Ukrainian government having watched Israel’s Iron Dome missile streak over Tel Aviv hunting down Hamas rockets, they contacted its Israeli counterpart last October in the hope of buying the air defence system to fend off the Iranian drone swarming their skies. According Loewenstein, the tiny country’s weapons exports,  which hit over $11 billion in 2021, are a means to an end. But Israel was not going to upset Moscow, especially when they are so deeply entrenched next door in Syria, so the answer was no, despite the key US foreign policy objective of arming Ukraine.

Israel’s military industrial complex uses the occupied Palestine territories as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology that they then export around the world to despots and democracies. After for more than 50 years, occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has given the Israeli state invaluable experience in controlling an “enemy” population, the Palestinians. They have perfected the architecture of control here. Israel since its birth in 1948, has sold weapons to apartheid South Africa, Chile during the horror of the Pinochet years, Myanmar against Rohingya minority, and in exchange Israel sought support especially on Palestine issues in international arenas such as the UN.

Best-selling journalist Anthony Loewenstein, author of Disaster Capitalism, reveals this largely hidden world in a global investigation with secret documents, revealing interview and on-the-ground reporting. He also explains vividly how Palestine has become the perfect laboratory for the Israeli military-techno complex, Surveillance, home demolitions, indefinite incarceration and brutality to the hi-tech tools that drive the “Start-up Nation”. From the Pegasus software that hacked Jeff Bezos’ and Jamal Khashoggi’s phones, the weapons sold to the Myanmar army that has murdered thousands of Rohingyas and drones used by the European Union to monitor refugees in the Mediterranean who are left to drown. Israel has become a global leader in spying technology and defence hardware that fuels the globe’s most brutal conflicts. AS ethno-nationalism grows in the 21^st century, Israel has built the ultimate model.

Loewenstein, underlines his Jewish credentials- the grandson of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and the son of Liberal Zionists in Melbourne- explains this is a failure of Zionism and a baton with which to bludgeon the Israeli state for its many, well documented failures to place human rights especially those of Palestinians. Israel’s military in subjugating Palestinians and defeating larger neighbours, alongside all -eyeing mystique of Mossad, drives demand for Israel’s battle tested weapons.

 Despots can order an airstrike  missile like ordering a pizza,  according to one Israeli colonel.

French President Emmanuel Macron scolded former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bemnett after his personal number popped up on the leaked database of 50, 000 phone numbers by Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International.

Jamal Khashoggi’s fiance’s  phone was found to be compromised and India’s Rahul Gandhi tutted about being surveilled by the Modi Government.

Pegasus not only mirrors a phone’s contents – but they encrypted messages or calendar invitations and can also turn on cameras and microphones secretly.

The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World by Anthony Loewenstein, Verso £18.99, 304 pages.