# Democracy Now! — "The Palestine Laboratory": Antony Loewenstein on How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation > *This is the rush transcript of Amy Goodman's June 23, 2023 Democracy Now! interview with Antony Loewenstein on the publication of* The Palestine Laboratory. *It is the strongest verbatim-quote source for the export thesis in the author's own spoken words: the "over 130 countries" claim, the Elbit US-Mexico border surveillance towers "tested first in Palestine," and the "battle-tested in Palestine" mechanism by which Israeli systems acquire their export value. It matters to the Arkansas surveillance investigation because it situates US border/policing surveillance procurement within a documented Israeli export pattern, and because Loewenstein himself keeps NSO/Pegasus spyware in its own category — relevant to the wiki's discipline of not conflating Pegasus with phone-extraction or ALPR vendors.* ## Source metadata - **Publisher:** Democracy Now! (democracynow.org), independent daily news broadcast - **URL:** https://www.democracynow.org/2023/6/23/the_palestine_laboratory_author_antony_loewenstein - **Archived:** 2026-06-07 via firecrawl_scrape (markdown) - **Tier:** 3 (established journalism / broadcast interview transcript) ## Extract — verbatim (lightly cleaned) Loewenstein defining the "Palestine laboratory" and the 130-countries claim: > "during those years, what Israel has done, very successfully, from its perspective, is find various tools and technologies to maintain and control Palestinians. And what they've done during that time, what Israel has done, is increasingly export those tools and technologies, but also those methods, those so-called counterinsurgency methods. So, what I look at in the book ... is that you find in over 130 countries across the globe in the last decades, Israel has sold forms of anything from spyware, so-called smart walls, facial recognition tools — a range of tools of occupation and repression, that have initially been tested in Palestine on Palestinians." Loewenstein, on the export to the US-Mexico border (Elbit surveillance towers, "tested first in Palestine"): > "And you see this almost Israeli border-industrial complex exported across the U.S.-Mexico border, for example. There are massive amounts of Israeli surveillance towers, made by Elbit, which is Israel's leading defense company, dotted across the border. It's a key part of the U.S. arsenal across its border with Mexico. And why was that company chosen by the U.S.? Because, of course, it was tested first in Palestine." Loewenstein, on the "battle-tested in Palestine" mechanism (here re: EU/Frontex drones, same logic applied to US): > "So, the Israeli drone becomes a key arsenal in part of this infrastructure of essentially allowing people to drown. And to me, it really goes to the heart of why Israeli drones are used by the EU, because they were battle-tested in Palestine over Gaza in a number of years in the last 15 years." Loewenstein summarizing the procurement logic: > "Israeli surveillance and technology and repression is part of that arsenal that many nations are now buying, because it's been used, in their view, successfully on Palestinians in Palestine." Loewenstein on NSO Group / Pegasus, kept as a distinct spyware category and characterized as state-linked: > "Essentially, it's a tool that allows any government or military intelligence or police department to spy on someone's phone, iPhone or Android, and get all the information from that phone. ... so much of the media in the last years around Pegasus missed the key point. It was almost framed as a rogue Israeli company doing terrible things around the world, when, in fact, companies like Pegasus actually are only private in name. They are basically arms of the state." Loewenstein on Israel's 2022 arms export total (scale of the industry): > "America remains the world's biggest arms dealer. Forty percent of the world's arms is sold by the U.S. Israel is now 10th. And just last week, in fact, Israel released its 2022 arms figures: $12.5 billion U.S., the biggest amount ever."