International Glance
At a recent military technology conference in Tel Aviv, Israeli weapons companies made some of their most explicit remarks yet connecting the value of their products to the real-world testing of that firepower on Palestinians in Gaza.
A recording of the conference remarks was obtained by Drop Site News and includes comments from the president and CEO of the Israel Aerospace Industries as well as executives at Elbit Systems, RAFAEL Advanced Defense Systems, and others. The conference was called DefenseTech Week and was held in early December. Drop Site shared the audio with independent news outlets in Brazil, Ireland, Australia, and elsewhere; those outlets will be producing their own investigations.
The Israeli weapons industry has previously come in for criticism for its willingness to boast that its products are “lab tested” on human beings under occupation, most prominently by Australian journalist Anthony Lowenstein. His book, The Palestine Laboratory, was adapted into a Drop Site podcast last year.
The newly uncovered remarks suggest that, rather than having been chastened by global condemnation for the genocide in Gaza, the nation’s weapons industry is emboldened by it. “The war that we faced in the last two years enables most of our products to become valid for the rest of the world,” boasted Boaz Levy, head of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), on day one of the conference. “Starting with Gaza and moving on to Iran and to Yemen, I would say that many, many products of IAI were there.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would be willing to withdraw troops from the country’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end Russia’s war, if Moscow also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.
The EU could “respond swiftly and decisively” against the “unjustified” US visa bans on five Europeans involved in combating online hate and disinformation, a European Commission spokesperson has said.
The United States and Ukraine have reached a consensus on several critical issues aimed at bringing an end to the nearly four-year conflict, but sensitive issues around territorial control in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland, along with the management of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, remain unresolved, Ukraine's president said.
Israel’s offensive has been one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history. More than two-thirds of the 20,000 Palestinians killed have been women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Since the so-called ceasefire came into effect in Gaza on October 10, Israel has been consolidating its control of over 50% of Gaza and—according to new research by Forensic Architecture—physically altering the geography of the land. Through a combination of the construction of military infrastructure alongside the destruction of existing buildings, Israel appears to be laying the groundwork to establish a permanent presence in the majority of the Gaza Strip.
