-censored ourselves hugely because we are scared of speaking honestly about what we are thinking, what we are feeling and that’s the impact, that’s the impact of what dehumanisation is.

So yes, you’re right, cameras can determine people’s supposed feelings, their anger, and therefore can determine their freedom of movement. But it’s actually worse than that. It is also one’s online presence. And I think in the film she calls it digital orientalism or digital colonialism, which is essentially what it is. That on paper you have freedom to write on Facebook or TikTok or whatever, but actually in practice you don’t because the impact of that can put you in jail or can make you suffer by the Israelis.

Chris Hedges

Let’s talk about the weapons themselves. You focus on Elbit. You go to arms fairs where Israel is selling these weapons. Let’s talk a little bit about those weapons and how they’re used in places like Gaza.

Antony Loewenstein

In the film we say that Israel is the ninth biggest arms dealer in the world. Actually, they’ve become the eighth now. The eighth biggest arms dealer in the world. They’re actually growing. And I suspect when we get the figures for 2025, which we’ll get next year, my guess is the figures will be higher again.

And there are a handful of major companies and smaller companies. There’s the Elbits, the Rafaels and others who appear at global arms fairs, including many in the Arab world. There’s been lots of examples, including since October 7, of these companies proudly parading themselves, really, and showing, including, I mean, it’s sort of remarkable to see it’s often these companies now are so brazen about showing videos of their weapons being used and tested in Gaza on civilians.

I mean, they say they’re terrorists, but in majority cases they’re not, to say they work, they’re battle tested and that is seen as appealing to many, many nations around the world. One of the things about these companies is, and we saw this in the film too, that Elbit is a weapons company but it’s also a surveillance company.

So along the US-Mexico border you have all these, in Arizona where I was last year, there were all these surveillance towers that essentially are used to both “monitor migrants” but also Native Americans who are indigenous to that land.

And since Trump has come in, those Elbit systems are now being incorporated with Anduril, the American so-called defense company, to try to, I guess, even solidify even stronger the US-Mexico border.

You know, these companies, Chris, are growing and surging. And after October 7, there was a realization amongst many in Israel, even though there’s been no real tangible arms sanctions on Israel that have been of any significance.

Increasingly Israel realises that they have to build the weapons themselves within their own country. In other words, the majority of weapons they’ve been getting have come from the US and Germany, particularly since October 7. And Israel has realised in the fear that they get boycotted by someone, the US, hard to imagine now, but at some point that they have the weapons they need in their view themselves, that they build themselves.

And so Elbit and others are increasingly building more factories within Israel itself to try to make themselves more self-reliant. I read a lot of the Israeli business press for my sins. And although there’s been in the last few months some concerns, you know, Spain in Europe at least, has been one of the more critical nations around the Gaza genocide and has cancelled around one billion US dollars of contracts with the Israeli government, which was quite significant.

I mean, they shouldn’t have organised them in the first place, but nonetheless they did. And that was the first time, Chris, that I can remember in living memory that there was some concern in the Israeli arms industry that maybe, just maybe, this surging year-on-year increase in profits could be challenged or arrested.

And what that showed to me is very clear. A lot of countries have a lot of power to seriously challenge that massively profitable industry if they choose to use it. And the vast majority of nations still have not.

Chris Hedges

Can you detail some of the weapons they’ve tested out on Palestinians? I know you had pictures of, I think they were kind of remote controlled mortars, of course you had drones, but what are some of the cutting edge weapon systems that have been used against the Palestinians in Gaza?

Antony Loewenstein

There’s been a number. Israel has been using quadcopters, essentially killer drones, killing huge amounts of...

Chris Hedges

Explain how a quadcopter works, what its capabilities are. There are pictures you have, I guess they have machine guns, but just explain what they can do and how they work.

Antony Loewenstein

Exactly. So these are drones, people know what drones look like, they are flying munitions essentially, they often have machine guns attached to them, they’re able to fly drones relatively stable and can shoot people, kill people, target people, target huge amounts of civilians and there’s vast amounts of evidence that that’s been happening in the last two years.

There’s been increasing use of robot dogs which has been present in when that was being tested along the US-Mexico border was tested along the Israel-Gaza border before October 7. It’s been used mostly to monitor rather than to kill people, often being sent into buildings to try to gather intelligence.

I mean the AI warfare we talked about but that’s been a huge massive use of weaponry both in terms of munitions but also intelligence gathering. And it’s worth saying this, that there’s an American drone company called Skydio that sent Israel drones after October 7. And Israel used them in Gaza, and now many, many American cities have these drones flying above them day in, day out.

Now, I’m not saying they’ve solely been battle tested in Palestine. They existed before October 7. But certainly they have a role. They’re a large American company, and they get barely any media coverage whatsoever.

So huge amounts of American cities use these drones now, often by police forces to monitor and often I think protests and so-called civil unrest. And another element that’s been really terrifying for many Palestinian friends of mine in Gaza, and this is something we show in the film that has happened in the West Bank before, but it accelerated in Gaza, is drones suddenly appear at night time, emitting sounds of babies crying.

Someone walks out of their tent, what is going on, where is this coming from? This sound is coming from a speaker on a drone. Someone comes out of their tent or a house or whatever they live in in Gaza and then the person is killed. There’s huge amounts of documented evidence of this. This is on one hand psychological terror but also actual terror, what can anyone say about that?

Just the level of ugliness and hatred and I mean, one tries to get into the mind of someone who would design that, it’s kind of impossible if you’re a human, decent person, That’s some of the weapons, Chris. There are many others, and it’s also worth saying that although Israel has been testing many weapons, many other countries have been looking to what Israel is doing and working with them to work for their own militaries.

I’m talking particularly about many Western countries, the Americans, British, Australians and others have been working alongside the Israelis in different ways, some more than others, of course the Americans are more central than the others, the Germans.

Yeah, I mean I think for anyone who is sane, who looks at what’s been going on in Gaza, we say this should be an abomination and something that we oppose, but actually what I’m hearing privately is many countries, even those that oppose what Israel has been doing, privately, actually, there’s a degree of admiration, particularly in the Arab world.

When I say the Arab world, Arab elites. Now, it’s no secret that the Arab elites have hated Palestinians forever. That’s not exactly a secret. But since October 7, and there was a Washington Post report a few weeks ago that confirmed this, although I’ve heard this from elsewhere too, military-to-military relations between Israel and Arab states increased after October 7. Not decreased, increased.

Arab countries in the 2024 Israeli arms sales deals were the second biggest proportion of buyers of Israeli, particularly surveillance tech. They love the stuff. The Abraham Accords that Trump trumpets is really an arms deal. It’s always been an arms deal. And if Saudi and Israel and America sign a so-called normalisation deal, a lot of that is because Saudi wants certain weapons.

It’s from Israel and the US. That’s all it’s about. So, yeah, I mean, the Israeli arms industry, I should also finish just by saying, I don’t think it’s an industry that cannot be economically targeted. What I said before, the Spanish cancelling $1 billion of contracts shows it’s possible. It’s very, very possible if countries step up.

Chris Hedges

Let’s talk about Pegasus.

Antony Loewenstein

Pegasus got known years ago as this sort of infamous phone hacking tool, essentially, where an intelligence service or a government buys this tool. They then put it onto, usually, a dissident or journalist’s phone. Often it used to be through a text message, now it’s through... It doesn’t even need that. All the intelligence service needs is your phone number. That’s all it needs, your cell number.

It was hugely successful for Pegasus, as I talk about in the book and we talk a bit about in the film as well, in some ways this is what led me to write the book, Chris. I started this years ago, I was so frustrated that so much of the Western press coverage of this story focused on this supposedly rogue Israeli company, NSO Group, selling all this horrible technology to terrible regimes.

Now that’s not inherently untrue, but what most of the Western media coverage ignored, which was the elephant in the room, which was NSO Group essentially was an arm of the Israeli state. Yes, it’s a private company on paper, but essentially Netanyahu was using that as almost like a form of spyware diplomacy.

He was going around the world selling it to Rwanda and India and Hungary, etc. The last few years during the Biden era, the company had sanctions put on them. Their business decreased, but they’re still selling to many repressive regimes. In fact, just this month, November 2025, the company has been sold to an American consortium led by some major figures in Hollywood, go figure.

And one of its key leaders now, so to speak, is David Friedman, the former American ambassador to Israel appointed by Trump 1.0. There was a piece in the Washington Post just this week interviewing him, talking about this product, saying, we’re very optimistic. Sure, there were some mistakes made in the past but we’re looking forward to the future and we very much hope that sanctions are lifted because there’s still sanctions.

Trump has not lifted sanctions on NSO Group, which actually surprised me because the company spent, Chris, millions and millions on lobbying in Washington, which didn’t really work. My guess is now there’s a good chance that will be lifted. And therefore what the vision of NSO Group is partnering with the US government, US law enforcement, FBI, ICE, etc.

But it’s worth saying Pegasus is the tip of the iceberg. Pegasus in some ways is the most infamous case, but there are many other examples like Paragon and others. These are basically the most powerful weapons in the world that can control everything on your phone without you knowing.

And they threaten, as I show in the book, huge amounts of people in often states, from India to elsewhere, where if you’re a human rights activist or a lawyer, if all your details on your phone from clients or sources is taken, it’s a pretty legitimate question about how problematic that is.

We spent time in the film in Mexico, and Mexico has become the most obsessive use of Pegasus in the world. Like, they’re obsessed with it. And still using it now under the left-wing and right-wing governments there. So in the end, to be honest, the problem is not so much Pegasus. The problem is that much of the world, Chris, doesn’t want to regulate these damn tools. That’s the problem.

Chris Hedges

Why were the sanctions put on?

Antony Loewenstein

Well, the Biden administration claimed it was because they were concerned about human rights abuses by Pegasus, by NSO Group, the company. There were examples of Pegasus appearing on US diplomat phones in Africa.

And that was what led to certain forces in the Biden administration putting sanctions on the company. Now, I didn’t inherently oppose those sanctions, I think that was fine at the time. I saw the sanctions on NSO Group in a much more cynical way. There was a sense that many of the American defence sector in the spyware industry were pissed off, frankly, that Israeli companies were getting business over them.

This was an attempt by Washington to give a leg up to American spyware companies. But here we are, year one of the Trump administration and still Israeli companies are in the top three most popularly used spyware firms because, again, it comes to the same point.

All these governments around the world, Chris, whether they’re so-called democratic or repressive, are obsessed with these tools. They can’t give them up. They’re desperate to listen to their opponents, to the journalists, to activists. It’s very hard for these regimes to give them up because there’s no regulation. There’s just none. It just doesn’t exist.

Chris Hedges

Well, wasn’t Pegasus used on the phone of Jamal Khashoggi, do I have that right?

Antony Loewenstein

Absolutely. Indeed. Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Washington Post columnist, it was used on members of his family, of his partner, both before his murder by the Saudis and after. I mean, let’s be clear, that didn’t cause any sanctions on NSO Group. It wasn’t the core sanctions at all at the time. And, you know, for a short time, it wasn’t clear whether the Israelis and the Saudis would continue their business on that, but shock horror they did.

I mean, this is the whole myth about, we’ve only, well, at least those who advocate for this, let’s look forward to the day where Saudi and Israel are best of friends. Listen, they’ve been friends for years. It’s just, it hasn’t been signed on the White House lawn. They’re friends. They’re very, very good friends. And I think in years to come, what I see is the so-called Middle East future, how they view it, is Saudi and Israel as leading an autocratic future. That’s the vision.

That’s the Trump vision really, UAE [United Arab Emirates], Saudi and Israel leading an autocratic-style, occupation-friendly Middle East. I mean, that’s where this is going. And I mean, they already exist now and the vision so-called for Gaza is that, right? I mean, this is what the so-called 20 point peace plan partly is. It’s about imposing and Jared Kushner has talked about this proudly.

Look at a place like Dubai. If only we could have Dubai here in Gaza. As if a city built, I mean, as you would know, Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the UAE, apart from the fact it’s a regime supporting another genocide in Sudan, putting that aside, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are a city built by slaves from South Asia, maintained by slaves. I mean, it’s a slave environment.

I have friends of mine in the South Asian community who have campaigned for years against all these South Asian workers coming from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and others who go to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, built this city up in this glittering metropolis. But actually they’re treated like not just second class citizens but slaves. If that’s the vision for Gaza, then God help us.

Chris Hedges

One of the points you make in the book and the film is that because many states, especially like India, buy so many weapon systems from Israel, they do Israel’s bidding on the international stage. So traditionally India has stood from the beginning for decades with the Palestinians. That’s all changed under [Narendra] Modi. And you really attribute that to the arms trade.

Antony Loewenstein

The arms trade is definitely part of that. You say, traditionally India, which is now the biggest country in the world population-wise, run by what I would call a Hindu fundamentalist as Modi and his party, the BJP, that arms was a major factor.

India is one of the biggest purchasers of Israeli weapons. But in fact, I think it’s more than that. It’s not just weapons. Yes, votes at the UN have shifted like it was with Mexico when Israel sold Pegasus to Mexico. Their votes shifted at the UN when there was a vote coming up about Israel-Palestine. India was similar.

But I actually think with India it’s quite a unique example and this is really the danger that I see Israel presenting. Israel is, has always been, but is becoming more and more the model for the global far right. India has a far right fundamentalist Hindu population, Modi is its head, the far right in Europe from Sweden to France to Germany and elsewhere, they see Israel as their model, an ethno-nationalist wet dream.

It is against multiculturalism, against diversity, against gay rights. It’s against Muslims, it’s against immigration. That’s what Israel represents. It’s a model. I mean, just look at the last month. Israel itself invited as an official guest Tommy Robinson, a far-right thug from the UK, to show him the glories of Israel, that he take that message back to Britain. It’s not, I mean, that relationship on the one hand might seem ridiculous.

How could a Jewish state embrace someone who hates Islam. In fact, it makes perfect sense, right? Because they both in some ways are white nationalists. This is the danger. And India represents that. India under Modi admires Israel’s ethno-nationalism and its racism and vice versa. And I say in the film that it really reminded me of Israel’s relationship with apartheid South Africa, where at the time it was a defense relationship. They were selling weapons and arms, but it was also an ideological relationship. They admired each other’s racism.

South Africa’s racism against Blacks and in Israel’s racism against Arabs and Muslims, principally of Palestinians. So I see that as a profound danger that Israel represents. And in fact, the last two years of genocide has accelerated that love that many in the far right have for Israel. They dream of doing something like that to their minority populations, to their Muslim populations and others in their own countries.

And it’s why many of these far-right groups in, as I said, Sweden, France, England, Australia, look to Israel as a model. They don’t want to create a Jewish ethnostate in their own borders. They want to create a Christian ethnostate. And they say it openly and proudly. And rather than rejecting it, Israel in fact welcomes it. They embrace it. And that to me, I see that as one of the great dangers of our age. I really do. That Israel as a model for the global far-right, it’s real and it’s worsening.

Chris Hedges

Let’s close by talking about Germany. That’s Israel’s second largest arms supplier. You’ve just made a film about Germany. Germany has been perhaps the most draconian of the European countries in terms of shutting down dissent to the genocide and people who speak up on behalf of the Palestinians.

Antony Loewenstein

I made a film recently called Germany’s Israel Obsession with Black Leaf Films, which is a production company in the UK and was on Al Jazeera. People can find it online on YouTube. And I’m a German citizen, although I’m an Australian, I’m also a German citizen and obviously I’m Jewish. And that wasn’t the primary reason I wanted to make the film, but I only mention that because there’s something about how Germany and the German elites, both political and media elites, Chris, are dealing with this issue — Palestine, which has been frankly a problem long before October 7th, but it’s got a lot worse.

So what do I mean by that? They, these elites and many in the German public, are taking their historical guilt for the genocide against the Jews, a justified guilt of course, considering my family was also killed in the Holocaust, but transferring that now to Arabs, to Muslims, to Palestinians, to refugees.

And they believe that the way that you atone for your former crimes is to support new crimes committed by Israel. So you have in Germany now profound crackdowns, police violence against activists, principally directed at Arabs and Muslims and Palestinians, but also Jewish critics, Jewish anti-Zionists.

You have huge amounts of mainstream media led by Bild, the conservative far-right outlet run by [Axel] Springer targeting anyone who’s critical of Israel. You have a German elite, as you say, who support and arm the Israeli state. And this is, by the way, across the board. This includes not the far left, but even the so-called mainstream left.

The German Greens, who historically actually were quite good on many issues, have fallen to the same track. We see it as our responsibility, we must support Israel. I mean, Germany on the one hand is an exception, but it’s also a warning. And what I mean by that is that you see in country after country, look at the UK under Keir Starmer, prescribing Palestine Action, a non-violent peaceful activist group, as a terrorist organisation akin to ISIS.

I mean, it’s insane. And you see it in country after country, the US trying to target peaceful pro-Palestine protesters. In my country, Australia, more and more protests and pro-Palestine voices are being silenced. So on one level, the film was trying to show that Germany is becoming and is an increasingly authoritarian place. Palestine is always a litmus test on this.

And what worries me in a way is that what it’s doing in Germany is empowering the far right. We talked about the far right, the AfD there, which is now the biggest opposition party in the country. Their vision for Germany is a deeply authoritarian, racist future. Muslims would be kicked out. So-called they believe in this concept of remigration, which is kicking people out who have been living in Germany for years, some of them would be even citizens.

And by supporting Israel so blindly, Chris, they actually are empowering the far right. There’s no question about that, which is directed principally at the moment at Muslims and Palestinians and Arabs, but inevitably to Jews as well. Inevitably it comes to Jews too, it always does. So the film really is an investigation and a warning to say to people, if you think that attacking peaceful pro-Palestine sentiment is somehow acceptable in a democracy in this kind of way, believe me, it doesn’t stop with Palestine.

It ends up talking about the climate or whatever other issue it may be, vital questions. And I see this in country after country. So the film came out a few months ago. It’s had an amazing response and made a lot of people realise, thank you for showing this reality in a nation that I think many in the West.

Certainly this is when I spoke to my friends before the film came out, and had no idea of the level of repression going on in a so-called civilised western state. So it’s another light film, Chris, that I’ve made.

Chris Hedges

We have the grandchildren of Nazis arresting Jewish activists and charging them as anti-Semites. I don’t know what world that comes out of. Thanks very much, Antony. And I want to thank Diego [Ramos] and Thomas [Hedges], Sofia [Menemenlis] and Max [Jones], who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.Substack.com.

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