Israel's dystopian weapons industry poses a threat to humanity, with the Hezbollah pager attacks setting a dangerous precedent, says Richard Silverstein.
Perspectives
NEW ARAB
Richard Silverstein
14 Oct, 2024
Like a spoiled child, whatever Israel wants, Israel gets,
writes Richard Silverstein [photo credit: Getty Images]
Israel specialises in weapons of mass destruction.
In the 1990s, Israel pioneered the use of armed drones in warfare and was the first to use exploding cell phones in assassinations. Thirty years later, Israel was among the first to use satellite-operated, AI-guided, autonomous weapons, to assassinate an Iranian nuclear scientist.
Israel has also spearheaded various forms of mass surveillance, including facial recognition and social media data mining. It does so via search algorithms targeting keywords which psychologists and intelligence agents have identified as indicators of radical inclination or concrete plans.
More recently, Israeli agents established an elaborate plan to sabotage a shipment of electronic pagers purchased by Hezbollah.
Thousands of the devices were distributed to their members. When they received a text message generated by the Mossad, they all exploded within an hour of each other. The next day they did the same thing with cell phones. They killed 40 Lebanese including three children. Nearly 4,000 were severely injured, many blinded as a result of eye injuries, as they looked at the messages on the screen.
Israel specialises in weapons of mass destruction.
In the 1990s, Israel pioneered the use of armed drones in warfare and was the first to use exploding cell phones in assassinations. Thirty years later, Israel was among the first to use satellite-operated, AI-guided, autonomous weapons, to assassinate an Iranian nuclear scientist.
Israel has also spearheaded various forms of mass surveillance, including facial recognition and social media data mining. It does so via search algorithms targeting keywords which psychologists and intelligence agents have identified as indicators of radical inclination or concrete plans.
More recently, Israeli agents established an elaborate plan to sabotage a shipment of electronic pagers purchased by Hezbollah.
Thousands of the devices were distributed to their members. When they received a text message generated by the Mossad, they all exploded within an hour of each other. The next day they did the same thing with cell phones. They killed 40 Lebanese including three children. Nearly 4,000 were severely injured, many blinded as a result of eye injuries, as they looked at the messages on the screen.
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Israel's brazen attack represents the first mass sabotage of everyday communication devices, used by much of the world. It sets an unimaginably dangerous precedent.
Imagine if, in the future, Israel or other states devise ways not just to hack, but to explode all communications devices of major companies such as Google or Apple in a specific country. The result could not only damage overall communications infrastructure but also cost the lives of massive numbers of users.
Israel also has mass cyberwarfare capabilities. It used some of them to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program and hack the communication devices of targeted Palestinians.
It has developed facial recognition technology, compiling databases to collect and analyse images of every Palestinian living in the West Bank.
In doing so, it can track their location, identifying who they meet, where, and when. The foremost military SIGINT entity among global armies, Unit 8200 intercepts every form of communication among Palestinians including email, telephone, texts and phone calls. They are used to recruit Shin Bet informants who spy on their families, neighbours and communities. Israeli intelligence uses such information to assassinate Palestinian resistance leaders.
While Israel gains a momentary advantage or degrades the capability of an enemy — these are tactics, not strategy. They attain a short-term gain instead of a long-term interest.
And to obtain even that small advantage, the costs keep rising. The weapons have to get more powerful, the risks increase, and the death count rises. Meanwhile, Israel grows uglier and more hated.
Israel also relies on old-fashioned military operations. In the past few days, it began what Biden national security officials have falsely labelled a “ground operation” or “limited incursion” into southern Lebanon.
Global media have followed suit. Some are calling it a “targeted operation”. The alleged military goal is the return of 70,000 northern Israeli residents to their homes.
In reality, the invasion will fail to achieve this objective. Despite absorbing blows, Hezbollah still retains 150,000 missiles, some among the most advanced in Iran’s arsenal. They are resisting the military assault on their country and will continue to do so, likely intensifying their resistance.
Israel's 'battle-tested' weapons industry
Israel field tests its weapons against enemies in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran. They provide proof of concept persuading armies, weapons engineers and intelligence agencies throughout the world to purchase them.
In turn, they impose precisely the same regime both inside and outside the country. This in turn fuels a lucrative weapons export market. Israel is ranked 10th in the world regarding the value of such products.
Its innovation in the development of such weapons systems is followed closely by the world’s weapons buyers. The former become products exported to failed states and repressive regimes like Myanmar, South Sudan, UAE, Philippines, etc. which use them to suppress dissent and settle scores with their enemies, just as Israeli does.
Whatever weapons Israel wants, but does not have it obtains from the US.
In the case of the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, US-made F35 warplanes, carried US-made bunker-buster bombs, while there are unconfirmed reports of AWAC planes monitoring the assassination in real-time. All were instrumental in the murder plot.
All the while, the Biden administration uses plausible deniability to excuse it all by claiming Israel didn’t warn the US before it acted.
Either the Pentagon is lying to avoid outrage at its role, or it is telling the truth. The latter would indicate that the US is providing its most lethal munitions without any control or restraints.
This violates US law which calls for using exported weapons under international law. The Leahy Law requires the government to end weapons shipments to regimes found to have violated human rights.
The State Department, tasked with such oversight, has deliberately ignored the findings of multiple agencies that Israel was violating both standards, issuing its statement that Israel is not in violation.
Imagine during WWII, if instead of sending thousands of ships filled with food and weapons to Britain to resist the Nazis, the US decided it was in its interest to send an armada to support Hitler’s invasion of the island and the Holocaust. This is akin to what Biden has done, sending a carrier battle group to the region along with 50,000 troops.
Israel's mad march to war
Biden seems to think this threat will cow Iran from attacking Israel. Apparently, it hasn’t worked. After Israel sent its troops into Lebanon, Iran launched 200 missiles targeting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Though Iron Dome intercepted most of them, there are not yet reports concerning any that struck their targets.
Israel has vowed retaliation. We are now in a state of calibrated escalation. Iran could have fired salvos of thousands of missiles. Then Israel would have been justified in a massive response, provoking all-out war. Instead, it fired a smaller number knowing Israel would retaliate in kind.
Though neither side wants to be blamed for starting such a war, Netanyahu has numerous reasons to want one. He is doing everything in his power — from the assassinations of Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif to the assassination of Nasrallah — to incite such a catastrophic conflict.
He needs these wars to distract from his unpopularity at home and to delay his corruption trial. He also seeks the distinction of being the only prime minister to launch direct attacks on Israel’s foremost regional enemy, Iran and its nuclear program. Netanyahu’s march toward mayhem continues unobstructed.
How can President Biden believe the US can play any role in such a process? We have no relations with Iran. We have refused to engage in talks with even Iran’s moderate leaders. We have proven instrumental in murdering the leader of its primary regional ally.
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The Biden administration seems either oblivious or uncaring regarding the impact this will have on the country’s status in the Arab and Muslim world.
It is implicated in the genocide in Gaza, which some public health experts estimate to be over 300,000 dead from combat and related causes.
It is an accessory to the assassination of one of the most admired leaders in the Muslim world. There is nothing we would not do for Israel. Why would the Arab world not hate America? Even more than it hated this country before these events.
Returning to Israeli cyberwarfare, regulation of these weapons lags far behind their development and use on the battlefield. Neither the UN nor any country regulates their use, permitting Israel to wreak havoc without any restraint from global regulatory authorities. It can develop and manufacture ever more lethal weapons with neither ethical nor legal limits.
Further, international bodies established to prosecute war crimes such as the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice seem powerless to hold Israel accountable for the use of these weapons of mass mayhem. In the former case, its judges failed to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister. Despite findings by the ICJ that Israel was committing genocide, it has no enforcement mechanism and Israel has ignored the findings.
The story of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley mirrors the medieval Jewish golem myth. The latter recounted a pogrom in Prague in which the Jews were attacked by their Christian neighbours. The city’s rabbi created a huge creature out of clay to protect the Jews. He succeeded and the violence stopped. But in doing so the rabbi lost control of the protector of the Jews. He ran amok causing even more danger for them.
To end it, the rabbi destroyed him by turning him back into clay. Israel is a golem wreaking havoc in the Middle East and beyond. Unfortunately, there seems to be no one who can control it or turn it back into clay.
Richard Silverstein writes the Tikun Olam blog and is a freelance journalist specialising in exposing secrets of the Israeli national security state. He campaigns against opacity and the negative impact of Israeli military censorship.
Follow him on Twitter: @richards1052
Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.
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