Chatham House reviews The Palestine Laboratory

Chatham House is one of Britain’s leading policy institutes.

Its monthly magazine, The World Today, has published a review of my new book, The Palestine Laboratory, by the International Crisis Group Senior Analyst on Israel/Palestine, Mairav Zonszein.

It’s a largely positive review with some pointed criticisms. It feels like 8 out of 10.

Here’s an excerpt:

Loewenstein wants to expose Israel as a hostile regime on a par with Russia and China. He conveys a palpable frustration with the fact that Israel has managed to excel at developing tools to maintain ethnonationalist rule and export them to dozens of countries, and at both a financial and diplomatic gain.

He also writes at length about private Israeli companies, staffed by former Israeli intelligence officers and often operating with a government licence, that have, for instance, provided surveillance drones to Russia which were used in the Syrian civil war. These private companies, Loewenstein shows, often do the bidding of the Israeli government, blurring the line between public and private sector, between defence and commerce.

The West is complicit in this network, too. Surveillance technology developed in Israel has also been sold to the United States, in the form of watch towers on the Mexican border, and to the European Union, whose own border agency Frontex has used Israeli drone technology to monitor refugees.

Loewenstein also argues convincingly that ‘growing numbers of regimes globally [are] learning how Israel gets away with politicide,’ citing the definition by Israeli academic Baruch Kimmerling as ‘the dissolution of the Palestinian people’s existence as a legitimate social, political, and economic entity’. This is a serious concern, considering explicit calls from senior members of the current Israeli government for the expulsion of Palestinians.

Read the whole thing: Review: Why Israel tests its spyware on Palestinians | Chatham House – International Affairs Think T

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