Despite calls across college campuses demanding divestment from Israel, one sector of the Israeli economy appears to be booming. Israeli startups raised over $1 billion in funding for the second straight month in May.
A number of these successful startups have participated in Israel’s ongoing war on the besieged Gaza Strip, suggesting genocide is a lucrative marketing tool for business. Products like suicide drones, smart guns, and robot dogs have all been deployed on the battlefield since October 2023, with some startups even exploiting the war to their advantage and touting their technologies’ use in the war as an advertising boost.
Israel’s government-owned and private companies alike have long promoted their weapons as “battle-tested,” with the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank serving as Israel’s homegrown weapons-testing laboratory.
“It’s just one example, and there are so many more, of Israel not wanting to ‘waste’ the opportunity in Gaza to show off its military hardware to an excited global market,” Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book on Israeli weapons exports around the world, wrote in the April 3, 2024 edition of his newsletter.
Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack exposed Israel’s once-renowned cyber tech capabilities. Whereas such a massive oversight would presumably collapse any other industry, the opposite appears to be happening as Israel’s genocide overshadows the October attack.
“Despite this colossal failure of the intelligence agencies, the wholesale destruction of Gaza and the kinds of weapons Israel’s using will only increase the sales,” Neve Gordon, human rights and international law professor at the Queen Mary University of London, told MintPress News. (more...)
Devastation Into Dollars: Israeli Startups Are Making a Killing in Gaza
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We all live in the Palestine laboratory
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