A review by beautyisterror
The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World by Antony Loewenstein

3.5

 

I’ve never read about Israel’s role as a cog in the war machine in such an extensive way. This book explores Israel’s role in most world conflicts, from arms dealing to state of the art intelligence spyware, and how its importance came to be at the expense of Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied territories of the West Bank as theyre used as lab rats. When all of Israeli weapons come recommended as battle tested this is what they mean, 

Loewenstein goes in detail about Intelligence projects and secret military programs, also thanks to anonymous sources that used to be part of the IOF, and how these programs and the knowledge garnered from them shapes the world now that they’re used against drug cartels in Mexico, or government Modi’s opposition’s in India and Kashmir, or in Israel as well when the Israeli citizens saw these programs being used against them during Covid - while they accepted it when they were used on Palestinians up until then. 

It’s a bit of a tough read, first of all because the horror of violence on innocent people is undeniable, but also because it’s a very dense list of war crimes to cram in about three hundred pages. 

It’s an incredible resource, up to date until late 2022/early 2023 (it was published in May of this year), but if I have to voice a complaint - the chapters are way too long. There are few paragraph breaks, there are no subsections, and as I said they are chock-full of information: they’re dense, and a bit difficult to read when you don’t know when you can stop. Of course, nonfiction shouldn’t be read like a novel, but I saw myself putting off reading because sometimes I came to dread it a bit knowing it would take a long while for me to finish. 

Regardless, this finds an easy solution in learning to pace yourself while reading, so not all hope is lost! It’s still deserving of acclamation. 

Access to the ARC acquired thanks to NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.