“How Israel tests military tech on Palestinians” and “How is Israel’s Military Tech Marketed Abroad” are the respective titles of the episodes that comprise the docuseries by Al-Jazeera and Antony Loewenstein’s “The Palestine Laboratory”. This series was released after a homonymous book in which he details both the methods of Israeli military testing as well as the marketing of its technology globally. In both the docuseries and Loewenstein’s book, he discusses the broad net that Israel has cast over both the global military industrial complex as well as the laboratorial manner in which they approach the Occupied Palestinian Territories (O.P.T.). Notably, the technologies primarily reviewed consist of surveillance/security software and weaponry that are implemented in day to day life that allow Israel to overwhelming control over the O.P.T. Loewenstein reaffirms this himself in developing the idea that part of the reason for why Israel is so unique in its arms industry is that all their exports are a mix of weapons, surveillance and guerilla style flexibility that allows for a comprehensive system to control “difficult” and hard to reach populations (Al Jazeera English 2025). This elaborate system of surveillance and experimentation is then sold as a “quality tested” bundle to buyers on the international weapons market and seen as something more reliable as a result. This brief docuseries serves as a scathing look into the horrors created by Israel and the manner in which the global military industrial complex has continued to allow and perpetuate their computerized testing-bed built on the lives of millions of innocents.

Loewenstein makes a rather simple yet effective argument through both the title and the substance of the docuseries: Palestine is a laboratory for, and Palestinians are the lab rats, of militarized control techniques. In this laboratorial system they are subject to inhumane conditions wherein the ever-growing Israeli arms industry is permitted to test and develop all manners of weapons and surveillance technology. These later refined products are then sold to the globe and marketed as being tested more rigorously than competing tech. Loewenstein is rather direct in his approach to investigation of this issue. Outlining a central finding of his book, he describes how Israel and Israeli companies (Rafael, Elbit etc.) take a subtle approach to selling their weapons as compared to other weapons manufacturers. The weapons are not merely a tool but also serve as an idea of what it means to ‘get away with it’ as Loewenstein puts it himself (Al Jazeera English 2025 at 3:17).

For instance, considering the Israeli focus on surveillance technology, he notes that Israeli AI based surveillance systems like Pegasus or Red Wolf are marketed to foreign governments as covert and undetectable products. This framing by Loewenstein illuminates what comes implicitly along with the purchase of Israeli weapons or technology. It also allows for a better picture in the ways that Israel markets itself globally as a high-tech liberal democratic regime with a burgeoning arms industry. Furthermore, when considering what has...