Antony Loewenstein, journalist: “Israel uses 'apps' that make killing Palestinians as easy as ordering a pizza”

The Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein (Melbourne, 1974) published a book in English in May titled The Palestinian laboratory. How Israel exports the technology of the occupation to the world. Now comes the Spanish translation (Captain Swing) with a new preface focused on the Hamas attack in October. Loewenstein does not believe that the attacks of October 7 will end up being remembered as a failure of the Israeli defense industry. Quite the contrary.

In the book, Loewenstein details some of the biometric tools that Israel and its soldiers use to build a robust database of almost every Palestinian citizen, as well as police cameras that attempt to reveal the identity of someone who is covered in a scarf or apps which extremely simplify the job of killing.

Ask. The thesis of the book is that without the occupied territories, Israel would not be a global leader in cyber weapons.

Answer. Exact. It is difficult to imagine that Israel would be a world leader without the occupation. It is like the United States, which gained a lot of war experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now also in Ukraine, although its troops do not fight, but its weapons do.

Q. A source in the book says that more and more countries know that Israel does not control the Palestinians as well as it thinks. Is this what was seen on October 7 with the Hamas attack?

R. The book came out in May. I included that phrase because it was almost an opinion contrary to my main thesis. But I maintain that October 7 did not change that. The barbaric Hamas massacre was an Israeli military, political and intelligence catastrophe. Although in the last four or five months we have seen two things: one, in Israel there is hardly any interest in reflecting. There is a war going on now, but I see no real interest in doing a serious examination of why intelligence failed. New products continue to be tested and sold in Gaza.

Q. Won't it affect Israeli sales?

R. So far there is no indication that it will happen. Before October 7, many European nations were desperate for Israeli surveillance technology, which they purchased after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The largest arms sale in Israel's history occurred in September last year with Germany for $3.5 billion. Since then many nations look with admiration at what Israel does in Gaza. My experience tells me that the Israeli arms and intelligence industry will do very well despite October 7. It may be counterintuitive, ridiculous, problematic, short-term, but never underestimate how many countries want one of two things: to show solidarity with Israel for what happened on October 7 and to align themselves with a war on terror mentality. The analogy I would make is with 9/11 in the United States. It was the largest intelligence failure in American history and had literally zero impact on the defense sector. In fact, it had the opposite effect.

Q. Exactly what technology failed in Israel that day?

R. Several things. One was zero technology and the other high technology. The low technology was that a year before October 7, Israel decided to stop monitoring the walkie talkies from Hamas because they thought there wasn't much to listen to and it was a waste of time. The most technological part was that the billions of dollars they spent on upgrading the fence did not prevent it from being vulnerable to Hamas' low-tech drones. But the main intelligence failure on October 7 was not technological, but ideological. There was a profound unwillingness to imagine that Hamas was capable of that type of attack and therefore to think that technology alone was enough, almost a technological arrogance was what brought Israel down. That's what most research will find in the coming years. Israel convinced itself that its supposed technological supremacy would win. Human intelligence was so massively degraded that they believed, tragically for Israel, that technology would save them. Most of the coverage in the last five months has focused on which technology failed. I think it's a mistake.

The main intelligence failure on October 7 was not technological, but ideological. Israel convinced itself that its supposed technological supremacy would win

Q. The book says that the sale of Pegasus serves Israel to buy diplomatic favors. But Spain used Pegasus and is now a sensitive voice with the Palestinians.

R. Spain is an exception. Pegasus is today in some ways quite old technology. But there are so many other examples where it is still being used obsessively from Greece to Togo, from India to Bangladesh. I'm not saying that every country will always be obedient to Israel in the UN, it doesn't work like that. Israel's idea with this over the last 10 years was a bet, successful from their perspective, that all of these nations were going to buy surveillance technology at no real political cost to Israel.

Q. If Pegasus is old technology and its creator, the NSO group, sinks tomorrow, what would happen?

R. Nothing. All your clients can go to other companies. Furthermore, most Israeli firms that are now in that space have less bad press, but they do the same thing.

Q. There are also companies like NSO in other countries.

R. Yes, definitely. The attraction of what Israel sells is not only the technology, but that it is dressed with an ideology, with a mantra that says that they have successfully controlled a population with these tools for more than half a century. October 7th challenges some of that, but that's what they've been saying for years and they're going to continue to say it.

Q. In the book, a famous Israeli journalist, Ronen Bergman, denies his thesis: he says that he does not know of cases in which Israeli companies use the occupied territories to sell more weapons.

R. I was taken aback by his words, especially considering his work. I interviewed him and put it in the book for readers to see. But it's simply not true. It seems like I'm making this up. I already told Bergman that the evidence is overwhelming. There are videos, there are marketing materials. You have to ask him. I honestly don't know what his reasoning was. I have the feeling that he is someone who is very concerned about Israel's image. He is a journalist, but he is also very intent on maintaining what he believes is a noble image of Israel. The idea that Israel would be selling weapons, surveillance technology, that it has been testing weapons is something dirty, a bad image.

Israel sells a mantra that says they have controlled a population with these tools

Q. Maybe they assume that these weapons can be used against the Palestinians but then they don't use that sales pitch.

R. But they do. There is a movie called The Lab, made in 2013, which includes images of foreign military leaders watching weapons tests. I'm not making this up. The evidence is overwhelming.

Q. In the book he says that killing a Palestinian can be as simple as ordering a pizza with your cell phone: a app which allows a commander in the field to send data from a human target to troops.

R. It is with a app. Obviously it's not a phone one of us is going to use. This is central to what I show in the book: the dehumanization of Palestinians is key to the Palestine laboratory
. It only works if Palestinians are not seen as equals. If many or most Palestinians are considered a potential terrorist threat, as polls reflect before October 7 and certainly since then, then any app That it can be used to kill and that it is as easy as ordering a pizza is not seen as inhumane, but as the rational thing to do to protect yourself. You are protecting Jews who are building a state on the ashes of the Holocaust. There are a huge number of videos on TikTok of Israeli soldiers in Gaza humiliating Palestinians, tying them up, blowing up Palestinian homes, all violations of international law. That can only happen if there is an underlying belief of dehumanization of Palestinians. People often talk about the radicalization of parts of Palestinian society and there are parts of Palestine like that, for sure. But there has also been a radicalization of Israeli Jewish society. I say this as someone Jewish. It is a society that has been highly radicalized. You cannot occupy a people for more than half a century and not deform yourself as a society.

Q. The book says that Israel monitors all Palestinians regardless of age, location or intention. What does it mean?

R. It's like what the NSA does in the US. I'm not saying that every American is being watched every day. What I mean is that unit 8200, the equivalent of the NSA in Israel, basically monitors, controls and collects information on all communications that Palestinians make within Palestine, calls, emails. It doesn't mean they read everything. We don't have the computing power to read it all.

Q. Is that information used to blackmail Palestinians into becoming informants?

R. A lot. It is very common for Israel to try to blackmail Palestinians when they want to go out to school or receive medical care; I am not saying that every Palestinian, of course, accepts that role. But we don't know how many Palestinians do it. The information you would actually have on those people comes from surveillance collection. In addition to those who want to leave, there is another way: the search for weaknesses in the Palestinians. A love affair, a child out of wedlock, homosexuality. Since October 7th there have been huge numbers of Israeli government ministers speaking openly in Parliament about how important it is for Israel to continue to have a huge network of informants in Gaza. What is often not said is how these informants arrive. So you have a situation where the entire Palestinian population, approximately 5 million, is always under surveillance.

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