Israel's deadly export industry

As the world witnesses the brutal ethnic cleansing in Gaza under the formidable military technology deployed by the Israeli Defence Forces, why are certain countries either mum or supportive of one the biggest mass killings of the 21st century?

- CHITI'AJIT MITRA

In *The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World*, award-winning journalist and writer Antony Loewenstein reveals how the occupied territories of Palestine are used as a testing ground for Israeli weapons and then sold around the world, irrespective of the consequences.

In 2021, the news of Pegasus spyware being used to spy on Indian activists, journalists, politicians from opposition parties and other individuals underlined the influential ambit of Israeli tech and weapons. The author shows through numerous sources how and why this extremely profitable system exists. Digging deeper into the settler colonialism project that is Israel, it is easy to see how the country has refrained from taking a moral stance on several humanitarian issues, though, ironically, it was the traumatising genocide of the Holocaust that accelerated its creation. During the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, for example, the Israeli government was found sending ammunition to the ruling Hutu regime, which went on to kill 800,000 Tutsis in 100 days by deploying weapons such as Uzi submachineguns and hand grenades. When a minister in the Israeli government was questioned on this, he shrugged off responsibility by stating, "We have no control over where our weapons go."