Reviews tagging 'Violence'

The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World by Antony Loewenstein

5 reviews

savshelfinger's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative medium-paced

4.5

extremely thorough dive into the technology of the occupation, many facts learned. 
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bookishmillennial's review

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challenging dark emotional informative sad slow-paced
This was written and published *before* October 7, 2023. I want to get that out of the way before anyone wants to argue that ethnic cleansing and genocide is a form of self-defense. The atrocities you will read about trace back decades & it’s absolutely abhorrent.

Verso provided free e-copies of this book & I’m unsure if they still are, but I highly recommend this book regardless of how you get a copy!

This book draws out exactly how Israel has supported past and current genocides and not only how Israel is actively committing a genocide against Palestinians, but the global impacts of this occupation. It’s eye-opening and honestly, it disheartened me a bit to see how far Israel’s reach goes.

This book explained Israel’s role in monumentally devastating violence in so many other countries, including Romania, Haiti, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Argentina, Colombia, South Africa, Rwanda, Chile, and more.

I simply became more and more disillusioned of any good faith or will of Israel as Loewenstein outlined each of these horrible revelations (to me, someone who continues to learn). I also felt less & less convinced that this was *complicated*, as so many people have argued. Genuinely seems like the age-old case of prioritizing greed & power under the guise of “protection”

“Israel’s claim to be a thriving democracy in the heart of the Middle East is challenged by the facts. All media outlets in Israel, along with publishers and authors, must submit stories related to foreign affairs and security to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) chief military censor before publication. No other Western country has such a system. It’s an archaic regulation that began soon after Israel was born. The censor has the power to entirely block the story or partially redact it.”
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pmhandley's review against another edition

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informative medium-paced

4.5

An important read. While it's called "The Palestine Laboratory," the book really goes beyond Palestine, and shows how Israel enables genocide in other countries and befriends autocratic regimes with its weapons sales - including governments that are actively antisemitic, flirt with Holocaust denial and a threat to their own Jewish citizens. Israel is fine with overlooking antisemitism as long as its weapons are sold and it gets backing of its occupation on the world stage. It seems unbothered to throw non-Israeli Jews under the bus for convenience, as well as any other minority deemed an "undesirable population," like migrants trying to cross the US border or the Mediterranean. The book also shows how Israel's racism goes past anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian rhetoric. As a country, Israel has set up its border technology to keep out African migrants as well and electeds have openly voiced anti-Black sentiments and racial slurs. I do wish Loewenstein had dipped into Israel's treatment of Ethiopian Jews, which is not covered. I think it also could've used another round of editing to clean it up a bit. A lot of the same people are introduced over and over as if for the first time and it gets redundant. Eitay Mack is prominently featured but gets introduced brand new something like 3 times. Some of the sentences border on run-on. But none of this takes away from the overall message and content.
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mads_jpg's review

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challenging dark informative sad slow-paced

4.5

A scary and therefore important read. Really lays all of Israel's defence policies out in the open to see the damage they've contributed to, not just in Palestine but globally. 

I usually avoid books that are solely focussed on war/politics since they tend to be quite dense with assumed knowledge but this was surprisingly accessible. I still struggled with some parts but it was mostly very informative and easy to understand.

Main critique is for the editor because my god were there a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes, what happened??
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zombiezami's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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