Bio
Antony Loewenstein is an Australian/German independent, freelance, investigative journalist, best-selling author and film-maker. He’s the co-founder of Declassified Australia.
He’s worked in dozens of countries around the world and was based in South Sudan in 2015 and East Jerusalem between 2016 and 2020.
He’s written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera English, The New York Review of Books and many others.
In 2024, he’s the co-editor, with Palestinian Ahmed Moor, of After Zionism. A collection of the world’s leading writers and thinkers on the Israel/Palestine conflict, the book outlines how the one-state solution can be achieved in the Middle East. The book is endorsed by Naomi Klein.
He’s the subject of the 2024 documentary film, Not In My Name, broadcast on Australia’s ABC TV and Al Jazeera English about Jewish dissent and his critical journalism on Israel/Palestine. In the same year, he was appointed to the advisory committee of the Jewish Council of Australia. He has a chapter in the book, Monstrous Anger of the Guns, on the Israeli arms industry.
The Palestine Laboratory podcast was released in 2024, a 4-part investigative series, on how Israel exports repression globally.
He’s the author of the worldwide best-seller, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports The Technology Of Occupation Around The World, released in 2023. Published by Verso in the US + UK and Scribe in Australia + New Zealand, the book is a global investigation into Israel’s endless occupation which gives the Jewish state invaluable experience in controlling an ‘enemy’ population, the Palestinians. It’s here that they have perfected the architecture of control, using the occupied, Palestinian territories as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology they export around the world.
The book is endorsed by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, Gideon Levy, Eyal Weizman and others.
The Palestine Laboratory received an honourable mention in the 2023 Moore Prize, an international literary and human rights award, and winner of the 2023 Walkley Book Award, Australia’s most prestigious journalism prize, equivalent of the Pulitzers. It won the People’s Choice Award at the 2024 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, one of Australia’s leading writing prizes. It was a short-list finalist in the 2024 Australian Book Industry Awards for “Social Impact Book of the Year”.
It was a best-selling book in New Zealand, re-printed multiple times in the UK, US and Australia due to huge interest and acclaimed across the globe. It was named one of the best books of 2023 by leading US magazines The New Republic, Wired and the Los Angeles Times.
The book was partly inspired by Antony’s 2019 essay in The New York Review of Books.
The Palestine Laboratory is released in Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese, Bengali, Indonesian, Italian, Brazilian and South Korean language editions, plus South African and Indian versions, with more translations to come.
In 2022, he started consulting and researching on a number of documentary films for Al Jazeera Arabic.
He co-founded Declassified Australia in 2021 with investigative journalist Peter Cronau to uncover Australia’s often secretive relationships with the world.
He’s the co-creator of Twenty Years, an artistic and journalistic project on the legacy of the post 9/11 Afghan war, with Melbourne-based artist Tia Kass and Afghans around the world. It took place in 2021 and 2022.
In 2021, he made a documentary for Al Jazeera English, Under the Cover of Covid, on the threat to civil rights during a global pandemic, with UK film-maker Dan Davies.
In 2020, he co-produced and co-wrote the podcast series, The Conspiracy Virus on Covid-19, vaccines and climate change, with journalist Olivia Rosenman.
He’s a contributor to the 2020 book, A Secret Australia: Revealed by the Wikileaks Exposes.
He’s the winner of the 2019 Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize, one of Australia’s leading peace awards.
He appears in the acclaimed 2019 documentary, This Is Not A Movie, on the famous Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk.
He made a 2019 documentary for Al Jazeera English on abuse of the opioid drug tramadol in Nigeria and Africa, West Africa’s Opioid Crisis, with South African film-maker Naashon Zalk.
His book on the global “war on drugs”, Pills, Powder and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs, featuring on the ground reporting from Honduras, Guinea-Bissau, the Philippines, the US, UK and Australia, was out in 2019 in Australia, the US and India and 2020 in the UK. It’s been translated into Slovakian. The book was endorsed by Johann Hari, Christos Tsiolkas and Professor David Nutt.
He wrote/co-produced a documentary with New York based film-maker Thor Neureiter, Disaster Capitalism, about aid, development and politics in Afghanistan, Haiti and Papua New Guinea. It was selected for the prestigious 2016 Hot Docs film festival. It was released in 2018, screening across the globe at film festivals and on multiple European TV networks.
In 2015 he released the book, Disaster Capitalism: Making A Killing Out Of Catastrophe, out with Verso. It was out in paperback in January 2017. An Arabic edition was released in 2019 and it became a best-seller. The book was endorsed by Noam Chomsky, Noami Klein, Jeremy Scahill and John Pilger.
He released in 2013 the best-selling book, Profits of Doom, about vulture capitalism and privatisation in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Haiti, Australia, the Asia-Pacific, the “war on terror” and beyond. It was published in an updated edition in 2014. A related photography exhibition opened in 2013.
He’s co-author of the 2013 book For God’s Sake, via Pan Macmillan, on the role of religion, faith and politics in society.
He is a contributor to the 2012 collection, Loving This Planet, edited by Helen Calcidott and published by The New Press, on the importance of Wikileaks.
He is the co-editor, with Jeff Sparrow, of Left Turn in 2012. Featuring some of Australia’s leading progressive voices, the collection provides an alternative view on #Occupy, unions, Palestine, the media, war, climate change and other vital issues.
He is a contributor to the 2011 book My Favourite Teacher, published by NewSouth.
He has a chapter in the 2011 book, On Utøya: Anders Breivik, right terror, racism and Europe, on the nexus between Israel and the Right.
His 2010 ABC Radio National feature documentary, A Different Kind of Jew, was a finalist in the UN Media Peace Awards.
His second book, The Blogging Revolution, on the internet in repressive regimes, was released in 2008 by Melbourne University Publishing, an updated edition in 2011, post the Arab revolutions, and an updated Indian print version in 2011.
He was a contributor to the 2008 Verso release, A Time to Speak Out: On Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity.
His best-selling book on the Israel/Palestine conflict, My Israel Question, was released by Melbourne University Publishing in 2006. A new, updated edition was released in 2007 (and reprinted again in 2008). The book was short-listed for the 2007 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award. Another fully updated, third edition was published in 2009. It was released in all e-book formats in 2011. An updated and translated edition was published in Arabic in 2012.
He contributed a major chapter to 2004’s Australian best-seller, Not Happy, John! on the Middle East.
He’s been a weekly columnist for The Guardian.
Antony is currently developing a number of documentary film projects.
He’s represented by literary and film agent Zeitgeist Agency.
In 2019, he was appointed Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University’s (ANU) Centre for Social Research and Methods.
He was a Research Associate at the University of Technology Sydney’s Australian Centre for Independent Journalism and was a former current Global Associate at Sydney University’s Sydney Democracy Network. In 2016, he was a Visiting Researcher in the Global Governance Research Unit at WZB, Berlin’s Social Science Centre.
In 2016, Antony was a finalist in the US-based, Kurt Schork Memorial Fund Awards in International Journalism.
In 2005, he was appointed to the board of Macquarie University’s Centre for Middle East and North African Studies and in 2006 became an Honorary Associate at Macquarie University’s Department of Politics and International Relations.
He sits on the advisory council of the British-based Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice. He is the co-founder of advocacy group Independent Australian Jewish Voices and contributed to Amnesty International Australia’s 2008 campaign about Chinese internet repression and the Beijing Olympic Games.
Antony appears regularly around the world on radio (including the BBC), TV (including CNN, Al Jazeera English, Democracy Now! and ABC Australia), in public, writer’s festivals (in Australia such as Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and every major literary festival in the country) and overseas such as Indonesia, India, South Africa and New Zealand) and at universities (including Harvard) discussing current affairs, politics and media.
Email: [email protected]