Government & Politics
Screening: The Palestine Laboratory
This documentary investigates in detail how Israel has developed unique systems of control, surveillance and advanced weaponry, using the population of the occupied Palestinian territories as their laboratory for proving, testing and promoting their products for sale around the world.
Israel has become the ninth largest arms dealer in the world - a $13 billion military-industrial complex. Award-winning journalist Antony Loewenstein goes on a journey to investigate how these technologies are being used. He interviews, among others, Yaakov Peri (Shin Bet Director, 1988-1995); Yossi Melman (Israeli security and intelligence expert); Israel Ziv (Israeli army operations directorate, 2003-2005); Meron Rapoport (writer, +972 Magazine); Paul Biggar (founder CircleCl & Tech for Palestine); and Mona Shtaya (digital rights advocate).
Israel's notorious intelligence Unit 8200 serves as an incubator for Israeli start-up technical surveillance businesses. Google and Amazon have built cloud services and data farms in Israel since 2021 to store a vast amount of intelligence data on the entire Palestinian population. The film also exposes Israel's use of A.I. targeting systems in Gaza and the 'acceptable' levels of collateral damage generated.
It also explores how Israeli technology is being enthusiastically deployed in other countries to suppress dissidents, journalists and human rights campaigners.
