Hello and welcome back to On the Nose, the Jewish Currents podcast. I'm Arielle Angel, editor in chief of Jewish Currents, and I'll be your host for today. In spring 2023, Antony Loewenstein published a book called The Palestine Laboratory that traces the way that Israeli military technology and weaponry battle tested on Palestinians is exported around the world, trying to connect the dots and get people to pay attention to the fact that what's carried out in Gaza, for example, will soon appear elsewhere in the world as different kinds of surveillance and combat technologies are sold far and wide. Last month, we published a piece by Rhys Machold, called “The Myth of Israeli Innovation,” which I'll put in the show notes, that takes issue with what Rhys has termed the laboratory thesis and some of the ways it obscures rather than illuminates the dynamics at play. Today, we have Antony and Rhys here for a comradely debate about the laboratory thesis. There's a lot of common ground here and a few very interesting points of divergence, which I'm looking forward to digging into.

Let me introduce you both first. Antony Lowenstein is an independent journalist, bestselling author, filmmaker, and co-founder of Declassified Australia. His books include the global bestseller The Palestine Laboratory, which is also a podcast with Drop Site News and an award-winning documentary series with AL Jazeera English. Welcome to the pod, Antony.

Thanks so much for having me.

Rhys Machold is a senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Glasgow School of Social and Political Sciences. He's the author of Fabricating Homeland Security: Police Entanglements Across India and Palestine/Israel. Rhys, thanks for being here.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Antony, I'm going to start with you. I was hoping you could lay the groundwork here and tell us a little bit about the basic thesis of your book.

So, the way I define the laboratory is not something that just has happened since October 7th, 2023. The concept, I think, has been around, I would argue, pretty much since the beginning of Israel's birth. I would argue maybe even before. And what I mean by that is that Israel, Zionism, Zionists have viewed the need—definitely since 1948—to make friends. Now, that's not particularly unusual. A new state gets born, you need to make friends. That's not exactly controversial. But pretty much from the beginning, there was a realization or an acknowledgment, including from David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister, that one of the ways they could do that was through the defense sector—through weapons, through arms. Now, obviously, at the beginning, it was pretty basic. It was guns, that kind of thing. And from the late 1950s, already, there were sales to, for example, Germany, which, at the time, of course, was quite controversial considering the Holocaust had only finished a number of years before. In the end, Israel decided to sell lots of weapons to Germany and also take huge amounts of money from Germany.

Fast forward to after 1967: Israel takes control of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. It was interesting how a lot of the world was opposed to that. They didn't support the occupation. They said to Israel, essentially: Give the land back. This is illegal. Now, of course, Israel has never done that. And the way that Israel has managed that is to show the various ways that they are controlling, managing, dominating Palestinians. And they didn't call it a laboratory, but that's essentially what it was: various forms of weapons, counterterrorism. By the 1970s—although it pretty much started from the late 1960s—Israel was selling and offering, to huge amounts of nations around the world—Western states and non-Western states—advice, training, how to manage, so to speak, what they viewed as unwanted populations—an Indigenous population here, Muslims there, whatever it may be. Israel, in that way, made lots and lots of friends. You would have, for example, Pinochet, 1973. There's a coup, Pinochet takes control, and for many, many years, people would know that the U.S. was a massive backer of the Pinochet regime, but Israel, at times, in fact, was a much bigger supporter. Armed, trained, backed that regime. The Guatemalan genocide in the 1980s, which was backed and armed by Israel. Now, Israel was selling weapons and surveillance, yes, but they were selling training. And a lot of the comments that, for example, Chilean officials, Guatemalan officials, Iranian officials before 1979 with the Shah, would say that they were admiring what Israel was doing in Palestine, and they want a piece of that for themselves.

Now, fast forward to after 9/11. Israel very quickly pivoted to saying, essentially: We've been fighting a war on terror forever. We've been fighting horrible Muslims and Palestinians forever. Let us teach you how to do it, how to fight this war on terror. And Israel's defense sector has exploded in the last 25 years or so to huge amounts of nations. Yes, Western nations, but also non-Western nations, from India, to the Arab states, to much of Asia. And October 7th showed, in some ways, the fallacy of the laboratory. I mean, you spent, Israel, billions and billions and billions of dollars on surveillance technology and all this equipment around Gaza to what you thought would protect you, so to speak, and it all collapsed in a matter of minutes when Hamas launched its attack. And yet, in the last two years, two plus years, Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, have destroyed Gaza, and a lot of the weapons, and surveillance technology, and AI that Israel has been using is very attractive to many other nations. Literally this month, in November 2025, huge amounts of Western nations went to Israel, essentially on a mission to learn what Israel had done “well”—in inverted commas—and “not well” in Gaza. So, I think, overall, to me, the laboratory thesis is just undeniably true based on what huge amounts of officials, and countries, and states in the West and the rest have been saying for literally more than half a century.

Yeah. So, I mean, it's amazing how much overlap we have. I mean, we agree about the vast majority of things. You're absolutely right in the sense that from day one, even before Israel was a state in 1948, Zionist officials have always been trying to present themselves as some kind of model for the world. It goes back to the end of the 19th century, in my reading. And I thought it was really interesting, in rereading a bit of your book, I pulled out a quote that I had also used in an earlier piece of the Jewish Currents piece, this Wall Street Journal quote from the 1980s quoting Israeli officials. It says, essentially: Stop being so upset with our hawkish behavior. We are, after all, the laboratory for you guys to test your weapons out. But there's been a lot of concerns that I have about that representation. I feel that it's not all that it seems, and it's not that it doesn't tell us anything at all. But I think if accepted at face value, it has a potential, or at least poses a danger, of reproducing a certain kind of Zionist exceptionalism that, I think, might not always lead us down the path that we desire to be led, I suppose. So, I've been more skeptical of it, but I've learned an enormous amount from other people who've used it. I think it's also probably worth noting that people recently, like Naomi Klein, who really championed that idea in the early 2000s, have also started to walk it back in the last couple of years.

Well, let me dig into the piece that I see as different. I mean, you're looking at the 1948 moment, the 1967 moment, and post 9/11 moments also as moments where there is enormous investment from Western governments in Israel. And so, the idea that we are working with a kind of pure Israeli innovation in those moments obscures the fact that there's more of a dependence on Western powers than is otherwise copped to in this framing, where they, again and again, will basically get an enormous amount of help militarily and in terms of intelligence, and then essentially say, “Look how mighty we are” when they win. And that creates kind of a virtuous cycle.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, I'm not talking about a laboratory in this way that is positive. And clearly, if Donald Trump, for argument's sake, tomorrow, came out and said, “All the funding stopped, military support stops,” Israel would not collapse the next day, but clearly, they would be challenged until they become far more independent themselves, which is something that Netanyahu and others have been talking about for quite a long time, with the realization that there is the potential of a future U.S. president not cutting Israel loose, but certainly relying much less on it. And I would argue that explains, to some extent, part of what Israel has been doing long before October 7th, but certainly since: expanding its base of support. It's not just Western powers here, it's not just Washington, it's not just the U.K., it's not just Germany. It's true that America and Germany are the two biggest arms suppliers to Israel since October 7th. That's undeniably true.

But, for example, since October 7th—and it started long before—India and Israel are massively close. Israeli companies have huge amounts of presence, physical presence, in India. They have been building huge amounts of factories. A lot of the drones that Israel has been using in Gaza after October 7th were built, produced, made in India. Those ties are deepening. The Indian-Israeli relationship has, arguably, never been stronger. I think it's, as I say in my book—and I was in India last year researching for the film for AL Jazeera—that it's not just a defense relationship; it's an ideological relationship, where they—Modi and Netanyahu—there's a deep admiration for each other's extremism. Modi is trying to build a Hindu fundamentalist state. Israel has built a Jewish supremacist state. So, the idea somehow—and Rhys’ essay in Jewish Currents, I think, in my view, overly focuses on Western reliance. Clearly, there's truth to that. I mean, the West is a massively important player here, but it's not the only one. From Sweden, to France, to Germany, to the U.K., to the U.S., to Australia, and many other countries, the far right—and it's hard to generalize, but in general, the far right embraces Israel. They see it as a model, not even talking about it as a laboratory. They see it ideologically as a model. So, if we hope to put pressure on Israel through, for example, cutting the arms flow from America or Germany, that clearly would make a difference to Israel's isolation. But it's being made up, in my view, from increasing support ideologically and, potentially, financially from a far right that is in the ascendancy.

I guess I would disagree to some extent. I think if the U.S. did pull the plug and Germany and all the West pulled the plug, I do think Israel would collapse almost immediately. But I think the more important point is that your point, Antony, about other sites of engagement is a crucial one. I do believe that Israel's allies exist across a range of places, and they have evolved, historically, in relation to a lot of far-flung places, not least of all, South Africa. Most of its exports indeed have been outside of NATO countries and to non-Western countries. That being said, though, I think it's important to qualify those relationships as well, which is to say that what has been exported there, I think, is often not all that it seems. So, one example that you cite in your book, Antony, that I found honestly fascinating, was the example of, in the 1980s, when Israel invaded Lebanon and seized, I believe, a bunch of AK47s from the PLO and then exported them to the Contras. That's a very dangerous and problematic transaction, but it has literally nothing to do with the Palestine laboratory. It's literally basically stealing a bunch of stuff that's almost junk quality and sending it somewhere else. Another example that I stumbled upon recently in a really excellent essay by the historian Alex Aviña—he has this example of the Arava aircraft made by Israel military industries in the 1970s and 1980s, and that was basically Israel's first aircraft that didn't work well enough even to sell it to Israeli actors and was basically dumped on Central America, which was used in counterinsurgency. But the aircraft itself was very, very bad. So, bad, in fact, that they couldn't even get business with the Israeli military. So, I think it's worth noting that there's a wide range of things, from highly advanced things like Pegasus, that have been absolutely devastating, to essentially Israel dumping all kinds of other basically junk on the rest of the world and trying to sell it, which is a different story.

Yeah, I mean, this is one place where you're afraid that the narrative is getting bigger than the reality—that people are saying, “It's all coming for us, all this advanced Israeli tech,” and they're kind of losing the fact that there are also questions about how advanced some of these technologies really are. I mean, you have a great point in your piece, Rhys, where you're basically saying a lot of the bombs that they're dropping on Gaza are just these dumb bombs. Like when they killed Nasrallah, they just blew up a whole city block. The innovation here is not the weaponry; it's a political innovation. They have such a relationship with powerful allies and have set themselves up to be totally shielded from impunity. It's more the political will to do such a thing as opposed to the technology itself. So, we have this question about how advanced these technologies actually are. There's also the question of whether these technologies should even be considered fully Israeli. Antony, you talk a lot in your recent work about big tech and the way that none of this could be possible without Google, Microsoft, the whole host. And so, how Israeli are these technologies, and is this technological innovation as much as a political one?

It's important to clarify that I don't see the laboratory concept as simply being about the most sophisticated technology. In Gaza, mass destruction is the point. So, I see the laboratory as not just Israel selling itself as selling the most sophisticated technology or surveillance. That's part of it, but as I say in the book, part of the laboratory's ideology is the concept of getting away with it. That's what Israel is selling to so many nations. And on one level, that's not something necessarily you sell financially for money, per se, but there are huge amounts of nations—I document this in the book, the West and the rest—who talk openly about how much they admire that Israel is able to get away with the longest occupation in modern times. They admire the fact that Israel can essentially level Gaza and get away with it. No one is held to account. So, yes, in terms of Gaza, since October 7th—yes, there's been a combination of killer drones and artificial intelligence which is being used. This existed before October 7th, but it's being deepened.

No doubt, the use of big tech—Google, Amazon, Palantir, Microsoft—has been essential to provide cloud services to Israel. Now, could they have done it without that? Hard to say. It existed before October 7th. They certainly expanded what those companies are willing to do, and I see those big tech companies as using Gaza as a laboratory. Because ultimately, what those companies are getting from Israel is not that much money, in the scheme of things. Israel is a small country, it's 10 million people, 15 million if you include everyone under occupation. It's a tiny country. So, the kind of contracts they're going to get elsewhere are going to be far bigger financially than they are from Israel. But what I would argue these companies have shown, working with Israel, is that most of those companies see no downside to what they've done. Zero. Silicon Valley now very much admires what Israel's doing. They're investing in the tech sector there hugely. I mean, that's just fact.

Rhys, Antony's talking about how big tech is starting to see Israel and Palestine as their laboratory. It's a place where they can see what this kind of AI technology or their services could actually provide to bigger countries in war scenarios. I don't know if that changes the calculus for you, in terms of the narrative. Like, if we started to talk about Palestine as a laboratory for global powers, including these big tech and transnational corporations, if that would break some of the narrative power of the idea of this being Israeli innovation writ large?

Yeah, it's a good question. I think everything Antony says about that is correct, in the sense that all these tech companies want to get their hands on this data. There's no doubt that they are harvesting enormous amounts of data out of the genocide, and I'm sure they are learning all kinds of things which can only be bad for everyone, or any normal people, I suppose. But I guess what strikes me a bit, with particularly the +972 reporting, which has been very, very widely reported, is that I think there's a bit of a sleight of hand or a bit of trick in it, in the sense—not the reporting itself, but the story that it tells about the genocide—in the sense that it is clearly, or at least part of it is clearly being administered by some kind of algorithm or some kind of AI, which is incredibly worrying for all kinds of reasons. But I don't think AI is really the story of the genocide. I was reading an essay by Shir Hever that came out, I believe, maybe a month ago, and he's traced in a lot of detail how the Israeli military production has shifted very much to what Antony was talking about a few minutes ago, which is toward brute destruction. What they have needed mostly is very crude things, and what they have mostly not needed is very sophisticated things.

Well, and the AI itself, it’s not like it was deployed in a sophisticated manner. It's not about targeted precision. It's about generating as many possible, quote, unquote, “targets.”

Exactly, and when I look at the pictures coming out of Gaza today, what I see is carpet bombing. If that carpet bombing was done with AI or without AI, it's not necessarily irrelevant, but the outcome is the same. And so, I think trying to parse what is novel about it and what is not is a really challenging thing. But simply saying that it was done with advanced AI, I think, is neither here nor there.

Well, it's still reportable.

No, no, no. All I'm trying to say is I think the Israeli state would very much prefer us to talk about AI as opposed to the genocide, per se. So, we should be a little bit suspicious of that, I guess.

I want to go back to this question about political innovation, and it seems like this is a place where you guys really agree. I just wondered if you could both talk a little bit about the way that this is actually a question about political narrative, power, maneuvering, et cetera, as opposed to (or even as it integrates) elements of military prowess and innovation.

Yeah, look, one of the things that I talk about in the book is that, as I said, the laboratory is not just surveillance and weapons. It's not just the actual act of killing people, or surveilling people, or monitoring them in the West Bank, or Hebron, or whatever it may be. I see the laboratory is far deeper than that. And we don't have to use that word; it could be some other word. But I think ultimately, to me, it's about how many, many nations have deeply admired Israel for a long time because they themselves want to enact similar policies in their own countries against an Indigenous population, against an unwanted minority, against Muslims, whoever it may be. And this has been the case for decades. It hasn't changed. I mean, it's changed in terms of which countries might be working alongside Israel. But to me, there's no question that if all those countries—and I estimate in the book between 125 and 140 countries in the last 50, 60 years has bought either some form of surveillance technology, some weapons, some training. That's the majority of countries on the planet. Now, some of it is a very small contract, some of it is much bigger. I'm not saying they're all the same, but ultimately, it still relies and looks for assistance from Israel.

Israel, of course, has framed itself as this almost one-stop shop. And I take Rhys's point here, that there's a danger in almost doing Israel's PR for it by saying everyone wants to be like Israel, or do work like Israel, or kill like Israel, or monitor like Israel, because they're the so-called best at it. Israel is now the eighth biggest arms dealer in the world. I should say the one caveat to that is that in the last few months, and we'll see if this changes, Spain was the first large country that I'm aware of that massively cut their arms deals with Israel. It was worth about a billion U.S. dollars. Now, I fear there's a good chance all those nations that were hesitant publicly will quietly come back to the warm embrace of Israel in the coming months and years. But nonetheless, that started causing concern in the Israeli business press, that: My God, what happens if all these countries decide to start to divorce us or move away from us because of public outcry over the genocide? But I think in some ways, the political admiration that many nations have for Israel—long before Netanyahu came on the scene—is really about the fact that there is no punishment. There's no accountability for anything that Israel does. There never has been, really, and ultimately, it's not surprising that many other nations would like a piece of that.

Yeah, I agree. I think murdering defenseless people with crude weapons isn't militarily difficult. What's difficult about it, typically, is the impunity question. And so, the question of how they get around it is the operative question. Not: Are they capable of murdering Indigenous peoples? Another thing that I want to just pick up on—you mentioned that Israel is the eighth-largest exporter in the world. I think, when I look at those statistics,—and I was just looking at them the other day,—what always struck me, and I've never really known quite what to do with this, is if you look at the top 10 suppliers—I mean, before Israel, you have Germany, Italy, and then Spain comes after it as number nine. And so, my question, I guess, in relation to the laboratory idea is: Where are their laboratories? As far as I can tell, Italy hasn't fought a major war in a very long time. Nor has Spain, nor has Germany, to my mind. And so, if experimentation is so vital, then I've always wondered: Where are they getting their experimentation from? Are they getting it somehow secondarily from Israel? I'm not totally sure. But I think the fact that Israel's in that top 10 is very striking, given their population, and they have the highest per capita export figures of any. So, in that sense, they are meaningfully exceptional. But at the end of the day, they are just one among a number of mid-range suppliers that are quite similar, I guess. So, to me, that raises questions about how experimentation figures into those other countries' industries.

It's a great question. Antony, what do you think about that?

I mean, I think there's no doubt that the other countries in there—I mean, if you look at some of those top 10, obviously it includes Russia and the U.S. The U.S., no doubt, is using the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as a laboratory. The War in Ukraine has certainly been that. There's been God knows how many articles in the last three years talking about how both the Ukrainian forces are using Ukraine as a testing ground. Russia's also using it in that way. I don't think every country necessarily has to see its military, or its weapons, or surveillance as a laboratory. I mean, the U.S. has a 45% of the world's weapons sales. It's huge because it's a global superpower. China is not that dissimilar, massive. So, some countries simply buy the technology from the U.S. for political reasons, for expediency reasons. Some countries are buying, for example, the spyware from Israel, whether it's Pegasus or Paragon or others, simply because, inverted commas, “it seems to work.” The reason that Pegasus—and it's a bit less so these days—that Pegasus was so explosively popular for so long was that it had been deployed against so many dissidents, and journalists, and actors around the world that it was seen as successful. And a lot of countries, I would argue, want to have close relationships with Washington, and they see the path to that as going via Israel. We haven't even talked about the Arab countries, by the way. The Arab countries are some of the biggest purchasers, in the last five or so years, of Israeli surveillance technology to monitor their own people. I think that's for a range of reasons. One, because they're all dictatorships. Two, because they're petrified of a public uprising like the Arab Spring. Three, they want to be close to Washington. But the fact is that they are deeply reliant, nowadays, on Israeli technology. And that has not changed at all since October 7th. In fact it's deepened.

I hear everything that you just said, Antony. I do think there's also something important that Rhys is saying about this de exceptionalization, and also just expanding the frame and recognizing this global military industrial complex, on some level. Both because it helps us see the full picture. That helps us think about strategy more clearly, and we'll talk about that, but also because, again, it doesn't play into the narrative. And it doesn't play into the narrative on a number of reasons. One is just the way that we've been talking about, which is: We're the best at killing people. Even if you don't like it, you might as well buy from us. But the other is simply about this attention on Israel, quote, unquote. And this comes all the time from the right. You hear this like: Why are we focusing on Israel? Like, this double standards piece. That kind of blows up when you recognize that this is part of a global network.

No, I agree with all that. Last year, the global arms industry was worth $2.5 trillion, and Israel is a small part of that. It's not the only player. I completely agree; I don't suggest, of course, that it is. But I think what Israel is offering and selling is different, in a way, to what the Italian arms industry is selling. Doesn't mean the Italian arms industry is not inherently amoral, as any arms industry is, because they sell to pretty much anybody. But I think Israel has seen its arms industry—and I would argue increasingly views it this way—as a key part of its potential long-term economic survival, which I think is where the Achilles heel comes in.

So, let's talk about what this says about strategy in general. I mean, I see you guys also having a conversation that I'm seeing played out all across the sphere. Basically, a subset of a debate that's like: Whether Israel is weak or strong right now; whether the economy is booming or on the brink of collapse. There was a great argument between the Makdisi brothers, the Palestinian academics and intellectuals, on their podcast Makdisi Street, about this. You also have Ilan Pappé’s new book, Israel on the Brink, also pushing the idea that Israel's on the verge of collapse. And we have this disagreement between you guys about the importance of the U.S. in particular, as opposed to the kind of diversification that Israel is seeking around the world. What does that say about our strategy? Maybe it doesn't matter how weak they are or not. Maybe that's just for our morale. But how does that change the strategy about what we do about any of this?

Yeah, I guess I'm more partial to the On The Brink argument, perhaps, than Antony is—that, in fact, the Zionist project is not nearly as stable as it appears. I think some of this comes up in your book, too, Antony, which I think is great—the references to Sparta, which have come up again recently by Netanyahu.

In other words, that he's trying to focus on making Israel more independent.

Yes. The anxiety about dependence has been there from the beginning, and the likes of Moshe Dayan and others were always very attuned to the dangers that dependency poses to the Zionist project. And there were deep disagreements with him and Ben Gurion about how dependent they should be and whether dependency was the horizon or whether self-sufficiency was the horizon. I guess what I would say to that, though, is that I think the idea of self-sufficiency has always been an aspiration in principle and had a lot of ideological force in Israeli and Zionist politics, but I think it has always been a myth, in the sense that it has never been realized in any meaningful sense. It's pivoted back and forth between different degrees of dependency and who you're dependent on, and what, and so on. But literally everything is a dependency relationship, to some extent, so I think trying to focus on that politically is where the most mileage is, in a sense. Whether it's the West, whether that's in relation to dock workers sending stuff to Israel, or whether it's the Arab countries. The action is always about trying to draw attention to where the dependencies are and trying to magnify the weaknesses and the cracks wherever they can be most leveraged.

Yeah. I see the vulnerability not so much economically but ideologically. Clearly, if one follows a lot of the Israeli conversation, media-wise and politically—Yes, there's lots of bravado, but actually, that masks—as Rhys rightly says—an insecurity that's been there from the beginning: Where do we belong? Who are we? What's our place in the world? And that's mirrored, obviously, in the conversation in much of the Jewish Zionist diaspora. There is profound insecurity about where the future of Israel and Zionism will be. That's been around for a long time, but one only has to look at the polling of young Jews in the U.S, U.K., much of Europe, even in my country, Australia. A lot of young Jews and young people in general do not have particularly fond feelings toward Israel. They just don't. That's on the left and even parts of the right. So, that undeniably brings insecurity, as it thankfully should, for many in Israel.

The Sparta point that Netanyahu made is something that Naftali Bennett has talked about, in fact, for a long time, but he talks about it in a positive way. He actually doesn't see it as a problem. Bennett has been—I have a quote in the book, this is long before October 7th, that Naftali Bennett and others see the concept of Israel as a Sparta as something to admire, that: We can do this. We can build a strong defense sector, strong economy, make friends, and somehow survive. Now, we can question whether that's viable or crazy, but I don't see, when Pappé and others talk about Israel on the brink—where? Where is this coming from? Practically speaking, economically, Israel is not on the brink, not even close to it. They're just not. Philosophically, ideologically, yes: There are stressors, and insecurities, and defensiveness. But I don't see where they’re anywhere close to, for example, 1988 South Africa, where Mandela was released in 1990, and this was the point where the South African regime essentially was given an ultimatum: You either change, or you're going to be isolated beyond repair. Israel is nowhere near that. Now, I'm not saying the comparisons are the same. They're obviously very different. I get that, but I don't see that.

Look, obviously we're putting this in very binary terms: Are they winning, or losing, or whatever? And as you said, who cares what you call it? Gaza is destroyed, and Israel, you know that the way that they've bifurcated Gaza with the yellow line, that land is not coming back, in the same way that all the other territories are not coming back, at least for the foreseeable future. I think that you really would have to focus in on the specificity of by what metric you're looking at vulnerability. And the truth is, they might be very vulnerable right now, and it's very contingent on what we do. But depending on how many Palestinians they are able to kill, and expel, and all of the things that we know that they're doing, they may also be able to complete the process of genocide and then restabilize, like Germany. So, I think it really depends a lot on what we do and how we push. And so, I want to put the question to you again, Antony: What is the strategy? I agree with you, on some level, that I think they're vulnerable in a lot of ways, but I think that they can very much recover from that vulnerability. So, what do we do?

Look, yeah, I don't want people to walk away thinking that there's no hope and we're all screwed. I don't necessarily think that. I think that in the last two years, I've seen more than any time—I've been writing about this issue and talking about it for 25 years, and I've never seen so much interest, and passion, and commitment to Palestine around the world, from civil society, from various groups. The question is translating that into political power. I mean, to me, it would have been unheard of, five years ago—and this is no defense of the Democratic Party, God help me—but the fact that in the Democratic base, Israel is in the toilet. That was not happening five years ago, even 10 years ago, That is happening now. Now, how that plays out politically, that, to me, is the challenge. How do you translate that? In Italy, there was massive protests—this is a country who elected a far-right government, Meloni—who had massive protests a few months ago. Dock workers go on strike at the end of this month, in November, there's going to be another massive strike on the docks in that country. That, to me, is how you put political pressure on: to impose economic pain.

Within the Jewish community. I think there are two things that need to happen, briefly. One, we are so in need of a reckoning, and obviously, Jewish Currents and others are part of that, of course, but there is a desperate need for a reckoning. A reckoning of what “our,” inverted commas, colleagues, friends, communities have been doing, are supporting, what our synagogues are largely backing still.

I hear you, and obviously, that's like my life's work. But at the same time, when we're having these broad conversations about the weapons trade, very little of that is going to be affected by anything that happens in diaspora Jewish communities.

I agree with that. So, countries need to be pressured to not buy weapons. Spain is a good example of that. Spain cut $ 1 billion of contracts in the last few months from Israel. That is a significant amount of money and significant that a country—which, yes, is relatively pro-Palestine—did that. That, to me, is a positive sign.

Rhys, I want to give you a chance to weigh in on this, and then I have one last question.

Sure. Yeah. I think it's a really interesting discussion, and I think, when I go back and read through the historical archive—and I was rereading Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi’s excellent book from the 1980s, The Israeli Connection: Who Arms Israel and Why that I cite in the Jewish Currents piece as well, he goes on and on for many pages, always talking about what a pariah state Israel is in the 1980s, and he's always emphasizing how isolated they are, and how unusually isolated they are. I think, in relation to the weapons trade, I think what's really important to get right here is that their claim to being an innovator, or being special, or being especially good at something—that, I would argue, has been what has been able to negotiate their otherwise total pariah status by cultivating what I would think is a kind of mythology around their military prowess.

And it's notable again, if you go back to that book—this is all over your book, too, Antony—they're mostly selling to despotic regimes. I think, really, their comparative advantage is that they have absolutely no scruples and they are willing to sell to literally anyone unless it's an overt enemy of the United States. For example, during the Cold War, they couldn't sell to the Soviet Union, for example, but barring a few tiny exceptions, that's their M.O. And so, I think it's just important to reiterate that they are a pariah, they are isolated, they are selling to the worst possible regimes, and they are not special. Their weapons, for the most part, with some exceptions, aren't special. I think telling that story better from the left can help us take one of their key political cudgels, I guess, which they always wield against all of us, which is to say that: We are special, and therefore, you have to put up with us. I think that's not true, and I think we have an opportunity to make that visible. And that's what I was trying to get at.

So, a last question for you guys. Kind of a biggie, but still, I think we have to talk about this in any conversation on this topic. There's this long-standing debate about who's really in charge in the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, and whether we have kind of a tail-wagging-the-dog situation with Israel in the driver's seat, manipulating the U.S. This came up a lot when the U.S. was drawn into the bombing of Iran by Israel over the summer, but also present as we watch the U.S. institute and enforce this putative ceasefire and put troops on the ground. Also, it comes into play, unsurprisingly in a lot of antisemitic conspiracy theories. Rhys, it seems like your analysis reasserts the primacy of Western powers in this arrangement, including big tech and big business, but also kind of affirms the narrative manipulation on the part of Israel. Antony, I'm not clear. I think you would maybe see the balance a little bit different. So, I was wondering what the implications are that both of you draw, from your own research, on the question of the nature of the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, and whether, so to speak, the tail is wagging the dog.

Yeah, it's a tricky question. I've been reading a lot about the Jeffrey Epstein revelations the past few weeks from Drop Site and other news organizations. I think they tell us a couple of things. If we circle back to some of the things you said a few minutes ago, Antony, around different Arab states, for example, clamoring for Israeli technologies, what I see in the revelations from the Epstein emails with Ehud Barak and other officials is really quite the opposite. I feel that it traces, in great detail, Israel and its allies—with the aid of Jeffrey Epstein—really pushing themselves on the world and doing everything in their power to try to, by hook and by crook, make these deals in a lot of different places like Mongolia or Cote d'Ivoire and other places. And the way that I read that is, the fact that they, I guess, needed Jeffrey Epstein to make these kinds of deals on their behalf really brings into question the extent to which they are at the commanding heights that they claim.

I think it also raises interesting questions about U.S. power as well. In some of the Drop Site reporting, I find it really striking that, at certain points, the Israelis, via Epstein, are basically doing things that are directly against U.S. foreign policy at the time. And so, I think none of these questions are entirely resolved one way or the other, but I do think that it's notable that, for example, in relation to Iran and so on, when the U.S. says “enough is enough,” the guns stop very quickly, and I think that is very telling about not trying to push the nuance too far. I think the U.S. empire can turn off the Israeli war machine with a phone call, if they so desire. So, I think we always have to keep that front and center. But the broader relationship—I think the Epstein and revelations really give us new details into quite surprising ways that global power works. Not always in the most obvious directions and forms that we might imagine.

Yeah, I mean, historically, one of the things I look at in my laboratory book is how the U.S.'s role after World War II has obviously been supporting god knows how many repressive states around the world. That's not exactly a revelation, but what I think was surprising for many people was that Israel was often by America's side, almost like America's wingman. Pinochet in Chile, or other regimes in South and Latin America, Asia, pretty much every corner of the globe—arming, training, funding, backing. And generally speaking, as Rhys rightly says, in alignment with so-called U.S. foreign policy goals, which generally fitted the agenda of the Israeli state, whether Likud was in power or Labor in Israel. I suppose these days, it seems pretty clear to me that had Trump not put at least some pressure on Netanyahu and the government, the genocide in Gaza, which obviously is ongoing, would have been a forever war. I mean, it's arguably a forever war now, but certainly, you would have had hundreds and hundreds being killed every day still. I don't think there's really any doubt about that. Netanyahu has a desire to continue bombing, and bombing, and bombing, and bombing for crude political purposes. But at the same time, I do think that it's pretty clear that the U.S., under Trump at least, does feel like they're increasingly impatient with Netanyahu at least. They're not going to unseat him; they're not going to try to overthrow him. For Christ's sake, Trump is writing to Isaac Herzog asking for a pardon for Netanyahu. I think he sees almost an affinity with a fellow thug, a fellow corrupt thug. But I do think that the role of the U.S.—and Rhys is absolutely right—they can change things with a phone call. Of course, it's not surprising that Israel is spending huge amounts of money to try to get the evangelicals on board, who are seen as the more, inverted commas, “reliable” allies, even though many young evangelicals, according to polls, do not see Israel in such a positive way.

Yeah, it's gone down enormously. I think it's more like 30% now, down from 70%. So, it's really been cut in half.

One other thing that I just wanted to mention, I was at a conference last week, and Maya Wind, I think, made a really apt point. Thinking about the political constituencies of the Zionist project simply as American Jews or even evangelical Christians is itself possibly misleading, in the sense that they have constituencies in a lot of other parts of the world that are not the West. I think that's a really astute observation, in the sense that if we are going to turn the tide against Zionism, it necessarily involves organizing beyond the standard political constituencies that are understood to move the ground. And that's a global struggle; that can't just be a matter of U.S. politics or even politics in the West. I think she's absolutely right on that.

I think that's a great place to stop. Rhys, Antony, thank you both so much for joining me in this very substantive conversation. Thank you all. This has been another episode of On the Nose. Thank you to our editor, Jesse Brenneman. If you like this episode, like it, leave us a review, share it, and, as always, subscribe to Jewish Currents, JewishCurrents.org. See you next time.