'Israel' will be forced to end its human experimenting in Gaza: Hedges
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According to Chris Hedges, a US journalist, the Israeli war machine is exporting its apartheid mentality through its weapon deliveries to other countries.
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Israeli border police officers detain a Palestinian teenager during Islamic celebrations in occupied al-Quds on October 19, 2021 (AP)
The Israelis have been experimenting on Palestinians as subjects for the Israeli war machine, intelligence agencies, and weaponry and technology businesses, Chris Hedges, an American journalist, wrote for ScheerPost.
"Israel's" drones and surveillance technologies, including spyware, face recognition software, and biometric data collection infrastructure, as well as smart fences, experimental explosives, and AI-controlled machine guns, have been tested on Gazans for years against their will. These weapons and technology are then "battle tested" before being sold to the world.
Hedges revealed in his article for ScheerPost that "Israel" is the world's tenth-largest arms dealer. According to the Israeli Security Ministry, exports last year recorded an all-time high of $12.5 billion with Arab nations that normalized ties with the occupation, accounting for nearly a quarter of purchase contracts.
The normalizing Arab countries were the main importers, with contracts jumping from $853 million (9%) in 2021 to $2.96 billion (24%) in 2022.
He argues that their intimate link with these military, internal security, surveillance, intelligence-gathering, and law enforcement institutions explains why Israeli allies back their bombardment of Gaza so wholeheartedly.
Hedges recalls that when Colombian President Gustavo Petro refused to condemn Hamas and accused "Israel" of terrorism for killing innocent children, the occupation swiftly ended all sales to Colombia.
He argues that the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, which has been ongoing for a century, is the "prelude to a frightening new world order" of what governments will do to their people once democracies further perish and economic disparity grows.
Gaza: A model for global dissent
Once populations are unhappy and begin to resist such treatment, he believes what is being done to the Palestinians will be done to the masses.
He points to the camps and detention centers holding migrants in Europe the Palestinians held in Gaza, which is described as the largest open-air prison, and the bombing of numerous countries in the Middle East for the sake of their resources to the usurpation of resources in Palestine by the Israeli occupation. He also calls into question the anti-terrorism laws used to criminalize dissenting voices in Europe and the US.
Hedges believes Palestinians in Gaza escaped from their theoretical "laboratory cage" on October 7 and have been viciously killed since.
He recalls "Israel's" role in militarizing borders around the globe by selling weapons to apartheid South Africa and Myanmar, as well as Azerbaijan, Bosnian Serbs, and the Salvadoran military.
In December 2022, the Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported that the occupation spent millions of dollars to appease its Western partners by procuring undisclosed strategic materials for Ukraine as well.
Anthony Loewenstein in “The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World" explains how “the similarities between the US–Mexico border and Israel’s wall through the occupied territories are growing by the year,” adding that “one informs and inspires the other, with tech companies always looking for new ways to target and capture perceived enemies. The use of high-tech surveillance tools to monitor the border was backed by both Republicans and Democrats."
Frontex, the European Union’s external border and coastal agency, uses Israeli-made Heron TP Eitan drones to monitor refugee boats on the Mediterranean.
The drones are usually used on Palestinians and have the capability of causing "tissue to be torn from flesh."
Read more: Another Israeli tool to spy on Palestinians?
Elbit Systems, "Israel's" largest private weapons manufacturer, provides high-tech monitoring towers to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for use along the border with Mexico.
Furthermore, Pegasus, the Israeli malware developed by the Israeli NSO Group that can seize control of a smartphone's microphone and camera, hit global headlines when a leak in 2021 showed how governments used it to spy on critics, journalists, and NGOs.
According to The Times, "Some governments have reportedly used it to target political dissidents, activists, and even the wife of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi."
Skunk water and other dirty tactics
Skunk water, a foul-smelling liquid, was tested and developed on Palestinians, frequently with Israeli film crews filming the attacks to show potential clients its effectiveness.
“Israeli forces routinely douse entire Palestinian neighborhoods in skunk water, deliberately spraying it into private homes, businesses, schools and funerals in what the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem calls ‘a collective punitive measure’ against Palestinian villages that engage in protest against Israel’s colonial violence,” The Electronic Intifada reported in 2015.
The same skunk water was used on protesters in Missouri after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson.
"Israel" developed a surveillance program, put into action two years ago, which involves, in part, a smartphone technology called Blue Wolf that captures photos of Palestinians' faces and matches them to a database of images so extensive that one former occupation soldier described it as the army's secret "Facebook for Palestinians."
In July, the digital rights group, La Quadrature du Net, stated that it raises serious concerns over the French government's violation of fundamental civil liberties and decried it as part of a "slide into heavy-handed security."
The French government has allowed police forces to spy on citizens by remotely activating the camera, microphone, and GPS of their phones and other devices, such as laptops, cars, and other connected objects, in an attack against civil liberties.
The devices would be activated to record sounds and images of people allegedly suspected of "terror offenses", delinquency, and organized crime.
In October 2022, Mintpress news reported on an automatic weapon, developed by Smart Shooter, being used at a heavily trafficked checkpoint in al-Khalil, West Bank, in September.
The report detailed how Palestinians were being used as experimental objects for the occupation authorities to market Israeli military technology that is "field-tested" to be sold abroad. The company's website claims it uses AI to turn weapons into "smart weapons".
"One shot, one hit" is the company's slogan. Smart Shooter holds a number of contracts with foreign militaries, including the Israeli occupation forces, the US Department of Defense, the US Marine Corps, the Dutch army, the Indian Navy, the German army, and more. The company's tech was also selected for a NATO Defense Against Terrorism Program of Work drill in 2020. Singapore's army, in addition, is testing the weapon.
One occupation mimicking another
Jeff Halper in his book "War Against the People" draws similarities between the US tactics in their occupation of Iraq and Israeli treatment of Palestinians.
US forces built a security barrier around Baghdad's Green Zone, closing cities and villages, and carrying out assassinations. They also imitated Israeli interrogation tactics and employed checkpoints and barricades to isolate cities and villages.
"Israel" trains and supplies US police forces, passing on aggressive methods and providing heavy military weaponry and trucks, as seen in Ferguson and Atlanta during police confrontations with protesters.
According to Halper, this is the “Palestinianization” of international conflicts.
Loewenstein believes that with the involvement of numerous Israeli companies, the firms promote their technology worldwide and act as "an extension of Israel’s foreign policy agenda, supporting its goals and pro-occupation ideology.”
