In this final episode, Loewenstein examines the fallout of October 7, exploring the devastating aftermath in Gaza, Israel’s live-testing of AI-enabled weapons, and the West’s support of Israel’s military expansion. Featuring eyewitness accounts from Gaza, he asks: what does a post-October 7 world look like for Palestine and Israel? The Palestine laboratory isn’t inevitable.
Guests: Gideon Levy, Dr Khaled Dawas and Maha Hussaini
The Palestine Laboratory Podcast is Drop Site’s first investigative series, looking into how Israel is using Palestinian territories as a testing ground to develop its occupation-enforcing tech industry. Hosted by investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein and based on his recent book, this podcast series examines how Israel is reshaping conflict and population control globally. What happens in Palestine never stays there.
Credits
Host: Antony Loewenstein
Series Producer: Elle Marsh
Producer: Bethany Atkinson-Quinton
Production & Sound Engineering: Tim Jenkins
Field Recording: Cinnamon Nippard
Studio Recordings at 2SER: Michael Jones and Jonathan Chang
Original Music: Ara Koufax
Music Direction: Sunless Studio
Podcast Artwork: Debashish Chakrabarty
Special Thanks: Anu Hasbold
Additional music in the series is from: Use Knife, Muqata'a & The Album Leaf
[THEME MUSIC PLAYS]
Antony: Welcome back to the Palestine Laboratory podcast. I’m Antony Loewenstein. In the years leading up to October 7, 2023, I was investigating how Israel was using the occupied Palestinian territories to test weapons and surveillance tools before selling them globally, all while claiming to be one the world's most moral armies.
[Archive Recording] The Israeli Army is going to lengths that no other army has done to prevent civilian casualties. No other army.
[Applause]
What's happened since in Gaza has utterly disgusted me. We've seen the massive acceleration of new weapons and new surveillance technology on civilians. The acceleration of the Palestine lab is happening in real time. The result is what Palestinians have long feared: an excuse for Israel to ethnically cleanse and destroy vast parts of Gaza, rendering it unlivable.
Maha: They don't just target this one room or one apartment. They knock down the entire building over the heads of their residents.
This series started at the beginning of the 20th century, where the kernel of Israel's modern-day military mindset began and then took us into a post-9/11 world. In the last 17 years, there have been six major Israeli bombardments on the Gaza Strip. And since 2007, the territory has been under an Israeli and Egyptian-imposed blockade, cutting the population off from the outside world to create what is essentially the world's largest open-air prison.
Mariam: It was planned, it was designed, for Gaza to be used as a workshop.
Today, Israel is one of the top ten weapons exporters and their security, defense and surveillance sectors are one of the biggest in the world. The Israeli army has become such a huge part of day-to-day life that things like mandatory conscription and army bases inside universities are just standard practice.
Haim: This is a society that is built around the army, that thinks around the army, that serves the army.
Antony: In this final episode, we’re looking at what’s happened since October 7. How Israel is increasingly automating and outsourcing the violence of war to machines and artificial intelligence, and we’ll hear from people on the ground in Gaza who are finding humanity amidst it all. Now more than ever, we must understand and uncover what Israel is developing and exporting and how it’s fueling conflict and government control around the world. What happens in Gaza won’t stay there. Episode 4: After October 7.
[MUSIC PLAYS]
It’s November 14, 2023, just over a month into Israel’s latest war, and the death toll of Palestinians in Gaza since October 7 has surpassed 11,000 people.
That morning, Israeli forces surround Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital where thousands of Palestinian civilians shelter.
[Archive Recording] For the first time, the Israeli Defense Forces confirmed they have moved into Gaza's largest hospital, which is filled with hundreds of patients and staff including babies.
Antony: Medical staff inside the besieged hospital report the deaths of three premature babies after power generators that were keeping the incubators going run out of fuel.
[Archive Recording] Doctor, Head of Burns Unit at Al Shifa hospital: It’s more of a war zone where it’s continuous bombing, shooting, drones are within the hospital area targeting and shooting anyone moving between the buildings. The ambulances are not allowed to move in or out of the hospital. Whoever tries to move will be killed.
Antony: In the West Bank, the death toll of Palestinians “killed in incidents” involving Israeli security forces reaches 176 since October 7. Human Rights Watch issues yet another report alleging Israel is committing war crimes.
On this very same day, dozens of Israeli military and tech companies are in Europe attending one of the world's largest national security expos in Paris. At this Milipol expo, being hosted in France’s largest exhibition centre, Israeli companies display their wares to an estimated 30,000 attendees from over 130 countries. Items on show include remote-controlled shooters made by the Israeli company SmartShooter*, which has trialled out their suite of weapons and tech across Palestinian territories, including at checkpoints in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza since the war began.
[Archive Recording] Shmuel Rabinovitz, Smart Shooter Operational Expert: We revolutionized the infantry world. Whatever the soldier’s level of experience, whatever mission, our system allows to hit only the chosen target, terrorists, or other target, in order to avoid collateral damage.
[Archive Recording] Michael Mor, CEO and Founder of SmartShooter: It doesn’t matter if we shoot well or not, the system fixes all my faults.
Antony: A number of these Israeli companies were openly saying to media that the Gaza war wasn't posing a problem for them. In fact, it was the opposite. It was a key selling point that some of these tools and weapons of war had been battle-tested and therefore more attractive to overseas clients.
According to Haaretz, facial recognition firm CoreSight* quote “showcased its tech through videos of hostages and terrorists” and “was also involved in search and rescue efforts.” Another company Cybabra* quote “showed its skills by mapping pro-Hamas influence campaigns." In April of this year, the Israeli pavilion at Singapore's Air Show was given prominence and inaugurated by the Defense Ministry’s director general. Haaretz reported Asian clients took interest in Israeli systems and weaponry that was, quote, “backed up by evidence fresh from the battlefields in Gaza and Lebanon.”
Morality and humanity aside, if we just look at this from a national-security perspective, just over one month before the expo, Israel’s cyber, intelligence and defense sector, which claims to be world leading, completely failed. On October 7, Hamas militants broke through the defense barrier separating Gaza and Israel. It was the deadliest attack on a single day in Israel’s entire history.
Hamas’s military wing is basically a guerrilla armed force. The political and military group, which was established in the late 1980s as an Islamic resistance movement, took control of Gaza in 2007 after winning a 2006 election. Since then, they’ve amassed around 40,000 fighters.
According to Al Jazeera’s investigations unit, in the lead up to October 7, Hamas was posting training videos of their forces online. Israeli intelligence units were documenting suspicious activity by the group and even obtained a detailed copy of its invasion plans prior to the attack. A woman at Israel's intelligence collection agency repeatedly raised the flag that Hamas was planning a major attack. But her concerns were dismissed by superiors.
[Archive Recording] Washington Post Video The resistance is now inside the occupied territories.
Antony: Despite the warning signs, in the early hours of the morning on October 7, Hamas successfully breached Israel’s “Iron Wall” defense system at least 30 times. The wall had recently received a $1 billion upgrade, including increased surveillance technology along the perimeter.
[Archive Recording] More than 1,000 fighters from Hamas broke through the 20-foot- high barrier that has long separated Israel from Gaza’s civilians and the militants of Hamas.
Antony: Hamas targeted and dismantled surveillance towers along the border, raiding Israel's army bases before attacking nearby kibbutzes and attendees of a large outdoor music festival.
[Hamas go pro footage]
Antony: Having been into Gaza many times over the years and crossed through that barrier, it was surreal seeing Hamas GoPro footage of them literally, seemingly very easily, breaking into Israel and coming into the southern part of the country. Crucial lines of Israeli defense collapsed. The chain of command vanished. And communications were in disarray. And the tech frankly just didn’t work.
[Archive Recording] Dr. Chuck Freilich, former Deputy national Security advisor: What happened on October 7 was a colossal intelligence and operational failure.
Antony: The Hamas attack on October 7 resulted in over 1,100 Israelis and foreigners being killed, and around 250 being taken hostage back into Gaza. That evening Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares war.
[Archive Recording] (In Hebrew) Citizens of Israel, we are at war. The enemy will pay an unprecedented price.
Antony: Despite the fact that Palestinians in Gaza are besieged and unable to leave, Netanyahu tells them to get out immediately.
[Archive Recording] We will exact a price that will be remembered by them and Israel’s other enemies for decades to come.
Antony: Something I think about often is that on October 7, the IDF killed some of their own personnel and Israeli civilians. The fact that this could happen just underscores the level of chaos and panic that was felt that day, but also speaks to something much more sinister.
In 1986 Israeli defense-force commanders drew up a policy that is now known as the “Hannibal Directive.” Now the doctrine ordered the use of maximum force in the event of a soldier being kidnapped or taken, even at the risk of that captive being killed. The goal of the policy was to disable the enemy from using captured hostages as leverage in future negotiations. Now while the Israeli army says it's no longer an official policy, documents and testimony obtained by Israeli media revealed that the IDF had in fact ordered the Hannibal Directive on October 7.
Gun-camera footage from Israeli Apache helicopters show numerous strikes on vehicles and individuals making their way back to Gaza where it is unclear whether they are Hamas gunman or Israeli hostages. We still don’t know the exact number of Israelis killed by its own forces on this day, but Al Jazeera’s investigations team says it found at least 19 incidents where Israel’s police and army appear to have killed Israeli citizens, including a 12-year-old.
Since October 7, there have been several more occasions like this where Israeli forces have reportedly killed their own personnel and their own hostages in Gaza. The Hannibal Directive goes to the heart of Israeli military culture where a so-called military solution is offered when the problem isn’t solved by military means. The Hannibal Directive is a key example of Israeli military doctrine devaluing human life, and presenting force as the only answer, which is deployed in Palestine and around the world.
It's been really clear since October 7 how ill-prepared the Israeli military is to fight this war for a few reasons. One, Israel basically has pretty much lost every major war its fought for the last couple of decades. And what I mean by that is that, yes, their solution to every problem is more violence and occupation, but they have not subdued their so-called enemy. And you see in Gaza, so many Israeli soldiers posting abuses on TikTok.
[Archive Recording] IDF soldiers celebrate.
The rules of engagement are lax at best. What Israel's facing in Gaza is remarkably similar to what the U.S. faced in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, they're a nation with maximum overwhelming force, but when it comes to fighting an insurgency, their technological advantage is severely undermined because occupation and mass violence inevitably brings resistance.
And so it's pretty clear that Israel will not win this war in any conventional sense and their only solution is to use maximum force against Palestinian civilians. It reminds me in a way of what the historian Haim Bresheeth-Zabner told us earlier in this series, where he says, “To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
Since the start of the war, with the full support of U.S. President Joe Biden and much of the Western world, Israel responded in a campaign of overwhelming shock and awe. The arms industry thrived. In the first month of its assault on Gaza, stocks in major defense companies such as Lockheed Martin skyrocketed. Israel says that within those early weeks, it struck at least 12,000 targets in the Palestinian territory, making it one of the most intense bombing campaigns in recent history.
According to the Gaza Media office, the weight of explosives dropped on the Gaza Strip in the first 89 days exceeded 65,000 tons — now that's more than the weight and power of three nuclear bombs like those dropped on Hiroshima in World War II. Universities, schools, mosques, hospitals, entire neighborhoods, entire family lines - all decimated. In the first 300 days of the war, at least 40,000 Palestinians have been killed.
Gideon Levy: It's very simple. It's a punishment of Gaza. It's for taking revenge over the horrible things which happened on the seventh.
Antony: Gideon Levy is Israel’s leading dissident journalist and we first met in Tel Aviv as I was starting out as a young journalist when I was 30 years old. And his work has inspired me on this issue more than many others, and so much so that my first son’s middle name is Gideon.
I’ve long admired his reporting on Israel’s occupation of Palestine because he’s challenged the Jewish state’s dehumanization of Palestinians.
Antony: When October 7 happened, what was the political social mood in Israel immediately in terms of what many, most believed should be done to Gaza and Gazans?
Gideon: It was a total earthquake.The main shift was not in the right. The rightwingers were always in favor of reconquering Gaza, rebuilding settlements, mass killings, I mean, everything, you name it. The real shift was in the remains of the Israeli peace camp, because there the destruction was immediate and total. People who for years believed in peace, believed in solidarity, believed in re-humanizing the Palestinians and seeing them as human beings, they lost it all within hours. “There will be never peace.” “Israel should get into Gaza.” “Israel has the right to do whatever it wants.” This was the shift.
Antony: Inside Israel, there’s been willful blindness. The reality of what happens in Gaza is not shown to them by Israeli media, and Israelis, by and large, don’t go looking for it.
Gideon: We see nothing. We are now 24-hours-a-day, seven days a week, preoccupied only with one thing: Our suffering, our victim, the hostages, the killed soldiers, the families, only this. The fact that the world stands against us, the coming sanctions, the international court, all to show that we are innocent victims of the situation and it's all about self-pity. Nothing but this, nothing, Antony. You will open Israeli TV. You will be amazed. And therefore the media is such a criminal in this country.
Antony: One opinion poll in late 2023 showed that 94% of Israeli Jews thought that the military was using either the appropriate amount of force in Gaza or not enough.
Gideon: Because brainwash is so deep. Mistrust, hatreds, fears are so deep. The problem is that, as usual, they live in denial, and immediately they protect themselves with the notion that it is all because the world is anti-Semite. Not because we are criminals of war. It's the world's fault.
Antony: Early Zionists in the late 1900s believed that they needed a Jewish state to escape anti-Semitism and ghettoization in Europe. And yet now, with a Jewish state, Israel shows that it believes in building higher walls, literally and metaphorically, around its ever-evolving borders. Former prime minister of the Jewish state, Naftali Bennet, said that before October 7, Israel had forgotten that it was surrounded by, quote, “the craziest terror savages on earth.” He tweeted about how Israel must continue to be a start-up nation, focusing on innovation and tech, and calling for Israel to, quote, “Be a Silicon Valley in Sparta.” (April 9, 2024) This type of hyper capitalism is becoming the norm in Israel, claiming that a thriving defense and cyber weapons industry is good for both business and security. This line of thinking inevitably leads Israel to where it finds itself today: increasingly ghettoized in the Middle East and attacking countless perceived enemies in the region, from Iran to Lebanon, Syria to Yemen, and of course, Palestine.
[MIDROLL]
I've been trying to get as much information and evidence about what Israel's doing in Gaza because I see huge evidence that in fact they're accelerating not just the Palestine laboratory but the need to make more money from the weapons and surveillance industries. Now I say that because Israel's economy's taken a hit. They're in a war. Israel’s credit rating has declined, but that hasn’t seemed to bother the nations still reliant on purchasing their military and surveillance tech. That's why Israel is going to be even more reliant on their arms and surveillance industries. Even countries that are currently speaking out against what Israel is doing in Gaza, Lebanon, and beyond, are likely to continue purchasing their tech.
I’ve been visiting Gaza for about 15 years. But since the beginning of the 2023 war, all foreign journalists like myself have been banned from entering. Watching it all unfold from afar, I stayed in touch with friends, colleagues, and workers who were trapped in Gaza, via WhatsApp. One journalist and human-rights worker in Gaza who’s been extensively documenting human-rights violations and the weapons Israel has been testing on the ground in Gaza, is Maha Hussaini. My producer Elle and I have been speaking with her. The connection is often incredibly poor and communications are often disrupted by the reality of war.
Elle: Hi Maha?
Maha: Hello, can you hear me?
Elle: Yes, it’s a bit fuzzy but I can hear you. Where are you right now?
Maha: I'm in Deir al Balah at the coffee shop, of course, to get internet connection, so I hope it's not very weak. As I speak to you now, I can hear background, Israeli bombardments, artillery shelling, particularly. We witnessed Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling all the time, 24/7, here in Deir al Balah.
Antony: As well as being a journalist, Maha is a strategy director at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based organization with a large presence in Gaza. Since the beginning of the war, Maha, her family, and her cat, Tom, have been displaced multiple times, but she has continued to work amid power and connection outages, food and medical shortages, and the constant threat of bombing and gunfire.
Maha: I'm here now, as a journalist, human-rights worker, and also a victim of this attack actually. You are constantly worried about your own safety. You wake up every morning, thinking that this will be your last day of reporting or this would be your last day of work because you are aware that you are one of the main targets, actually, and I do not exaggerate when I say I'm one of the main targets, as a human-rights worker and a journalist. So, yeah, I'm aware that I'm doing a job that would cost me my life and not just my life, the life of those people staying with me and in my shelter, including my family. The extended family is also staying with us because we're staying in houses that, for example, house 70 people at once.
Antony: Since the start of the war, at least 108 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed and often deliberately targeted by Israel in the Gaza Strip. This makes it the deadliest war for journalists in modern history. But Maha says despite the risks, those on the frontlines are the ones who need to tell this story.
Maha: No one can convey the message better than the people who are actually enduring the suffering. I feel that it is my duty now more than ever to report on these violations and to continue my work despite all these hardships and risks, because I feel that there are so many parts, so many details, so many stories that are not reported online in the international media. I meet people every day, I interview them every day, and there are stories that must be seen, must be heard. There are voices who are being silenced.
Antony: Maha has reported on countless conflicts in Gaza and documented grievous human-rights abuses committed by Israeli forces. These Include the IDF’s use of weapons such as white phosphorus in civilian areas which the IDF has been accused of using since 2009. Now white phosphorus is a weapon that’s internationally banned from being used in densely populated areas, due to its ability to cause severe burns, often down to the bone. Israel repeatedly claims that this time around, it’s acting in accordance with international law. However, huge amounts of collected evidence contradicting this claim reveal that this is a boldfaced lie.
On the 20th of May, 2024, the International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor announced it was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and top figures in Hamas’s political and military wings including the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar.
[Archive Recording] The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan: The crimes include starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. Willfully causing great suffering. Serious injury to body or health. Or cruel treatment. Willful killing or murder and intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.
Antony: Accused of war crimes, Netanyahu labelled the court’s findings absurd and anti-semitic. That same month, civilians were being forced to flee Rafah in southern Gaza, Maha collected witness reports of white phosphorus, once again, being used in a heavily populated civilian area.
Maha: Since the beginning of this attack, we have documented several cases of Israel’s use of unconventional weapons. I Interviewed a woman who said that she witnessed white phosphorus being fired on their neighborhood in Rafah by Israeli forces, only to force them out of the city towards Khan Younis and other areas.
Antony: The human-rights organization Maha works for has also called for a thorough investigation into whether the IDF has been using banned thermal weapons in Gaza since October 7. These thermal weapons, which are also known as “vacuum bombs,” can reportedly produce such high heat that victims’ bodies evaporate.
Maha: They don't just target this one room or one apartment. They knock down the entire building over the heads of their residents. And this cannot be done, but with unconventional weapons with very high destructive powers.
Antony: Since the war began, Israel’s biggest supplier of weapons, the United States, has sent tens of thousands of weapons to Israel. The U.S. accelerated its arms deliveries to Israel to the point where a senior Pentagon official said that they sometimes struggled to find sufficient cargo aircraft to deliver them. In December last year, a U.S. intelligence assessment found that nearly half of the Israeli munitions dropped on Gaza were imprecise quote “dumb bombs.” The use of such weapons, like white phosphorus, dumb bombs, and, potentially, thermal weapons, are just a couple of examples that reveal the kind of destructive and indiscriminate warfare Israel is unleashing on the Palestinian population. More international investigations are needed, but, once again, no outside journalists or investigators have been allowed in to assess the evidence.
[MUSIC PLAYS]
Maha believes that the IDF is increasingly replacing its soldiers with machines, and she’s right, they’re using facial recognition, biometric data and artificial intelligence. A major investigation by the Israeli outlet +972 Magazine and Local Call revealed the IDF was outsourcing some decision making to an AI program known as “Lavender.” The program was designed to identify and mark suspected Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters and then generate bombing targets. In the first weeks of war, the program generated a kill list of roughly 37,000 suspected militants. Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who broke the story, explains how the system works.
[Archive Recording] Yuval Abraham: Now the way it works is, the machine scanned most of the population in Gaza, collecting, surveilling information, and it gave each individual a rating from 1-100 based on how likely the machine thought that individual belonged to a military wing. Now sources said, and this is very very important, that this machine, when they were using it, the IDF knew that in approximately 10 percent of the cases, it was making what was regarded as errors. So it was marking people who were complete civilians.
Antony: What’s clear is that military personnel were seemingly only there to rubber stamp the machine’s decisions, devoting roughly 20 seconds to every AI-generated target — just to make sure the target is male — before authorizing the attack. One Israeli intelligence source admitted that they had personally authorized the bombing of hundreds of private homes of alleged junior Hamas operatives marked by the AI program. The killing of civilians and entire families was viewed as quote “collateral damage” and “frankly acceptable.” Another former intelligence officer said the AI system facilitated “a mass assassination factory.”
[Archive Recording] Yuval Abraham: When a child is killed in Gaza, it’s because somebody made a decision that this killing was worth it to hit another target.
Antony: It just reminds me of this quote from Ursula Le Guin: “A machine is more blameless, more sinless even than any animal. It has no intentions whatsoever but our own.”
[MIDROLL]
Antony: On the ground, Maha and others have been documenting the Israeli use of quadcopters. These are large remote control drones, about one meter in diameter and they are often fitted with weaponry. They are developed of course by Israeli military industries. Maha documented how initially the drones were being deployed as a tool to surveil the population and direct evacuation orders. Later, Maha discovered that quadcopters were being used in fact to also kill Palestinians and to conduct psychological warfare.
Maha: I've been reporting on Israel's use of quadcopter since the beginning of this attack, and we have been witnessing the increasing use of these quadcopter drones over the entire of the Gaza Strip. In the first months of this year, Israeli quadcopters played sounds but they were only threats and orders to evacuate certain areas to the residents, particularly over schools, which were turned into displacement centers. But, lately, these quadcopters are actually, doing another job, which is very bizarre and very, disturbing, let’s say, and distressing. Israeli forces use these quadcopters over a refugee camp at the center from Gaza Strip. And these quadcaptors, at midnight, they were playing, sounds of babies crying, women shouting, and screaming and calling for help.
[Archive Recording] Quadcopter Audio
Maha: One of the witnesses who witnessed these quadcopters playing these sounds. She said that they were sitting at home. They didn't at first think that these were, quadcopters, of course. They thought that actually they were children screaming or babies, infants, particularly, crying on the street. And they were asking, what was happening? What was going on? So they went out. And they were targeted and killed.
[MUSIC PLAYS]
Maha: We have reported at least seven people being killed by this new strategy and new policy. Israel is, has followed. So, yeah, I guess that this is a new stage of psychological war that needs also to be investigated.
Antony: The human cost of this new stage of warfare is immense. For those who aren’t killed, these new weapons still leave its victims changed forever.
Antony: Tell me a little bit about seeing injuries from say quadcopters, a weapon that's not, at least yet, extensively used globally, but I suspect will be.
Dr. Dawas: We had a day, particularly of several bullet injuries coming in. And in one particular man, I pulled out the bullet from his bladder. And the story I'm told by the relatives of the patient is this was a quadcopter that was hovering in that area, firing, they said, indiscriminately at the time. And these stories were being repeated to us on a regular basis.
Antony: This is Dr. Khaled Dawas, a British Palestinian who worked in Gaza’s hospitals. Since the beginning of the war, over 90,000 Palestinians have been injured.
Dr. Dawas: The injuries I saw were amputations from explosives. I saw horrendous injuries to the abdomen and in the chest from bullets and from shrapnel. I saw lots of burn patients in the emergency department.
Antony: His is just one of the testimonies I've collected about new Israeli tactics and weapons who report this kind of indiscriminate targeting and torture at the hands of Israeli forces.
Dr. Dawas: This man is a wheelchair-bound man. He has a long term chronic condition of his spine, which means he's unable to walk. He was put in handcuffs and blindfolded for weeks on end and he has two nasty pressure sores on both hips, you can see the bone.
Antony: Yeah and I mean as you said, these stories are just replicated over and over and over again, we don't even know the scale of it. Except that it's huge.
Antony: Hearing and seeing these utterly dystopian tools of war being used in Gaza is so shocking. And yet, in some ways, we can't be surprised because Israel has been using Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, for years as a testing ground for these kinds of tools of war. And I don't think in many ways that that sense of horror really has been understood by enough people around the world — that these weapons of war that Israel is using are not simply going to be staying in Gaza. At some arms fairs already, those quadcopters are on sale, and there are a lot of nations who are going to want to buy those weapons.
Business for the developers of drones and quadcopters in Israel and overseas are doing really well. One Tel Aviv startup, Xtend, which is the creator of an AI drone operating system that has been tested and deployed by the Israeli army in Gaza, raised $40 million US in capital since October 7.
On Tuesday the 17th of September, 2024, Israel announced it was broadening the aims of the war to include its fight against the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah. Hours later, hundreds of pagers used by the group simultaneously exploded across Lebanon, killing multiple people, including children, and injuring more than 2,800 people. The next day, dozens more were killed and hundreds injured in another attack after walkie-talkies detonated in Beirut and southern Lebanon.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was entering a new era in the war. But the pager and walkie talkie attacks signal a disturbing new era for warfare everywhere. Israel has shown a proof of concept, advanced tech and production with endless possibilities, creating a new generation of potential weapons in mobile devices or any number of home appliances. They’re expanding the realm of what is technically possible and what is considered acceptable in warfare. Speaking to my sources in Israel, many global intelligence services are looking with alarm at what Israel has done, but also excitement at what they could achieve against perceived enemies.
Something that I talk a lot about is the Palestinianization of global conflict. And what I mean by that is that the way that Israel treats the Palestinians in Palestine allows many other countries to treat their own minority populations in a similar way: to isolate them, put them into tent cities, and limit their access to electricity and clean water. And that's why the Palestine Laboratory's so attractive to so many nations: Because those states have seen that Israel is doing it and getting away with it.
[MUSIC]
Although there are some signs in some parts of the world that Israel is facing global isolation, it's also worth saying that in other parts of the globe, where the right and the far-right are in the ascendancy, Israel's support has never been stronger. You have in 2024 senior Israeli government ministers openly meeting with far-right leaders in Europe, going to conferences, shaking hands, hugging them. Those groups and those parties say what Israel's doing in Gaza is a model.
For example, in May 2024, Israel’s diaspora minister received a warm reception at a far-right conference in Spain, when he said that the Gaza war, “is an existential battle for the future of Western civilization against radical Islam.” Far-right leaders who spoke at the event included Marine Le Pen, Georgia Meloni, Viktor Orban, Javier Milei and Santiago Abascal. Far-right groups around the world support what Israel is doing. Their hatred and contempt for Muslims, for Palestinians, is so deep and so great that they do accept the Israeli narrative which says, we're fighting a war here, so you don't have to fight it there.
Even in my own home country, the Australian government — which, in theory, through statements and UN votes has supported calls to peace and urged Israel to “show restraint” in Gaza — in practice has continued to assist Israel’s status quo and expand its business dealings with major Israeli defense companies. The U.S. spy base Pine Gap, located in the center of Australia in the desert, feeds real-time intelligence to the U.S., who then pass it to Israel. In February 2024, the federal Australian government awarded Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest defense company, and one that is financially benefiting from the Gaza war, a fresh contract worth $917 million Australian dollars. That’s about $600 million.
More and more countries, including Australia, continue to buy Israel's cyber, surveillance and military hardware. So what we’re seeing is surveillance and the militarization of public spaces on the rise globally.
[Archive Recording] As protests sweep across the U.S., it's becoming increasingly clear that law enforcement has become more militarized. Treating the people they're supposed to serve and protect as a hostile foreign population.
The world then saw the U.S. police deploy brutal tactics across the country against pro-Palestine protesters occupying U.S. universities from early 2024.
[Archive Recording] It was something never seen on the campus of Emory University Thursday as pro-Palestinian protesters and those against the Atlanta training facility went head to head with law enforcement.
[Chanting]
You’re on camera!
[Archive Recording] Protest is not a crime! Free, free Palestine!
Antony: In the U.S., thousands of police officers have trained with Israel’s military and police forces since the early 2000’s.
[Archive Recording] Protesters as they are being arrested: You’re hurting me, let go! Free Palestine, free Atalanta.
Antony: The Palestine Laboratory keeps looping back on itself. And will continue to grow and expand if it’s not stopped.
Antony: Do you worry that the potential of sanctions and isolation from some circles is potentially countered by other parts of the world? India. Parts of Europe which become even more supportive of Israel because of what they're doing in Gaza.
Gideon: Look, even those countries will have to respond also to popular sentiments. If you take India, you know, finally, there is also a public opinion in India. There is a media in India. People are watching TV. People are seeing what's going on. So I don't say that tomorrow India will stop to be the biggest client of Israel as it is now, in terms of arm deals. But, you know, I can't see that it can continue like this when the public opinion in civil societies are so strong and you see that they are stalled. You see it everywhere in Europe, in the United States, in Asia, everywhere. It must have an effect. Will they stop buying weapons from Israel? Totally stop? Or supplying Israel? Not at all. It will be a process. But this process started already. It really started. I mean, you can feel it.
[MUSIC PLAYS]
[Archive Recording] UK protesters chant: From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free
Gideon: People are stoked over Gaza more than anything else now in the international arena.
[Archive Recording] Japanese protesters chant: Free free Gaza
Gideon: There’s a very strong wave against Israel.
[Archive Recording] Chicago protesters: What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! And if we don’t get it? Shut it down!
Maha: For the first time, in life, in history, we feel that we are not abandoned by the peoples around the world. For the first time, we witnessed that people can see and hear the suffering happening here. And they admit that there is injustice happening.
[Archive Recording] Crowds chant: Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now!
Antony: What we've seen since October 7 really is a global explosion in support for Palestine. Public protests, the size of which we haven't seen in decades, really, since the protest against the Iraq war in 2002 and 03, and a growing awareness that what's happening in Palestine will not stay there. This is across the world, the Western world, global South and these protests aren't going to suddenly disappear. Particularly young people 18 to 35, according to public opinion polls, have become in some ways so enraged with what Israel's been doing in Gaza and their political leaders that have supported and armed it, that they will keep protesting and fighting until Palestine is free.
Boycott, divestment and sanctions, a movement that started in Palestine in 2005, is surging around the world. Many in Israel and Palestine argue that without massive outside economic, political, and cultural pressure, akin to the global campaign against apartheid South Africa, the situation in Palestine will never change as it's unlikely to come from within Israel.
Gideon: I mean, this government has to go, because it's really rotten and dysfunctional. But it's not a problem of the government. It's not like Israel was a paradise and then Netanyahu came and destroyed everything. Or Israel was a liberal country giving freedom to everyone, equality, justice and then came this demon and destroyed everything. No. We are living in an impossible situation from day one. The establishment of this state was accompanied with sins and we are paying the price of these sins until this very moment, because we were never ready to take accountability on the first since we did.
Antony: Israel keeps selling the rest of the world a story, one where the unknown and the outside is dangerous. That to be safe, you must build a fortress, ghettoize yourself, put higher walls up, and use machines to guard the gate. Stockpile your weapons, be prepared to fight, and eliminate the enemy at all costs. The rest of the world keeps buying this story.
But there’s another story, one that can't be bought and sold. Palestinian journalist in Gaza Maha documents the ongoing genocide and war crimes that Israel is committing there. But she’s also been documenting and sharing real stories from within the war zone.
She sends through a video of a group of Palestinians who have just been displaced, again, as forces move into Rafah, in southern Gaza, and they’ve found time to play volleyball on the beach. And then another of kids flying a white and red kite. She shares with the outside world a picture of a pastel yellow home, bombed out and windowless, grey rubble surrounds it. As Israel dropped bombs on the strip, the family returned to their home and gave it a fresh coat of paint.
Maha: You know, these are my favorite kinds of stories to share. There are people here that love life who are also clinging to life. I like to observe these stories, observe these details, amidst this insanity we're living. And I witness them every day. People here in Gaza are actually people who love life, who want to live, and who do not want to die this way. There is so much that they, they need to witness in their lives, especially the children, who we say that, half of all these, victims of Israel’s genocide, are children.
Antony: The story Maha wants to tell is one of humanity and a search for peace, where Palestinians are seen as deserving equal rights, self determination, safety, where they’re not abandoned by the rest of the world. The Palestine Laboratory is not inevitable.
Maha: We are longing for peace. We are longing for a normal life and we are clinging to life, in every way possible. And this is a typically a Palestinian attitude. Because we've been living decades under this suffering and I think it's time now for Palestinians to try to improve their lives and to live the life they are dreaming up, even under this genocide, under this occupation, and under this strangling siege.
Antony: The Palestine Laboratory Podcast is hosted by me, Antony Loewenstein.
The series is produced by Elle Marsh and Bethany Atkinson-Quinton, production and sound engineering by Tim Jenkins.
Studio recordings at 2SER in Sydney with Michael Jones and Jonathan Chang.
Field production by Cinnamon Nippard.
Original music in this series is by Ara Koufax and music direction by Sunless Studio.
This last track is Window by The Album Leaf. A special thanks to our guests Gideon, Maha, and Khaled.
This is an independent podcast brought to you by Drop Site News. To support Drop Site's journalism and get 20 percent off a subscription, visit dropsitenews.com slash palestinelab
Thanks for listening.
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*We reached out to all the companies mentioned in this podcast, but we didn’t receive a response from them.
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