Israel: Prime Developer and Exporter of Police State Techniques, Policies and Systems
International Jewish Anti Zionist Network (IJAN)
Israel exports weapons, technologies, training, and techniques of violence for use by governments and corporations against populations around the world.The expertise on which it relies has been developed through its occupation of Palestine and parts of Lebanon, Syria and Egypt as well as its repression of and military aggression against the people living there.
The colonization of Palestine was once part of the British and French assault on the movement for Arab unity and independence that threatened European control of the region’s resources. The state of Israel is now a junior partner in the U.S.-allied strategy for the same control of the region’s resources.
For Israel, this partnership has enabled the imposition and maintenance of a settler colonial state in Palestine. For its Western partners Israel has ensured control of what F.D.R.’s administration once described as “the greatest prize in human history” – Arab oil.
The importance of Israel to the U.S. is a reflection of the growing significance of both oil and the arms trade to the world economy. The United States, the main arbiter of power worldwide, is Israel’s largest funder. The majority of U.S. aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance. The U.S. government gives Israel approximately 3 billion U.S. dollars per year in financial aid and several billion more per year in military assistance and contracts. The US provides 18% or nearly a fifth of Israel’s military budget. From 1949 until 2011, the estimated cumulative total in U.S. direct aid to Israel is between 115 and 123 billion U.S. dollars.
In 2009 Israel’s military spending accounted for an additional 15.1% of the country’s overall budget. It was the biggest defense spender as a percentage of GDP. It also spent the greatest amount of its overall budget on the military out of all developed countries.
Israel uses U.S. aid to fund its ongoing occupation of Palestine and Syria and its military campaigns, which in turn serve as a laboratory to develop weapons, surveillance technology, and tactics of population control that are then marketed across the globe.
Israel’s unique skills in crowd control, forced displacement, surveillance and military occupation have resulted in placing it at the forefront of a global industry of repression: it develops, manufactures and markets technologies that are used by armies and police around the world for purposes of repression.
Israel’s role in this industry began with the Israeli military, which first used its weapons of war against Palestinian people in historic Palestine and against neighboring countries. In recent years, as interest in surveillance and policing technologies and techniques has grown among governments around the world, an Israeli “homeland security” private service industry built on these field-tested instruments has emerged to exploit and export this interest.
This industry includes government agencies, the Israeli military a network of private corporations that grossed over 2.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2008. This industry accounts for approximately 7% of the Israeli economy. The Israeli Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor says on its website:
- Israel has more than 300 Homeland Security (HLS) companies exporting a range of products, systems and services… These solutions have been born by the necessity of Israel’s survival and matured by the reality of the continual terrorist threat to the country… No other country has such a large pool of experienced former security, military and police personnel and no other country has been able to field test its systems and solutions in real-time situations.
This network of state bodies, corporations and non-profits shares intelligence information, coordinates strategies for surveillance and repression and collaborates for profit. The precise function of each varies according to their role.
Israel has provided weapons, trained militia and military and civilian police, developed and provided surveillance technology and repression strategies and supplied the means for a broad array of other control techniques from”non-lethal” weapons to border technology. Israel has played a role in arming and training the apartheid regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia, colonial regimes in the Middle East and North Africa (otherwise known as Southwest Asia and North Africa, or SWANA) and dictators in Central and South America and Asia.
The Israeli government has assumed a major, worldwide role in enforcing limitations on the freedom of movement, policing of communities, and undermining peoples’ struggles for justice. Though well documented, this fact is rarely if ever mentioned or discussed and even more rarely challenged.
Those in solidarity with the Palestinian people, those against war, poverty and an unjust globalized economy need to take into account the very real ways the state of Israel contributes to violence and repression around the world.
Israel sells its weapons, technologies, training and techniques of violence to those it considers allies and even to those whom it considers enemies. Israel sells or has sold to Islamist, communist, capitalist, dictatorial and social democratic states. The driving force behind Israeli arms exports, in addition to the profit motive, is the need for a close and strong alliance with major imperialist powers that provide it with continuous military and diplomatic support, economic markets and access to power. Therefore, Israel has prioritized selling weapons to the allies and agents of these powers.
A major war profiteer and a settler-colonial state, Israel can use its profits to further repress and displace Palestinians, developing still more deadly weapons in the process. Given how unfamiliar most people are with the extent of the Israeli arms industry and the industrial scale of its function in suppressing movements, we have collected here some of the most atrocious aspects of Israel’s repression worldwide.
Israel’s racism is rooted in centuries of European colonialism. It is integral to global imperialism from which it derives investment, support and cover. Israel has worked hand-in-glove with repressive regimes in every corner of the earth in ways that facilitate the suppression, murder, assassination, rape, torture, disappearance, kidnapping and imprisonment of those struggling for freedom and justice. Its arms and repression industries continue today through Israeli state institutions and via private corporations and a worldwide network of Zionist organizations. Repressive regimes find a willing and able ally in Israel.
Though well documented, the information we offer is not widely available in the media or at universities. The states and corporations that engage in war, the arms trade, occupation, incarceration, surveillance and repression benefit from this information not being publicized. Tracking the trail of Israel’s function in global repression is an opportunity to expose the players in this vast industry. There is a need to continue to expose Israel’s role in worldwide repression and to support the organizing to end it.
http://israelglobalrepression.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/israels-worldwide-role-in-repression-footnotes-finalized.pdf
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