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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
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href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/apartheid-arms-why-israel-sells-military-equipment-to-human-rights-violators/">http://www.palestinechronicle.com/apartheid-arms-why-israel-sells-military-equipment-to-human-rights-violators/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Apartheid Arms: Why Israel Sells
Military Equipment to Human Rights Violators</h1>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time">May 21, 2019<br>
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<p><strong>By <a
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/mohamed-mohamed"
title="Display all articles for Mohamed Mohamed">Mohamed
Mohamed</a></strong></p>
<p>An in-depth report released in Hebrew by Amnesty
International’s Israeli chapter provides a <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-arming-dictators-equipping-pariahs-an-alarming-picture-of-israel-s-arms-sales-1.7250048"><span>damning
picture</span></a> of Israeli arms exports to
countries that violate human rights. This report
provides solid evidence that over the past 20 years,
Israeli military exports went to at least eight
countries that have been known for serious violations of
human rights:</p>
<ul>
<li>Azerbaijan – which has persecuted government critics
and LGBTQ people – received Israeli battleships,
anti-tank missiles, attack drones, military vehicles,
and radar systems</li>
<li>Cameroon – implicated in kidnappings, torture, and
murder – received Israeli military training and
armored vehicles</li>
<li>Mexico – undergoing a severe human rights crisis and
forced disappearances – received Israeli spyware
software that <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/world/americas/mexico-spyware-journalist.html"><span>targeted</span></a>
journalists, human rights lawyers, and anti-corruption
activists</li>
<li>Myanmar – which has engaged in ethnic cleansing,
genocide, and crimes against humanity – received
armored vehicles and naval ammunition</li>
<li>Philippines – which carried out mass extrajudicial
executions – received Israeli assault rifles, machine
guns, and anti-tank guided missiles</li>
<li>South Sudan – implicated in ethnic cleansing and
crimes against humanity – received Israeli
surveillance technology and assault rifles</li>
<li>Sri Lanka – which was engaged in a brutal civil war
– received Israeli drones and battleships</li>
<li>United Arab Emirates – which has imprisoned
government critics and human rights activists –
received Israeli spyware software, including the
infamous “Pegasus” spyware (just days ago, NSO, the
Israeli company behind Pegasus, was <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/14/whatsapp-spyware-vulnerability-targeted-lawyer-says-attempt-was-desperate"><span>linked</span></a>
to a security exploit targeting WhatsApp that allowed
Pegasus to be installed)</li>
</ul>
<p>What is worse is that some of these countries were
under international sanctions and weapons sales
embargoes, yet Israel continued to sell arms to them.</p>
<p>For example, the UN Security Council imposed an arms
embargo on South Sudan due to its acts of ethnic
cleansing, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even
using mass rape as a method of war. Yet South Sudan
still ended up acquiring Israeli-made assault rifles.
Part of this is due to the fact that Israeli weapons
reach such countries after a chain of transactions,
which helps to avoid international monitoring and
decrease transparency.</p>
<p>Israeli authorities claim that they “carefully examine
the state of human rights in each country before
approving export licenses for selling them weapons,” but
the fact that Israeli weapons made it to the countries
mentioned above proves that this statement is far from
the truth.</p>
<p>But this information is neither new nor shocking. As
Jonathan Cook <a
href="https://www.wrmea.org/013-september/the-lab-israel-tests-weapons-tactics-on-captive-palestinian-population.html"><span>wrote</span></a>
in 2013, “despite having a population smaller than New
York City, Israel has emerged in the last few years as
one of the world’s largest exporters of weapons.”</p>
<p>At the time, analysts placed Israel as the sixth top
producer of weapons, ahead of China and Italy. When
accounting for covert weapons deals, Israel was even
considered to be the fourth top producer, ahead of
Britain and Germany.</p>
<p>Of course, much of these military sales were made
possible at the expense and lives of Palestinians. A
significant reason why Israeli weapons are so marketable
is because they are presented as “battle-proven.” In
other words, they were tested on Palestinians.</p>
<p>As Miko Peled <a
href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/gaza-a-cruel-testing-ground-for-israels-weapons-marketing-campaign/241401/"><span>wrote</span></a>
last year, an Israeli weapons manufacturer marketed its
unmanned armored personnel carrier as “combat-proven” at
the “Israel Unmanned Systems 2014” conference, since the
2014 war on Gaza was the first time that such a
remote-controlled carrier had been successfully
deployed.</p>
<p>And as Rania Khalek has <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israeli-drone-conference-features-weapons-used-kill-gazas-children"><span>mentioned</span></a>,
“Palestine has long served as a laboratory for Israel’s
ballooning ‘homeland security’ industry to test and
perfect weapons of domination and control, with
disenfranchised and stateless Palestinians serving as
their lab rats.”</p>
<p>And as Bloomberg <a
href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-27/elbit-gains-as-gaza-conflict-seen-fueling-defense-tech"><span>noted</span></a>,
the price of stock of Elbit Systems, one of the largest
manufacturers of Israeli military technology, surged to
its highest level since 2010 during the 2014 war on
Gaza. This was surely no coincidence. It is also
uncoincidental that the 2010 high peak of Elbit’s stock
was not long after the end of the 2009 war on Gaza.</p>
<p>Clearly, waging war on Palestinians is a huge
money-maker for the state of Israel, its corporations,
and even its citizens (Cook cites data that around 6,800
Israelis are actively engaged in exporting arms, and
former defense minister Ehud Barak admitted that 150,000
Israeli households – around 10 percent of the population
– depend on the weapons industry).</p>
<p>One can look no further than to the <a
href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/defense-industry-the-business-of-war-in-israel-a-988245.html"><span>comments</span></a>
of Avner Benzaken, who was head of the “Technology and
Logistics Branch” of the Israeli “Defense” Forces:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If I develop a product and want to test it in the
field, I only have to go five or 10 kilometers from my
base and I can look and see what is happening with the
equipment. I get feedback, so it makes the development
process faster and much more efficient. “</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Essentially, Benzaken is glad that he has such a
convenient space to test Israeli weapons. He all but
confirms that Palestinians serve as “lab rats” for these
weapons systems.</p>
<p>The report highlighting Israel’s export of arms to
countries violating human rights is troubling, but it is
not surprising. Israel claims to be a democracy, but
this is in name only. In fact, Israel belongs to the
same club of prolific human rights violating regimes
that it sells weapons to.</p>
<p>More than 71 years ago, Israel forcibly seized
Palestinian land and expelled more than 750,000
Palestinians. To this day, nearly all of them have been
denied the right to return to their homes, and the ones
who managed to stay are now treated as second class
citizens in the state of Israel. This reality was
reinforced legally with the recent racist Israeli
“nation-state” law of 2018.</p>
<p>For 52 years, Israel has maintained a cruel military
occupation of Palestinians living in the West Bank and
East Jerusalem, and it has imposed full control over all
aspects of their lives. Palestinians in the West Bank
have severe restrictions on their freedom of movement,
on access to their own land, on access to basic
resources such as water and other natural resources, to
religious sites, telecommunications, and they are
subject to theft of their land and to violence and
harassment by Israeli settlers.</p>
<p>And of course, Israel has imposed a vicious and
near-total blockade of Gaza for almost 12 years now.
Almost all of Gaza’s water is undrinkable, it has only a
few hours of electricity per day, it is unable to import
even the most basic food and other necessities, its
fisherman and farmers cannot work without risking their
lives, and it is always at risk of being savagely
bombarded by Israel.</p>
<p>With all these factors in mind, is it surprising that
Israel would sell military equipment to human rights
violators? Of course not, because Israel is one of them.
As the saying goes, “Birds of a feather flock together.”</p>
<p>Israel will only change its behavior if world powers,
particularly the United States, imposed sanctions
against it as was done in 1986 against South Africa.
Otherwise, it will continue to act in an apartheid-like
manner toward Palestinians, and it will continue to
support and profit off of oppressive regimes like
itself.</p>
<p><em>– Mohamed Mohamed is the Executive Director of The
Jerusalem Fund & Palestine Center in Washington
DC. He is a graduate of The University of Texas at
Dallas, where he majored in Political Science and
completed his senior thesis on statelessness and its
practical implications on Palestinians living in the
refugee camps of Lebanon. He also earned an M.A. in
International Relations and an M.S. in International
Political Economy. His articles have appeared on Arab
America, Electronic Intifada, Hindustan Times,
Mondoweiss, and has been interviewed on various
international outlets. Follow him on Twitter at
@mykm47. He contributed this article to The Palestine
Chronicle.</em></p>
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