{"id":157136,"date":"2020-03-30T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=157136"},"modified":"2020-03-29T11:00:07","modified_gmt":"2020-03-29T10:00:07","slug":"technology-of-death-the-not-so-shocking-report-on-israeli-weapons-exports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/03\/technology-of-death-the-not-so-shocking-report-on-israeli-weapons-exports\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology of Death: The Not-so-Shocking Report on Israeli Weapons Exports"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a>

Israel\u2019s weapons manufacturing industry has experienced an unprecedented boom in recent years. (Photo: File)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

25 Mar 2020 – <\/em>The Middle East region, battered by wars and adjoining humanitarian crises that have left millions of people stateless, hungry and diseased, is in urgent need for peace, security, and reconstruction. Thanks to the US, Russian, French, Israeli and other weapons manufacturers, however, it is now the dumping ground for military hardware, an ominous sign for the years ahead.<\/p>\n

Data\u00a0released<\/a>\u00a0by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on March 9, paints a grim picture of the world, in general, and the Middle East, in particular. According to the report, the demand for weapons in the warring region has increased by a whopping 61% between 2015 and 2019.<\/p>\n

The correlation between arms, war, and casualty count needs no elaborate algorithm to be deciphered, as facts on the ground amply demonstrate. Syria remains the epicenter of conflict in the Middle East, with Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Palestine, and South Sudan trailing, but not far behind.<\/p>\n

The top five merchants of death, according to SIPRI, are the United States, Russia, France, Germany, and China. Interestingly, while US arms exports have increased exponentially by 76% in the last five years, Russia\u2019s arms exports fell by 18%.<\/p>\n

The US market is in constant expansion as it now includes 96 client countries, while Russia has, essentially, lost one of its most significant clients, India.<\/p>\n

Ruled by a right-wing Hindu nationalist government, Delhi has found in Tel Aviv a more ideologically like-minded supplier. The special\u00a0\u2018friendship\u2019<\/a>\u00a0between India\u2019s Narendra Modi and Israel\u2019s Benjamin Netanyahu has made India Israel\u2019s largest weapons market.<\/p>\n

In 2017, Israel\u2019s arms exports reached a record high of $9 billion dollars, following the signing of\u00a0a $2 billion deal with India. The contracts awarded to the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) were\u00a0considered<\/a>\u00a0the \u201csingle largest deal ever signed by the Israeli arms industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

With India becoming the largest importer of Israeli arms in the world, Israel is now a secondary party in the protracted conflict between India and Pakistan. The two nuclear-armed countries\u00a0edged closer<\/a>\u00a0to the abyss of a full-blown war in March 2019. Naturally, Israeli weapons, now featured prominently in India\u2019s military arsenal, will play a major role in sustaining any future conflict.<\/p>\n

According to the newly-released data, Israel is only second to South Korea in terms of the vast expansion of weapons exports, as Israel\u2019s weapons manufacturing industry has experienced an unprecedented boom in recent years. SIPRI puts that increase at 77%.<\/p>\n

Last year, the International Defense Cooperation Directorate of the Israeli Ministry of Defense (SIBAT), which is the cornerstone of Israel\u2019s weapon manufacturing, testing, and export,\u00a0released<\/a>\u00a0a comprehensive plan aimed at the expansion of Israel\u2019s global weapons market, with due focus on the US, Finland, and India.<\/p>\n

What makes Israeli weapons more attractive than others is the fact that they are not accompanied by any political price tag. In other words, Israel is willing to sell weapons to any country, or even non-state actors, openly or secretly, regardless of how these weapons are used and whether their use violates human rights or not.<\/p>\n

In May 2019, Amnesty International\u2019s Israeli chapter\u00a0released<\/a>\u00a0an in-depth report that examined Israel\u2019s weapons export markets. Contrary to the claim by Rachel Chen, head of the Israeli Defense Export Controls Agency, that \u201cwe will carefully examine the state of human rights in each country before approving export licenses for selling them weapons,\u201d Israel is known for peddling its weapons to the world\u2019s most notorious human rights violators. The list includes Myanmar, Philippines, South Sudan, and Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

A damning proof to the above claim is a statement made by Philippines President, Rodrigo Duterte, who is known for his dismal human rights record, on September 4, 2018, during his highly-touted visit to Israel. Duterte\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0Israeli President, Reuven Rivlin, that the Philippines \u201cwould henceforth only buy weapons from Israel due to its lack of restrictions,\u201d \u2018Times of Israel\u2019 reported.<\/p>\n

The US is \u201ca\u00a0good friend,\u201d Duterte said, but like Germany and China, US weapons come with certain \u201climitations\u201d.<\/p>\n

Considering that Washington provides Israel with over $3 billion worth of weapons annually that are used freely against occupied Palestinians and other Arab nations with no regard whatsoever for international or humanitarian law, one has to marvel at Duterte\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n

It is logical to assume that a country that sells weapons to civil war-torn and extremely impoverished South Sudan, has not an iota of regulations, let alone moral standards.<\/p>\n

What is unique about the export of Israel\u2019s weapons and so-called \u2018security technology\u2019 to the rest of the world, is that they often appear in regions where people are most oppressed and vulnerable. For example, Israeli companies have for years stood\u00a0at the forefront<\/a>\u00a0of successive US administrations\u2019 war on undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n

Moreover, recent years have witnessed the infusion of brutal Israeli military tactics in many aspects of American society, including the\u00a0militarization<\/a>\u00a0of American police, thousands of whom received training in Israel.<\/p>\n

Similarly, in 2018, Israeli war technology\u00a0was incorporated<\/a>\u00a0into the European Union\u2019s security apparatus. One such contract was awarded to the Israeli company Elbit, estimated at $68 million, to provide maritime unmanned aircraft system (UAS) services. This technology, which relies on the Hermes 900 Maritime Patrol system, allows Frontex \u2013 the European Border and Coast Guard Agency \u2013 to intercept war refugees and migrants in their attempts to cross into safer European territories.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the EU has purchased from Israel the same deadly technology that the Israeli army has used against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip during Israel\u2019s so-called \u2018Protective Edge<\/a>\u2019 war of 2014.<\/p>\n

The latter fact represents the backbone of Israel\u2019s marketing strategy. Branding its military products as \u2018combat-proven\u2019, Tel Aviv is able to obtain top dollar for its bloody technology, as it is able to demonstrate, using actual footage, how its armed drones, for example, can flatten whole Palestinian neighborhoods in seconds and return safely to their bases inside Israel.<\/p>\n

Far greater focus should be placed on the fact that Israel is, itself, a notorious human rights violator that should be held accountable for its crimes against Palestinians, who are often used as\u00a0guinea pigs<\/a>\u00a0in the testing stage of Israel\u2019s technology of death.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of <\/em>The Palestine Chronicle. His last book is <\/em>The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is <\/em>These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is <\/em>www.ramzybaroud.net<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 ramzybaroud.net<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Join the<\/em><\/strong> BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS <\/em><\/strong>campaign<\/em><\/strong><\/span> to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n

DON’T BUY<\/strong> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/strong> BARCODE<\/strong> STARTS WITH<\/strong> 729<\/strong>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25 Mar 2020 – The Middle East region, battered by wars and adjoining humanitarian crises that have left millions of people stateless, hungry and diseased, is in urgent need for peace, security, and reconstruction. Thanks to the US, Russian, French, Israeli and other weapons manufacturers, however, it is now the dumping ground for military hardware, an ominous sign for the years ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":157138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1161,1104,88,291,1105,427],"class_list":["post-157136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-militarism","tag-arms-industry","tag-arms-trade","tag-israel","tag-military","tag-military-industrial-complex","tag-palestine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}