Israel’s repressive role worldwide

Your web editor writes:

We are pleased to give advance notice of two books dealing with the power of Israel and the Israel lobby, due for publication later this spring.

Even to mention these subjects is to invite accusations of being conspiratorial, antisemitic, ascribing to Israel demonic powers.

The truth is conspiracies abound.

Political economist Adam Smith could write as a simple fact in The Wealth of Nations that “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

No doubt if one of these traders was perceived to have been Jewish someone today would be accusing him of antisemitism…

Collusion, deceit, underhand dealings are the currency of the day – look at the corruption allegations surround Covid-19 contracts and the general behaviour of Tory politicians today.

This is particularly true where states  are involved. Any states. Israel among them. As the Jews for Justice for Palestinians Resources page on Hasbara explains, substantial state resources have been invested over a long period of time in campaigns in the US, Britain and elsewhere to improve Israel’s image by paying people to sell the Israeli state’s point of view.

Antony Lerman’s recently published Whatever happened to Antisemitism gives a sustained and sophisticated analysis of Israel’s decades-long role in redefining the concept of antisemitism to undermine criticism of the Israeli state, demonising legitimate political free speech as “the new antisemitism”.

And the Al Jazeera programme on The Lobby exposed the work of hasbara agent Shai Masot, based in the Israeli embassy in London, with a substantial slush fund at his disposal to undermine politicians and others sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

In the teeth of unremitting attacks on those who dare to investigate such activities we are pleased to  announce two forthcoming books that relate precisely to these themes.

First is Antony Loewenstein’s The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports The Technology Of Occupation Around The World. Loewenstein is an independent Australian journalist, author, film-maker and co-founder of Declassified Australia.

He writes in a recent newsletter:

Surveillance and repression tech are scourges of our age. The technology fuelling it turns up everywhere, from prolonging the drug war in Honduras to disinformation campaigns on a global scale. What connects so many of these operations is Israeli involvement, either private and/or state-backed. 50+ years of occupying Palestine has led to generations of Israelis with the experience and determination to monetise what they know into successful businesses. The human rights of those being tracked or even killed is deemed irrelevant.

This is (partly) what my forthcoming book is about. The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports The Technology Of Occupation Around The World is out globally in May and investigates how the Jewish state has spent decades perfecting the art of occupation. Many nations now want a piece of that experience and hi-tech “solutions” within their own borders.

It’s a ground-breaking tale that goes to the printers in late February and will be ready for your reading pleasure soon. It’s out in the UK and US with Verso and Australia/New Zealand with Scribe. It’s available for pre-order at both these links now so please do so if you can (initial interest helps build momentum). I’ll also be able to share some exciting news soon of foreign, translation rights in at least two countries and a heap of other information.

The book has received its first mention in the UK Independent newspaper (and I was interviewed about the role of Israeli surveillance tech in Bangladesh), I’ve started a new Twitter feed for news and views related to the book (please follow!) and we’ve collected a remarkable number of powerful endorsements including Noam Chomsky, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy plus historians Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim. They’re all listed here (with more to come).

Second is a book by Hil Aked a writer, investigative researcher and activist in Britain with a background in political sociology entitled Friends of Israel: The Backlash Against Palestine Solidarity.

The publishers describes it like this:

Is there such a thing as “the Israel lobby,” and how powerful is it really?

Friends of Israel provides a forensically researched account of the activities of Israel’s advocates in Britain, showing how they contribute to maintaining Israeli apartheid. The book traces the history and changing fortunes of key actors within the British Zionist movement in the context of the Israeli government’s contemporary efforts to repress a rising tide of solidarity with Palestinians expressed through the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Offering a nuanced and politically relevant account of pro-Israel actors’ strategies, tactics, and varying levels of success in key arenas of society, it draws parallels with the similar anti-boycott campaign waged by supporters of the erstwhile apartheid regime in South Africa.

By demystifying the actors involved in the Zionist movement, the book provides an anti-racist analysis of the pro-Israel lobby which robustly rebuffs anti-Semitic conspiracies. Sensitively and accessibly written, it emphasises the complicity of British actors ­ both those in government and in civil society. Drawing on a range of sources including interviews with leading pro-Israel activists and Palestinian rights activists, documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests and archival material, Friends of Israel is a much-needed contribution to Israel/Palestine-related scholarship and a useful resource for the Palestine solidarity movement.

Both are available for pre-order in the UK from Verso Books