Episode 2: How to Make Friends

Summary

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Drop Site News – The Palestine Laboratory

Episode 2: How to Make Friends
Date: October 30, 2024
Host: Anthony Lowenstein (with Jeremy Scahill, Daniel Silberman, Sasha Polakow Saransky, and others)

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Overview

This episode delves into the lesser-known history of Israel’s relationships with oppressive regimes around the world, exploring how the nation developed its diplomatic and military network by supplying arms and repressive technologies. With a focus on Latin America (especially Chile under Pinochet) and apartheid South Africa, the episode investigates how Israel justified these alliances, the secrecy involved, the impact on victims, and the continued global expansion of its military-industrial complex.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Israel’s Secret Ties with Dictatorships

• Daniel Silberman’s Story (00:15–07:54):

  • Daniel recounts his childhood in Chile during the 1973 military coup, the disappearance and murder of his father, and the family’s escape to Israel.
    • “Finding out about Israel's involvement in aiding the military regime in Chile. It was very painful. Basically, in a metaphoric way, I can say that an Israeli bullet killed my father.”
      — Daniel Silberman (00:15 & 10:41)
  • Despite Israel offering asylum to Jewish Chileans, it was later revealed that Israel supplied arms, training, and support to Pinochet’s regime.

• The Hidden Role of Arms Deals (08:56–11:45):

  • Declassified documents show Israel became a major arms supplier to Chile after the US embargo (1976).
    • The Palestine Laboratory concept: “Israel is selling weapons to get money, but also trying to get international support for a brutal occupation of Palestine.”
      — Anthony Lowenstein (09:36)

• Legal Action for Truth and Accountability (11:45–13:46):

  • Daniel joined a lawsuit in Israel to demand government transparency about arms sales to Chile; met with bureaucracy, denial, and document obfuscation.
    • “For me, it was important to be part of this legal suit ... our goal was also to fight against the Israeli policy of selling arms without considering the moral issue.”
      — Daniel Silberman (12:29)

2. Israel as Global Arms Merchant

• Pattern of Complicity Worldwide (13:46–16:12):
  • Israel has supplied weapons/training to:
    • Argentina’s anti-Semitic dictatorship (“the disappeared”)
    • Colombian death squads
    • Rwandan genocide perpetrators
    • Sri Lanka’s repressive special task force
    • Myanmar’s military during Rohingya genocide
    • India’s state police during farmer protests
  • “The list goes on and on and on and what this shows is that nothing has really changed for decades.”
    — Anthony Lowenstein (15:22)

3. The Turning Point: 1967 and Beyond

• Impact of the Six-Day War (16:42–18:56):
  • Israel’s occupation of territories post-1967 led to diplomatic isolation and a shift towards arms-for-support alliances, particularly with “pariah” states or those casting themselves as anti-Soviet during the Cold War.

4. The Unspoken Alliance: Israel and Apartheid South Africa

• Shared Ideology and Military Cooperation (20:33–28:46):

  • Detailed account of Israel’s arms and nuclear cooperation with Pretoria, including nuclear technology transfers, joint missile programs, and trade in riot control equipment.
    • “You get this sense from their correspondence and from these declassified archival materials that this was more than just tanks and ammunition. This was about ... a shared struggle.”
      — Sasha Polakow Saransky (23:27)
  • South African officials viewed Israel as a fellow embattled minority state.

• Moral Ironies and Lasting Impact (24:51–29:07):

  • Even after apartheid’s fall, South African leaders like Mandela condemned Israel’s support for the white regime:
    • “The people of South Africa will never forget the support of the state of Israel to the apartheid regime.”
      — Cited by Anthony Lowenstein (28:56)

5. Continuing the Playbook: Myanmar, India, and Beyond

• Blueprint for Modern Repression (30:28–35:23):
  • Israel’s weapons, cyber, and surveillance expertise now marketable globally — even to regimes credibly accused of genocide or mass repression.
    • “This model ... is being replicated in more contemporary situations such as Myanmar and India, and inspiring the far right in the US, Europe and beyond.”
      — Anthony Lowenstein (31:12)
  • Despite embargos or reputational damage, Israeli defense tech remains in high demand: “Every single country here in Israel's expanding diplomatic horizons is talking to us about cyber. They all want to share in our knowledge of Cyber Defense.”
    — Israeli Defense Industry Representative (32:24)

6. The “Palestine Laboratory” Model & Its Entrenchment

• Arms Sales and Perpetual Conflict (35:23–36:44):
  • Israel’s decades of “battle-tested” arms sales are both morally and financially self-perpetuating:
    • “The Israeli industry of arms has absolutely no interest in ever solving the Israeli Palestine conflict.”
      — Daniel Silberman (35:54)
  • The continuing expansion of the military-industrial complex undermines incentives for accountability or peace.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If you take a globe and you spin the globe, wherever you put your finger on it, most likely we sold our arms over there.”
  — Daniel Silberman (01:19, restated at 12:29)

• “It's remarkable looking at South African PR today from the 1980s ... complete and utter delusion from the reality at the time. And this actually is very similar to many ads that Israel puts out today...”
  — Anthony Lowenstein (26:20)

• “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
  — Mandela, quoted at (30:28)

• “It's the only way for Israelis, not just the government, but its people, to realize these kind of actions must come with a price...”
  — Anthony Lowenstein (35:23)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:15 — Daniel Silberman reflects on the pain of learning about Israel's support for Chile’s dictatorship.
• 04:54 — Daniel describes being ostracized as a child in Chile after the coup.
• 08:56–11:45 — Exposé on Israel’s hidden arms trade with Pinochet’s regime and its consequences.
• 13:46–16:12 — A global tour of Israeli arms sales to repressive governments and militias.
• 16:42–18:56 — How the 1967 war transformed Israel’s foreign policy and alliances.
• 20:33–28:46 — The deep and secretive Israel–South Africa apartheid connection.
• 29:07 — Mandela's statement on Israel’s support for apartheid.
• 31:12–33:15 — Modern arms sales and “the model” being exported to Myanmar, India, and elsewhere.
• 35:54 — Daniel Silberman on Israeli arms industry’s lack of incentive for peace.

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Tone and Language

The episode retains an investigative, somber, and unflinching tone, driven by first-person testimony, archival revelations, and historical context. The language is accessible yet hard-hitting, with moments of reflection and moral questioning from guests and hosts alike.

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Conclusion

Episode 2 of The Palestine Laboratory traces a dark but vital narrative of Israel’s global role in supporting repressive regimes, highlighting the gap between public rhetoric and secret policy. The stories of survivors and researchers like Daniel Silberman and Sasha Polakow Saransky illustrate both the personal and international stakes, urging listeners to question the cost of military alliances and the global diffusion of repressive technology.

Next Episode Preview:

• How the post-9/11 “War on Terror” fueled an explosion in private Israeli surveillance firms and the increasingly high-tech nature of repressive export, much of it “tested” on Palestinians.

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Transcript

[Jeremy Scahill]

Jeremy I'm Jeremy Scahill from Dropsite News. You are about to hear the second episode of our new investigative podcast series, the Palestine Laboratory from journalist Anthony Lowenstein.

[Daniel Silberman]

Finding out about Israel's involvement in aiding the military regime in Chile. It was very painful. Basically, in a metaphoric way, I can say that an Israeli bullet killed my father.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

Welcome back. I'm Anthony Lowenstein and this is the Palestine Laboratory. In the first episode, we looked at how Israel's early leaders used the military to shape the country, borrowing repressive tools from the British.

[Sasha Polakow Saransky]

This is a society that is built

[Narrator/Documentary Voice]

around the army, that thinks around the

[Sasha Polakow Saransky]

army, that serves the army.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

We also heard from Palestinians like my friend Mariam about Israel's long history of testing weapons. Because people in Gaza know when it's Apache, they know when it's F16. Today we'll explore how this military mindset has influenced Israel's relationships with other countries. Many people know how the US supported and armed a huge number of oppressive regimes after World War II. But what's far less known is that Israel was doing virtually the same thing.

[Daniel Silberman]

Basically, if you take a globe and you spin the globe, wherever you put your finger on it, most likely we sold our arms over there.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

Well, look at the way the young Israeli state began befriending dictators, human rights abusers, drug traffickers, and even anti Semites. These relationships would prop up Israel as a diplomatic and military power and help to divide criticism of its treatment of Palestinians. When it comes to Israel's involvement in a truly daunting amount of oppressive regimes, the details are still largely being kept hidden by Israel under the guise of security concerns. But there are people out there fighting to get the truth. Episode 2 How to Make Friends

[Daniel Silberman]

My name is Daniel Silverman. I'm originally from Chile. My family is from Chile and we moved to Israel when I was 10 years old. Because of the political situation In Chile

[Anthony Lowenstein]

on September 11, 1973, Daniel Silberman was six years old and living with his family in the northern part of Chile when the country's democratically elected government was overthrown in a swift and brutal military coup.

[Daniel Silberman]

It wasn't a total surprise for many because there was a political turmoil. But for me personally as a six year old, it was a complete surprise. Something that changed My life changed completely and forever.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

In the early hours of that morning, the military junta besieged and bombed the presidential palace in the country's capital, Santiago. By that afternoon, the socialist President of Chile, Salvador Allende, was dead.

[Narrator/Documentary Voice]

The buildings all around are high and close in on the little palace. Yet they're scarcely touched. This was pinpoint bombing of such astonishing accuracy that even an Israeli I met here was filled with admiration.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

General Augusto Pinochet was installed as Chile's new ruler, and he would go on to lead an authoritarian military dictatorship for 17 years.

[Narrator/Documentary Voice]

The army is devoting all its time and its considerable force to hunting down the remaining Marxists and Ayindi sympathizers. Arrests continue day and night. The ever increasing number of prisoners are kept here at the National Stadium, which is an enormous building and needs to be for its new purpose.

[Daniel Silberman]

The very first days were very cruel days. Bodies were found floating in the river every day. There was a curfew between, I believe, 8pm or 9pm until 6am and people that were found outside were first shot. Then questions were asked.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

Daniel's father, David Silberman, was an engineer who was managing a major copper mine in northern Chile. As a supporter and friend of the Socialist President, Salvador Allende, he decided to turn himself into the regime. After many of the mine workers were killed by the army. Daniel's father hoped that he might be saved because he had done nothing wrong. Instead, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

[Daniel Silberman]

He it was a terrible situation for many people, and it's basically a situation that tore apart families, communities. There was a really, really terror feeling in the streets.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

Now outside of jail, Daniel's family were followed by the secret police. Their close friends and cousins would see the family on the street and walk the other way.

[Daniel Silberman]

As a kid, it was terrible. You know, you couldn't understand, for example, the fact that certain stores in the neighborhood wouldn't allow us to enter the store, even let alone to buy something in the store. We were marked. People would call us communist as if it was like a curse. And that's it. That's enough to say, you're not welcome here.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

But inside prison, Daniel's father's condition was deteriorating. He was subject to frequent beatings and torture, including electric shocks on his genitals. But the family still held out hope that he might be released soon. And like many in Chile's Jewish community, Israel's embassy was offering the family asylum and safe passage out of the country.

[Daniel Silberman]

My grandparents, very quickly they left for Israel. So the idea was that they were waiting for us to also come to Israel. The plan and the hope was that my father would be indeed released and would be allowed to go to Israel.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

Near the end of 1974, Daniel's mother thought she had finally succeeded in securing her husband's release. And the one Condition offered by Pinochet's regime was if David was released, the entire family would have to go into exile. But instead, David Silberman disappeared.

[Daniel Silberman]

He was kidnapped from jail by the military police. I should say it's the dina, which was the organization, the secret police, the organization that was in charge of eliminating all the people from the previous regime.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

For three years, Chilean officials, prison guards, and officers told the family lies about where David was. They'd get a call from a prison guard saying he was spotted at this jail or that they'd seen him being transferred.

[Daniel Silberman]

There comes a point where you add one point to another and you understand that that person is no longer alive. But there was never a declaration, a formal declaration, just a series of events that you can understand. And basically he is considered a missing person. Since October of 1974,

[Anthony Lowenstein]

according to the Chile Ministry of Justice, over 40,000 people were executed, detained, disappeared, or tortured as political prisoners during Pinochet's rule.

[Daniel Silberman]

Once my mom understood that he is no longer alive, it was time for us to leave Chile because it also was dangerous for us. So we arrived to Israel.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

51 years on, families like Daniels are still looking for answers about what happened to their loved ones.

[Daniel Silberman]

With the research of many different humanitarian agencies in Chile, we found out that he was most likely murdered two weeks after he was kidnapped from jail in 1974. So on one hand you say, you know, I'm happy that he suffered less. No. But on the other hand, you say, from 1974 until 1977, all those phone calls that we would receive, claiming that he's been seen here, there, and then the offer to release him while he's already dead two years ago, it's almost like sinister, you know, who would go into those efforts of tormenting the widow, telling her that there's hope that they're going to release him, and you ask yourself why he was treated this way.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

So far in this story, Israel comes across as relatively benign. On the surface, Israeli authorities claimed they were assisting the small Jewish Chilean community escape the Pinochet dictatorship that they alleged they did not support. But then, in 1999, formally classified documents revealed the US's backing of the military dictatorship and the 1973 coup. Among these documents was evidence of Israel's ties to Pinochet's regime. Israel did not just train Chilean personnel to aid the repression of its own people, but was the major arms supplier to the state. After a US arms embargo against Chile passed the US Congress in 1976, a cable from the US embassy in Chile in 1980 acknowledged that Israel was a major arms supplier to Pinochet. A declassified document from 1988 says, quote, Chile values Israel's willingness and ability to sell battle tested military equipment, modify and modernise older items, and provide services and training. Chile, in turn, has supported Israel on a number of votes at the UN that Tel Aviv considered vital. In that CAA document from 1988, it said, including acceptance of the Israeli delegation's credentials for the UN General Assembly. The reason these documents are revealing is it uses a language that could be as relevant today as then, that Israel is selling weapons to get money, but also trying to get international support for a brutal occupation of Palestine. Much like we talked about in the last episode, the concept of the Palestine Laboratory was alive and well in the 1970s and 80s in Chile. And as the country bought and deployed weapons on its own, people that had first been tested on Palestinians finding out

[Daniel Silberman]

about Israel's involvement in aiding the military regime in Chile. It was very painful because on one hand, I will always be thankful for Israel, to Israel for giving us a second chance, for allowing me to grow up, normally, I would say, and raise a family of my own and live a decent life. But on the other hand, when I was exposed to the information that Israel provided military aid to Chile, and when we say military aid, it's not only arms, military equipment, it's also training and training in interrogation systems. So you say, you know, what's going on here. Basically, in a metaphoric way, an Israeli bullet killed my father.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

In 2015, Daniel joined other survivors of Pinochet's regime and filed a legal suit in Israel with human rights lawyer Itai Mak. The suit demanded that the country's authorities reveal its ties to the Chilean junta. And this was a landmark case because no one really had seriously ever tried to get accountability for Israeli actions in Chile after 1973. Now, at first, the Israeli government said that there was no correspondence between Israel and Chile during Pinochet's rule. Then they backtracked on this claim and eventually acknowledged that there were in fact 19,000 relevant documents in the archive, but that they couldn't release the information as they simply didn't have the manpower to reject the documents.

[Daniel Silberman]

After a year, we indeed received 12 pages of a correspondence about a delegation of Chilean doctors that they wanted to come to visit in Israel. And the whole correspondence was, okay, they can come, but who will pay for them? Make it clear that Israel is not going to pay for their expenses. They need to pay. You know, it was a. I mean, we're asking for documents about our families and this is the documents you're giving us. For me, it was important to be part of this legal suit for two reasons. One is on a personal level because the name of my father could be mentioned in those papers and we could come about a new piece of information that will allow us to understand where exactly he was killed by whom. But I also have to be honest and say that our goal was also to fight against the Israeli policy of selling arms without considering the moral issue. Basically, if you take a globe and you spin the globe wherever you put your finger on it, most likely we sold our arms over there.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

Daniel says he's continuing to try to find out the truth of Israel's involvement with the dictatorship. But Israel's complicity in Chile's brutal regime is not just a one off occurrence. Israel has pretty much always had an open policy of selling weapons to basically anyone who wanted them, including to Germany less than 15 years after the Holocaust. Today there is extensive documentation that Israel was knowingly selling arms to Argentina's brutal anti Semitic dictatorship. There were many opponents of the military junta who were kidnapped and killed for raising their voice against the system. These people were some 30,000 or more are known as the disappeared. Training and arming death squads in Colombia

[Narrator/Documentary Voice]

to defeat the guerrillas. The general's men threw away the rule

[Sasha Polakow Saransky]

book so that right wing death squads could operate freely.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

Sending bullets, rifles and grenades. During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It is said to be the fastest pace of genocide in human history. Israel provided the rifles, ammunition and grenades

[Narrator/Documentary Voice]

that that made it all possible.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

Supporting Sri Lanka's special task force, a brutal unit of the Sri Lankan police during its civil war.

[Daniel Silberman]

As the students disregarded continuous requests to

[Anthony Lowenstein]

hold the protest in a peaceful manner,

[Daniel Silberman]

the police had to resort to other measures to disperse the crowd.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

Selling weapons and surveillance tech to Myanmar's military even after it had committed genocide against its Muslim Rohingya population.

[Narrator/Documentary Voice]

The International Court of Justice has ruled that Myanmar must take all possible measures to prevent its military from carrying out genocide.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

And literally this year teaching India's state police violent tactics deployed against protesting farmers. A drone at one point dropped tear gas on the protesters and police have put up barricades as tens of thousands of farmers and people have traveled into the capital in tractors and trucks. It's almost like a war zone because there's a consistent oh my God, oh my God. This is where a tear gas has gone on and obviously this is almost suffocating. The list goes on and on and on and what this shows is that nothing has really changed for decades.

[Jeremy Scahill]

You're listening to the Palestine Laboratory, a new investigative podcast series from Dropsite News. If you appreciate this investigative journalism, you can support our work by becoming a paid subscriber for a 20% discount. Head to dropsitenews.com palestinelab that's dropsitenews.com PalestineLab. You can also support our work by making a tax deductible 501c3 donation and at donate.dropsitenews.com thank you so much for listening.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

You might be thinking how did Israel, this tiny nation, end up cooperating and assisting with so many brutal dictatorships? Exactly how did Israel get here? In 1967 there was a six day war where Israel fought some of its Arab neighbors. And this marked a turning point for Israel inside Palestine in terms of its relationships with other countries around the world. Israeli history can be split really into two eras, before and after 1967. Before 1967, Israeli policy wasn't noble, but gave the rhetorical impression of sometimes opposing repression. Many Israelis then and now viewed Zionism as a liberation struggle. For example, in 1963 the Foreign Minister Golda Meir told the United nations that Israel, quote, naturally opposes policies of apartheid, colonialism and racial or religious discrimination. Wherever they existed. Israel bonded with newly independent African states enjoying their post colonial freedoms.

[Narrator/Documentary Voice]

June 5, 1967, around 300 Israeli aircraft, mainly French built fighter bombers, prepared to launch the most decisive airstrike in history. Their target, the air forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

The international community saw Israel aggressively and rapidly take over and occupy the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

[Narrator/Documentary Voice]

The news flashes clarified the situation. It soon became apparent that the Middle east power patterns of a decade were being changed in a matter of hours.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

Within six days, Israel had tripled its size and now controlled far more territory and occupied Palestinians. By the end of the war, Israel had expelled another 300,000 Palestinians from their home, including around 130,000 who had already been displaced in 1948.

[Narrator/Documentary Voice]

With total command of the skies, Israeli fighters can now give tactical support to their soldiers as they advance across the desert.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

1967 was a turning point and Israel really has never been the same since. It both empowered the most extreme radical messianic Jews to start building settlements which began very soon after the war concluded. Israel was receiving a lot of condemnation for its colonization of Palestine, but to offset that, they had to make deals, arms deals and training deals with various nations who were inspired by by what Israel was doing in the occupied territories and wanted to Get a taste of that in their own country. A key context here for what's happening with Israel and the world is the Cold War. Some of the world, of course, aligned itself with Washington and others with Moscow. And that global split continued for years where Israel felt it needed to make friends with more Western friendly nations opposed to more Soviet backed states that often supported Palestinian struggle, liberation and resistance. And I think a lot of the Israeli backing of repressive states, particularly since 1967, they claimed, was to make friends in a world that was often very hostile to them. This policy was not just about gaining diplomatic support or growing a profitable arms industry. It was also about sharing an ideological framework, creating alliances between like minded nations. And there's no better example of this than Israel and apartheid South Africa. A brutal regime that existed between 1948 and 1994. Life in apartheid South Africa was brutal. There was one rule for whites and one rule for blacks.

[Narrator/Documentary Voice]

Though blacks were officially citizens of South Africa, they could only come to white areas if they had work and they had to live in separate townships outside the white cities.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

The black population were herded into Bantistans. Essentially these black townships and their labor was used exploitatively by the South African state. When many Israeli leaders went to South Africa during this period in the 70s and 80s, they were inspired by what South Africa was doing and wanted to bring some of that back to their occupation of Palestine.

[Sasha Polakow Saransky]

They were united in a sense of what I call minority survivalism. The sense that the Arabs want to push us into the sea, the blacks want to push us into the sea, and we will do anything to resist that.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

Journalist and author of the Unspoken Alliance, Sasha Polikow Saransky spent years researching the secret relationship between the two countries.

[Sasha Polakow Saransky]

I was discouraged from pursuing this project by almost everyone, and that was not because people didn't find it interesting, but the general reaction I got from most academics, especially in Israel and South Africa, was great topic. You're not going to get anything. Everyone knows that something was going on. Everyone knows that there was some relationship. You're not going to be able to prove it.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

Most of Israel's information regarding the state's history of arms deals has never been made public. The government shuts down most legal filings or requests for information, even if this information requested is decades old. Public information is further obstructed by the Israeli military censor. Journalists in Israel covering military intelligence and defence have to submit their stories to the Israeli military censor before publication. No other Western country is like this.

[Sasha Polakow Saransky]

So I almost gave up because I was talking to people I respected, who presumably had tried themselves at some point. But I decided to push. Israel has declassified virtually nothing about this relationship, regardless of how many years ago it was. But I did manage to get thousands of pages of documents from the South African Foreign Ministry archive and the South African Defense Ministry archive. The Israelis did try to intervene. And I know Even now, almost 20 years later, that I didn't get everything.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

During a period where the white supremacist government was attempting to violently crush the anti apartheid movement, Israel ignored UN resolutions that called on nations to cease selling arms to South Africa. Instead, they secretly became one of the country's major arms suppliers during its reign, including playing a key role in helping South Africa set up a nuclear weapons program.

[Sasha Polakow Saransky]

So the Israelis helped with South Africa's missile program. They helped in terms of supplies of ammunition, bombs they helped restore, or an update, South Africa's fighter jets. There were training trips of South African military personnel going to Israel, and vice versa. There was joint missile testing. And the most controversial part of it involves nuclear technology. South Africa was developing a nuclear program, which it dismantled in the early 90s, during the transition to democracy. But during the late 70s, early 80s, South Africa was developing its own nuclear weapons program. They were about 10 years behind Israel. And the South Africans, according to the archival documents, were extremely interested in Israel's military technology as a vehicle for what they planned to build in their nuclear program. And so you have letters between leading Israeli military officials and top generals in the apartheid regime in South Africa writing to each other, praising each other, expressing an affinity with each other. You get this sense from their correspondence and from these declassified archival materials that this was more than just tanks and ammunition. This was about what many of them, not all of them, but many of them, sensed as a shared struggle.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

In 1976, the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin invited South African Prime Minister John Vorster to visit. Vorster had been a Nazi sympathiser and a member of a fascist Africaner group during World War II. And yet when Worcester arrived in Israel, he was given the red carpet treatment. It's remarkable to see footage now of Vorster visiting Yad Vashem, the country's Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, and laying a wreath to victims of a Third Reich.

[Sasha Polakow Saransky]

They invited him to formal dinners with the leaders of the country. They held meetings with top government officials. And behind the scenes, he was primarily involved in discussions about this burgeoning arms trade. The arms trade certainly was highly classified. Most of the meetings between military officials and even Some Israeli ministers visiting South Africa, there was always some sort of COVID story or it was completely secretive. And if it was known that an Israeli minister was visiting South Africa, it would be because they were fundraising for some Zionist organization and giving a speech to the local community when in fact the primary purpose was to meet with defence officials.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

The South African government's yearbook from that year documented the growing bond between the two countries saying quote, Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common. They are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples. End quote.

[Sasha Polakow Saransky]

The 1976 is also the peak of apartheid brutality. In some ways. The Soweto massacre occurs in June of that year. And so just months after he goes on this red carpet visit to Israel, you have one of the most violent and brutal incidents in the whole history of apartheid South Africa where hundreds of school children are shot in the back, massacred for protesting against his government's educational policies.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

Now in 2006, the former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Alon Lille, told the Guardian that Israel essentially created the South African arms industry. He called the relationship between the two countries security establishments a love affair. As well as state owned factories exporting materials to South Africa, private Israeli factories developed a profitable industry of selling anti riot vehicles for use against protesters in the black townships, the so called Bantistans. It's remarkable looking at South African PR today from the 1980s when the regime was trying to promote itself as this so called nation of equality. The advertisements that they were putting out to the world, especially to try to convince Americans to keep supporting the apartheid regime, shows blacks and whites working together harmoniously. Complete and utter delusion from the reality at the time. And this actually is very similar to many ads that Israel puts out today talking about west bank factories where Israelis and Palestinians work harmoniously to economically benefit both peoples. It's hard not to miss the historical irony here of two regimes both credibly accused of apartheid, promoting themselves in a remarkably similar way. Now, near the end of South Africa's apartheid regime and the country's first democratic election, 1994, in which Nelson Mandela was elected as the country's first black president, Israel was one of the last nations to maintain a relationship with the white minority regime. And when you read the declassified documents from this period, Israeli officials are quite concerned about apartheid ending and are hoping, which in hindsight seems delusional, that their relationship with South Africa will continue if the black population takes control.

[Daniel Silberman]

We identify with the PLO because just like ourselves, they are fighting for the

[Anthony Lowenstein]

right of self determination Mandela took note saying, quote, the people of South Africa will never forget the support of the state of Israel to the apartheid regime.

[Narrator/Documentary Voice]

Our attitude towards any country is determined

[Anthony Lowenstein]

by the attitude of that country to our struggle. Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has become a leading critic of Israel, with presidents, ministers and UN delegates slamming the state for denying basic rights to Palestinians. Israel is the only state in the

[Daniel Silberman]

world that can be called an apartheid state. We remain deeply concerned at the denial of the right of self determination to

[Anthony Lowenstein]

the Palestinian people in the absence of

[Daniel Silberman]

which no other human right can be exercised or enjoyed.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

Last year, in 2023, South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice alleging Israel was in violation of the Genocide Convention for its invasion of Gaza.

[Daniel Silberman]

The evidence of genocidal intent is is

[Narrator/Documentary Voice]

not only chilling, it is also overwhelming and incontrovertible.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

South Africa's former Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor says the solidarity most South Africans have with the people of Palestine stems from the fact that they feel and remember the pain that they were subjected to during the apartheid regime.

[Narrator/Documentary Voice]

As long as the people of Palestine know we as South Africa are with them, we will strive on. We won't tie up.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

At many pro Palestine rallies across the world, including in Australia. South Africa has become almost a rallying cry for this movement and it's not unusual to have Mandela's famous quote on posters. Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians. Despite Israel's attempts to keep their defence deal secret, there's a growing awareness around the world about Israel's involvement in apartheid South Africa and in other regimes. But this international awareness does not seem to be slowing Israel down. The state continues to market itself as the ideal ethno nationalist model and is finding plenty of other interested parties who want to learn the tactics and tools Israel is developing in occupied Palestine. The model in various forms is being replicated in more contemporary situations such as Myanmar and India, and inspiring the far right in the US, Europe and beyond. In 2015, a secret delegation from Myanmar visited Israel's defence industries and bases to negotiate deals for drones, a mobile phone hacking system, rifles, military training and warships. This relationship continued long after Myanmar was credibly accused of committing genocide against the Muslim Rohingya minority, despite an international arms embargo on Myanmar and Israel, claiming that they had stopped selling equipment to the state. In 2019, senior representatives of Myanmar were seen in uniform attending Israel's biggest weapons and security conference in Tel Aviv. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seemingly more interested in expanding the state's security industry than worrying about who buys from Israel.

[Israeli Defense Industry Representative]

Every single country here in Israel's expanding diplomatic horizons is talking to us about cyber. They all want to share in our knowledge of Cyber Defense.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

In 2020, Myanmar acquired a surveillance system from Israeli firm Cognite. The cyber system that the regime bought gives police and authorities the ability to track its citizens for monitoring online activity, hacking devices and extracting coded text messages.

[Israeli Defense Industry Representative]

Cybersecurity is not merely here to stay. It's going to grow exponentially. And it reflects the fact that what we have to do is to take certain risks and allow the graduates of our security services to merge into companies with local partners and foreign partners.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

If we look at the developing relationship between India and Israel, the model emerges again. Since the Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power In India in 2014, the two states, Israel and India, have begun cooperating extensively, signing huge arms deals and conducting military, police and counterterrorism training. In 2019, Modi's government suspended the Jammu and Kashmir Constitution to give India almost complete control over the disputed and occupied territory of Kashmir. Modi moved quickly to implement a plan with remarkable similarities, but also notable differences to Israeli controlled Palestine. And it's worth noting that many Indian officials for many years have publicly and privately spoken of their admiration for what Israel is doing in Palestine and and the desire to replicate that in Kashmir. In May this year, one of Israel's major defence giants, Israel Aerospace Industries, inadvertently revealed that India was the company's largest foreign customer in 2023, buying almost $1 billion worth of equipment for Ms. Israeli company alone. When you research this issue, it's hard not to see history repeating itself over and over and over and over again. That nations that want to repress their own people, whether it's in Myanmar or India or Sri Lanka or elsewhere, look to Israel as a model. Not just because they want to buy weapons or training, because they also like the idea of learning how Israel gets away with it. This is a theme that I found time and time again. That so many nations look to Israel and say, how do you do this? How do you get away with it? How do you essentially act in Palestine without global sanction? And I'd include the actions of Israel in Gaza since October 7th. When I keep seeing this happening over and over again, it makes me realise this will never stop without arms embargoes and sanctions and boycotts. It's the only way for Israelis, not just the government, but its people, to realize these kind of actions must come

[Daniel Silberman]

with a price, especially in the historical context of the Jewish people. Israel shouldn't be selling arms and aiding countries that are creating more refugees, creating more suffering and pain.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

This leaves people like Daniel Silberman wondering if Israel will ever try to end the Israel Palestine conflict. What started out as a strategy by Israel to gain international recognition and friends now is so profitable and entrenched that how would they ever stop?

[Daniel Silberman]

One of the advantages of Israel with its competitors in this industry is that Israel always can claim that the weapons that she's selling and the training that she's selling comes with a lot of experience, battle experience, it's called. You know, the grounds of where we get that experience is unfortunately, Palestine. The bottom line is that the Israeli industry of arms has absolutely no interest in ever solving the Israeli Palestine conflict.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

In the next episode of the Palestine Laboratory, we'll look at how the war on terror after 911 led to an explosion of private Israeli surveillance companies. We're also going to examine not just who Israel's selling to, but what they're developing and how. And of course, as ever, all these tools of repression are first trialed in the occupied Palestinian territories.

[Israeli Defense Industry Representative]

The three principles of winning the war on terror are the three W's Winning, winning and winning. The more victims victories you amass, the easier the next victory becomes.

[Anthony Lowenstein]

The Palestine Laboratory podcast is hosted by me, Anthony Lowenstein. The series is produced by Elle Marsh and Bethany Atkinson. Quinton production and sound engineering by Tim Jenkins. Studio recordings at 2 Ser in Sydney with Michael Jones and Jonathan Chang Field production by Cinnamon Nippard. Original music in this series is by Ara Koufax and music direction by Sunless Studio. This last track is Coup d' Etat by Use Knife, remixed by Mukata. A special thank you to Anu Hasbold and our guests on this episode, Daniel and Sasha. You can check out Daniel Silberman's podcast about social justice and democracy, La Monito, or read his latest book about Chilean life under the Dead hand. Sasha Polakal Saransky's book is the Unspoken Israel's Secret relationship with Apartheid South Africa. I'd also like to acknowledge the work of Israeli human rights lawyer Itai Mak, who has done invaluable work over the last years uncovering Israel's defense tank ties with repressive states around the world. This is an independent podcast brought to you by Dropsite News. To support DropSite's journalism and get 20% off a subscription, visit DropSiteNews.com PalestineLab thanks for listening.