Review of Antony Loewenstein’s “The Palestine Laboratory”
By Kinan Imseis, Research Fellow; CG-IPTC
“How Israel tests military tech on Palestinians” and “How is Israel’s Military Tech Marketed Abroad” are the respective titles of the episodes that comprise the docuseries by Al-Jazeera and Antony Loewenstein’s “The Palestine Laboratory”. This series was released after a homonymous book in which he details both the methods of Israeli military testing as well as the marketing of its technology globally. In both the docuseries and Loewenstein’s book, he discusses the broad net that Israel has cast over both the global military industrial complex as well as the laboratorial manner in which they approach the Occupied Palestinian Territories (O.P.T.). Notably, the technologies primarily reviewed consist of surveillance/security software and weaponry that are implemented in day to day life that allow Israel to overwhelming control over the O.P.T. Loewenstein reaffirms this himself in developing the idea that part of the reason for why Israel is so unique in its arms industry is that all their exports are a mix of weapons, surveillance and guerilla style flexibility that allows for a comprehensive system to control “difficult” and hard to reach populations (Al Jazeera English 2025). This elaborate system of surveillance and experimentation is then sold as a “quality tested” bundle to buyers on the international weapons market and seen as something more reliable as a result. This brief docuseries serves as a scathing look into the horrors created by Israel and the manner in which the global military industrial complex has continued to allow and perpetuate their computerized testing-bed built on the lives of millions of innocents.
Loewenstein makes a rather simple yet effective argument through both the title and the substance of the docuseries: Palestine is a laboratory for, and Palestinians are the lab rats, of militarized control techniques. In this laboratorial system they are subject to inhumane conditions wherein the ever-growing Israeli arms industry is permitted to test and develop all manners of weapons and surveillance technology. These later refined products are then sold to the globe and marketed as being tested more rigorously than competing tech. Loewenstein is rather direct in his approach to investigation of this issue. Outlining a central finding of his book, he describes how Israel and Israeli companies (Rafael, Elbit etc.) take a subtle approach to selling their weapons as compared to other weapons manufacturers. The weapons are not merely a tool but also serve as an idea of what it means to ‘get away with it’ as Loewenstein puts it himself (Al Jazeera English 2025 at 3:17).
For instance, considering the Israeli focus on surveillance technology, he notes that Israeli AI based surveillance systems like Pegasus or Red Wolf are marketed to foreign governments as covert and undetectable products. This framing by Loewenstein illuminates what comes implicitly along with the purchase of Israeli weapons or technology. It also allows for a better picture in the ways that Israel markets itself globally as a high-tech liberal democratic regime with a burgeoning arms industry. Furthermore, when considering what has credibly been referred to as a genocide that Israel has carried out in Gaza since 7 October 2023, those who continue to buy into the Israeli military industrial complex are not simply making a purchase and aligning themselves with a system of occupation, exploitation and inhumane experimentation. Rather, they are becoming active members of a genocide who choose to fund the state of Israel through the continued purchase of their ill-conceived weaponry and technology. If there was a question on the morality or legality of purchasing Israeli military technology before, there now remains less of a question and more a direct adherence with Israeli war crimes (Amnesty International 2024). It is partly the pertinent and effective criticisms made in Loewenstein’s documentary and partly the continued actions of Israel itself that make this documentary such a precise and scathing lens in examining Israel’s recent history and continued actions.
In the second part of the docuseries Loewenstein focuses far more on the ways in which Israel’s technology is marketed and implemented abroad. Using examples from the Mexico - US border, Greece, India and South Africa he observes each as serving a different purpose yet argues that all of them are reflect Israeli military and surveillance cooperation. For instance, over the course of the last 20-odd years Greece has struggled with a refugee crisis. This has been a problem for countries across the Mediterranean, but Greece is noted in its higher-than-average rates of refugee arrivals (“Refugees & Migrants Sea Arrivals in Europe” 2024). As such the government (and by extension the E.U.) has looked to purchase technology that would allow for more effective security measures. So rather than opting to enact adequate refugee aid and asylum systems or decouple themselves from governments carrying out the wars in which these people are displaced, Greece (and the E.U.) instead opted to purchase Israeli “Heron Maritime UAS” fixed wing drones. These drones do not have any obligations under international law to rescue vessels in distress on the sea as technically no one is physically manning these drones. Rather, they are tasked with triangulating where refugees are in the Mediterranean and then inform the Libyan government, who is paid by the E.U. to intercept these refugee boats (Al Jazeera English 2025). Israel is estimated at being between the seventh to ninth largest arms exporter globally, there is no shortage of their influence in the arms market, and they are currently even seen as “cutting-edge developers” (George et al. 2025). In the wake of this fact, these dystopian practices look as though they are going to become increasingly more common particularly when considering there has been little pushback against Israel’s continued manufacturing of a variety of these products. Though it is rather obvious, it is important to reiterate that all these weapons and technologies being purchased by these third-party states were developed and tested at the expense of Palestinian lives, crushing the agency and dignity of countless people. In turn, Israel is further propagated and removed from accountability as their growing list of business partners become increasingly less likely to throw their suppliers under the “international humanitarian law bus” so to speak.
Crucially there remains a single question and Loewenstein touches on said question, what does Israel see for the future of themselves and the O.P.T given their massive hand in the surveillance and control over the territories? Loewenstein claims the Israeli position is that technological advancement ought to create a future in which human intervention between Palestinians and Israelis in and around the O.P.T. is limited or almost nonexistent. Ideally, for Israel, their technologies like Red Wolf, Pegasus, and Mabat 2000 are able to act autonomously and conduct any security measures needed. A cocktail of these spyware technologies is used to always have an eye on every Palestinian and even those outside of O.P.T or Israel. An endemic issue with this approach is that these technologies are often biased and are unable to effectively conduct the security measures that were already poorly done. Due to being trained on previously available data, which is often biased, they are likely to repeat the same biased outcome.
Furthermore, this litany of software imposes a mass surveillance state that collects facial scans and other biometric data to maintain an apartheid state. Amnesty International’s 2022 “Ban the Scan” report shows that Israel has created exclusively Palestinian databases for surveillance purposes and furthermore set up networks of surveillance all across cities under Israeli occupation. Notably the city of Hebron serves as a hub for Israeli intelligence software and in 2022 Amnesty International reported on previously unknown surveillance technology by the name of “Red Wolf”. As described by Amnesty International “Every time a Palestinian goes through a checkpoint, their face is scanned without their knowledge or consent, and compared with other biometric entries of other Palestinians stored in linked databases…If Red Wolf finds that an individual is not registered on the databases, their face is added, without their consent, and they are automatically denied passage.” (“Ban the Scan” 2022). This is all done in violation of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) Art. 13. Despite the UDHR being a declaration rather than a ratified treaty, Israel is a signatory to both the ICCPR and ICESCR, both of which emerged as a result of the UDHR and share many core principles. In essence, their continued action of surveilling groups of Palestinians continues to violate their international obligations. As mentioned previously, this question of how Israel sees development in the O.P.T going forward is laid in the background of Loewenstein’s entire docuseries and he does well to “show” rather than “tell”. This method was particularly effective in demonstrating the ways in which Israel is set up infrastructurally that then allows them to build technological systems of oppression and to use them widely in the O.P.T.
All things considered, Loewenstein does excellently in his docuseries to demonstrate his position in regard to Israeli technological development and the ways in which that technology is made available to perpetuate other forms of militarism globally. His thesis on Palestine being exploited by Israel and its numerous weapons manufacturers as a laboratory was thoroughly developed and well expounded on. Another positive point of note would be his regular inclusion of the Palestinian experience in the midst of the ever-growing surveillance state that Israel has continually developed toward becoming. It can almost seem redundant to make this comment but more often than not things like this are easily swept aside in favour of simply treating Palestinians as a monolithic group with the same experiences. Their perspective was the most valuable element of this docuseries given how difficult it can be for journalists to reach them as well as the fact that Palestinian people have easily become the most familiar with AI security measures that will be seen as increasingly common over the course of the next fifty years. Overall, “The Palestine Laboratory” serves as an effective accompaniment to the original book of the same name. It gives a more visual element to those who seek it as well as more in depth on the ground reporting from a variety of cases that help further round out Antony Loewenstein’s original thesis.
Bibliography
Al Jazeera English. 2025a. “How Israel Tests Military Tech on Palestinians | the Palestine Laboratory E1 | Featured Documentary.” YouTube. January 30, 2025.
———. 2025b. “How Is Israel’s Military Tech Marketed Abroad? | the Palestine Laboratory E2 |
Featured Documentary.” YouTube. February 6, 2025.
Amnesty International. 2024. “Amnesty International Concludes Israel Is Committing Genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.” Amnesty International. December 5, 2024. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-international-concludes-israel-i s-committing-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/.
“Ban the Scan.” 2022. Amnesty International. 2022. https://banthescan.amnesty.org/opt/.
George, Mathew, Katarina Djokic, Zain Hussain, Pieter D Wezeman, and Siemon T Wezeman. 2025. “Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2024.” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, March. https://doi.org/10.55163/xxsz9056.
“Refugees & Migrants Sea Arrivals in Europe.” 2024. UNHCR.org. UNHCR. 2024. https://data.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/53447.