#AusReadingMonth23 The Palestine Laboratory
- Author: Antony Loewenstein (born in Melbourne, Australia)
- Title: The Palestine Laboratory (320 pg) 2023
- Genre: Non-fiction
- Walkley Book Award 2023 – longlist
- 02 November shortlist to be announced
- 23 November winner Walkley Book Award 2023 to be announced.
- Australian TBR List
- #AusReadingMonth23 @ This Reading Life (Brona’s Books)
Conclusion:
- The book goes into detail about “occupation”
- …the methods of control and separation of populations
- It is a marketing tool that Israel sells to other countries!
- This is a warning that depotism can be easily shareable with
- …compact technology.
- The main message in the book is to expose the
- …past and current Israeli defense deals
- that you never read about in the news!
- 2020 survey across 34 countries:
- 44% polled were content with democracy
- 52% …were not.
- Israel is the ultimate model and goal for
- …countries with the ideology of maintaining
- groups of people with shared
- …religious and ethnic backround (White Supremacy)
- This book is a real eye-opener!
Last thoughts: I
- Israel uses Palestine (Gaza, West Bank) as a laboratory
- to test their methods of control of people!
- The best-known Israeli lawyer who is fighting
- …the defense sector is Eitay Mack.
- He reveals information uncoverd
- when he submitted a several freedom of information requests.
- Israel’s role in Pinochet’s brutality is still clouded in some mystery.
- Israel refuses to release a full accounting of its role.
- There are rumors that the government had moved documents
- from state to army archives.
- The Israeli army archives are not open
- …to freedom of information requests.
- It appears that Israel is a major arms supplier
- …to Chile’s Pinochet, South Sudan,
- …Syria, Rwanda, South-Africa, US-Mexico border
- ….the list goes on and on!
- This was such a difficult book to read b/c it is shocking
- ….especially with all that is happening in the Middle East.
- My opinion of Israel has changed dramatically!
Last thoughts: II
- Chapter 6 “Israeli Mass Surveillance in the Brain of Your Phone”
- …sent chills down my spine.
- It was not until Pegasus spyware (developed by Israel)
- was exposed in 2022 as having
- been used on Israeli citizens…was the Israeli public
- outraged about the possibility of abuse of its technology.
- The use of the Pegasus spyware is a serious violation of human rights and
- goes much further than Watergate and George Orwell’s 1984!
- At the moment there is in investigation
- …about the use of Pegasus by European member states
- to spy on journalists, political oppoents, human rights activists and lawyers.
- This concerns Poland, Greece, Hungary, Spain…and The Netherlands!!
- Read this book!
10 Comments
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NancyElin.blog 
This does sound like a confronting read Nancy!
I’ve only read a little about the Pegasus spyware and it’s frightening.
If you don’t feel like reading the book…just take it off the shelf in the bookstore during a lunch break and read chapter 6. Pegasus is absolutely chilling. Ukraine has been begging for this spyware, but Israel won’t sell it to them…or perhaps it wll change it’s mind. So enjoy reading the wonderful choice of non-fiction books in Australia. Truly, your have some great investigative journalists! They need some attention to promote their work…I do my part!
You do a great job!
Thanks to your reponses I feel I can chat more intelligently to our customers about some of these books – so a big thank you from me!
This is very timely, isn’t it. But too chilling and scary for me at the moment. Thank you for reading the confronting books and reporting on them for us!
Liz, books are a source of informaiton but sometimes I just cannot bear what I’m reading. Skimming pages helps but not always. Thanks for the comment and good luck hosting #NonFicNov. I’ll link this book with the linky’s for the challenge.
Brona, just saw on ANZ Litlovers blog (Lisa) yet another shortlist for Australian book prizes….more non-fiction and Australian history to read! I do want to catch up on some literary biographies as well…Nathan hobby’s The Red Witch and My Tongue Is My Own, A Life of Gwen Harwood, and Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life (2022) by Brigitta Olubas.
I love a lot the Jewish faith and authentic believers, but when I went to Israel many years ago to do some translation work, and saw what the Palestine population had to go through, my heart was definitely not with the Israeli government.
Thanks, quite an eye opener book!
I hope the world finally WAKES up to see the terrible conditions in the Middle East!
I love Jewish people. I love Palestinian people. I hate evil people like Hamas and Governments who use people such as the Palestinians as laboratories. I was wishing for books about the whole situation as I admit I know very little, so I will add this to my TBR!
The Middle East situation…I admit I don’t know all there is about it either. But books are here to educate us.