"The Palestine Laboratory": Antony Loewenstein on How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation

[Uncle Joe]

5. Apples and oranges, you/we aren't under occupation,

Palestine is literally a lab for surveillance.

It's part of the carcinogenic, occupying, package, the Palestinians for all practical purposes have no rights, they're at the mercy of Netanyahu's right wing government.

Jun 22, 2020

Israel Nearly Doubled Exports of Surveillance Systems to Track Civilians, Refugees

(snip)

Last year, in contrast to previous years, Israel didn’t strike a single deal worth over $1 billion, while much more lucrative deals had been signed, including with India and South Korea, in the past.

Ministry officials said that 2019 was a “challenging” year due to the drop in oil prices, which adversely affected acquisitions by some countries. The report also stated that Israel sold military command and control systems that had been converted for civilian purposes.

(snip)

Bidding companies were asked to provide information on target countries’ needs for biometric measures, systems for tracking people and vehicles and face recognition systems as well as systems for recognizing voices, images, license plates, cellular geolocation measures, intelligence cybersecurity systems and software for blocking or intercepting information online.

The call was intended to include all countries around the world other than ones defined as enemy states. The ministry seems to have marked Asian countries as a main target for expansion of defense-related exports. Other than Iran, Lebanon and Syria, no other country was noted as constituting any problems in terms of the way equipment from Israel would be used.

(snip)

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-06-22/ty-article/.premium/israel-nearly-doubled-exports-of-surveillance-systems/0000017f-e0ec-df7c-a5ff-e2feb5fc0000

I guess Saudi Arabia is okay?

Israel has infinitely more power than the Palestinians so it's not just one "Semitic Group against another," anymore than watching Russia roll over Ukraine as just one Slavic Peoples against another.

Perhaps you wouldn't so easily discount the right to privacy had *rump succeeded in his coup attempt on January 6th and we were living under his occupation?

I can guarantee you, had that been the case, Netanyahu would be selling the shit out of their cutting edge surveillance tech to him, they got along splendidly while *rump was in power, it's all just so transactional.