A review by bookedbymadeline
The Palestine Laboratory: how Israel exports the technology of occupation around the world by Antony Loewenstein

challenging dark informative slow-paced

3.5

While a very informative and important read, I had a lot of issues with the writing style-It felt very disjointed and scattered. It’s a lot of facts, figures, dates, etc jumping back and forth (and sometimes back again) without making connections or expanding further on each subject, or even leading my into it with some form of introduction to the new subject.

For example, there’s a chapter about 9/11 but we keep bouncing between Colombian cartels in the 1980s then quoting present day Israeli journalists or human rights lawyers then talking about the Rwandan genocide, then going back to 9/11 only to steer away from it again?!

Every chapter just feels the same: “here’s every company and technology Israel is selling and here’s a human rights lawyer I’m consulting oh by the way we’re 120 pages in now let me tell you who he is and about his work and oh now let’s talk about his lawsuits and the countries Israel has built ties with” on a never ending loop!!! No chapter is actually about what the title suggests 

It feels like the author is trying to fit in so much information and is more like a history class where the teacher wants you to memorize facts without actually educating you on the rest of the context/understanding the connections and the ‘why’ of it all. 

It's informative and important but I really struggled to feel engaged. It could be so info heavy at times without any additional background that it felt like drowning in information without fully grasping everything.

Aside from the writing style, the only complaint I have content wise is that the author has a lot of negative views on Pali resistance and often positions things as "we all just have to get along."

The only reason I didn't DNF is because there's no other book on this topic and with this amount of information. I'd recommend starting with other books first before trying to dive into this, otherwise it can be overwhelming. I think it's still an important read and can be educational. For now I'll use this as a starting point for independent research and would recommend picking this up with no expectations based on chapter titles and really taking your time with it.

Also please the best way I can put into words, how once again everything is connected and why everyone should care about a Free 🍉, no matter where you live:

1)Lots of examples of Israel working closely with countries and leaders who aligned with "Yahtzees" in ww2 and yet Israel respected them, invited them to h0l0caust museums, and works closely with them-just another example of why Israel doesn’t actually give a sh*t about Jewish people/H0l0caust survivors
2)Face recognition technology
3)Collecting and selling digital data including from “encrypted apps”
4)Using drones to survey migrants (before letting them drown)
5)Selling weapons to fund gsides in: Rwanda, Bosnia, El Salvador, China, India (to name a few)
6)Working closely with US police through ADL exchange program to train together 
7)NSA and Israel work together to collect data and create surveillance technology to monitor activist phones
8)They partner with the US and EU-making contracts for millions or billions in surveillance technology and weapons, which these western countries can then use of their own citizens just like Israel does to Palestinians 

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