'Not in my name'

Israel has long hailed the pipeline between its defence forces and world-leading hightech export sector, writes PETER BALE, A new book joins the dots to its sustained occupation of Palestinian territories

- 

'Israel has developed a world-class weapons industry with equipment conveniently tested on occupied Palestinians, then marketed as 'battletested," Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein writes in The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World. "Cashing in on the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] brand has successfully led to Israeli security companies being some of the most successful in the world."

It is an uncomfortable truth that Israel has built a hightech export industry based on highly efficient methods of mass surveillance, communications interception and societal control. Autocracies and democracies alike buy those products knowing they are proven tools Israel uses to maintain the occupation, as well as its betterknown defensive weapons.

For those brought up with the idea of "plucky" Israel as a beacon of democracy in a hostile region, Loewenstein's assertion is confronting. For those hostile to Israel or just concerned at the plight of Palestinians, the book will validate their belief that Israel plays the "antiSemitism" card to shield itself from criticism over the occupation.

Those who defend Israel come what may, or who see it as singled out by secret and not-so-secret antiSemites will loathe the book as much as some loathe Loewenstein, who is visiting New Zealand this month. He is accused of being a "self-hating Jew" who betrays the memory of his family members obliterated in the Holocaust, that central pillar of the creation story of modern Israel.

All these facets are in the book and in Loewenstein's evidently painful personal journey to question some of the founding shibboleths of Israel.