Downloaded from YTS.BZ
(lively music)
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ
The Farnborough Air Show
one of the largest in the world.
Global weapons giants like BAE Systems,
Lockheed Martin and Airbus come to show off their latest
military hardware.
Billions of dollars of civil
and military deals are done here every year.
Standing shoulder to shoulder with these global
military giants are Israel's top weapons manufacturers
like Israel Aerospace Industries
and missile makers Rafael.
In the main hall, Israel's largest
private weapons company, Elbit has a huge stand.
They need it to showcase their world class
drones and missiles.
Despite its tiny population, Israel is the world's
ninth largest weapons producer.
(missile sounds from TV)
This high budget promo is for the trophy
anti-missile system made by Israeli company Rafael.
It's the kind of advanced technology Israel specializes in
and makes the Israeli Merkva tank
one of the best on the market.
Automatically activated only when enemy fire
is sure to hit the vehicle.
Both tank and anti-missile system sell
around the world to undisclosed clients.
Overall, Israel exports more than $13 billion
of weapons and surveillance equipment a year.
And with adverts like this for the
Spike Firefly, Israeli company's hint
that their products may have been battle tested in Palestine.
So how does being a major arms supplier
impact Israel's diplomatic position?
Could it give the country
a measure of impunity when it wants to undertake its own wars?
(explosion)
(atmospheric music)
I've just got a stash of books from my publisher today.
My book and other books are mostly related
to Palestine and,
guerrilla journalism.
Just some light reading.
I'm about to do an event,
a Q&A about my book, The Palestine Laboratory.
The book's been quite controversial.
It's a look at how the occupation
of Palestine allows Israel
to test weapons, which are then sold around the world.
I wanted to do a book, really, not just about the whole concept
of the arms industry, which is an
interesting subject, but can be a bit dry.
But what Israel is testing and selling
and promoting is not just weaponry, it's an idea.
It's a concept.
And it's a very appealing concept to many other countries.
Israel sells the idea of getting away with it.
To find out how tiny Israel
has managed to develop this huge
military and surveillance machine.
I'm heading back to Israel and Palestine.
It's not really clear if I'm going to get in.
I haven't been there for a few years.
Wish me luck.
(tense music)
Although I'm Jewish, I'm not a citizen of Israel.
And their immigration rules say they can refuse entry to critics
of the country or those who have called for boycotts.
So they have multiple reasons for turning me away.
My arrival was surprisingly smooth,
so I'm heading straight to East Jerusalem.
Israel has been occupying
the West Bank since 1967, and has developed a unique system
of controlling the Palestinian population,
from checkpoints in the separation wall
to increasingly innovative methods of surveillance.
These walls are not just walls, they can listen,
and they are listening to probably us right now
I suspect.
It's in these population management technologies
that Israel is a global leader.
So I want to see how they first
use it to control Palestinians
before being sold around the world.
I'm on my way to meet Osama, a businessman in East Jerusalem,
to find out how all this impacts ordinary Palestinians.
You can see my office from this camera...
inside.
So the cameras are both looking into Damascus Gate,
but also out. - In and out.
So I'm standing on a balcony,
literally overlooking Damascus Gate.
It's Osama's office, his insurance office and all around
behind me over there, there's multiple
surveillance towers. Right behind me.
there's a camera watching me.
So I'm going to watch it.
Osama wants to show
me the very physical reality of the occupation.
The restrictions on the movement of Palestinians,
His daily commute from the West Bank to Jerusalem
is through the Columbia checkpoint.
Osama, how do you feel
when you cross Columbia checkpoint?
You're crying.
I think 24 hours about my, my daughter.
My son.
If he need me.
I am here, in this traffic.
I need 3 or 4 hours to go to help my son.
- I do.
I can understand why this would make you nervous.
You can see soldier here. Any mistake,
you lost your life.
And that's happened many times.
Yes.
The soldiers have the power to
detain people like Osama for hours.
Question them and place them in
administrative detention without charge.
or trial.
It's almost like you have to ask permission
to go into Jerusalem to get back to your own city.
But this physical infrastructure is just the beginning.
Israel has a vision of a seamless
future where technology minimizes
the interactions between
Palestinians and the Israeli army.
Israel says it's safer, but it's quite dystopic.
Mona, hi! - Hi.
I'm meeting Palestinian digital rights
campaigner Mona Shtaya to find out more.
Explain the growing trend within
Israeli thinking of a so-called frictionless occupation.
Well, the whole automation aims to
eliminate the direct interaction
between the Israeli as occupying force
and Palestinians as occupied people.
And to make the main interaction
between Palestinians and the technology.
So it could create this idea
that our problem is not with the
occupier, but rather with the technology.
Hebron is the testing ground
for many of the supposedly frictionless technologies.
The city is split into two zones, each one
with a population of nearly 200,000.
In H2, 35,000 Palestinians live
under the gaze of the 750 settlers,
and 800 soldiers who have taken over the center of the city.
Palestinians living in H2 face the heaviest surveillance
in the West Bank, and the strictest travel restrictions.
(pulsing tense score)
Under the so-called frictionless occupation
these cameras are linked to artificial intelligence systems,
watching for what Israel deems threatening behavior.
There's someone who watches you, who knows what you are doing,
but you don't necessarily know who's watching you.
Palestinians needs to think about
behaving at our best all the time.
Sometimes you might be angry from
something that happens with your family,
in your home, or at your work, and
then you might look like angry.
And with a predictive policing, you never know
when you would be identified as a
security threat by the Israelis.
So you need to fake your emotions.
If the frictionless occupation can't get a fixed
camera on you, it can send a flying one.
This was recorded just a few miles south of Hebron.
(drone buzzing)
Issa Amro is a human rights activist living in H2.
This is a military post full of cameras and surveillance.
And they watch us for sure now.
So let's say hi.
I usually say hi to them.
We are in the main street in Tel Rumeida
Palestinians are not allowed to drive here.
Palestinian shops are closed by military orders
and the streets here is full of Israeli military surveillance.
Let's see.
The Palestinian kids in the window,
they are caged in the house.
Look, they put fences in their
windows to be protected from the settler
and army violence. Look!
Surveillance for the military is up there.
And this is the surveillance of the Israeli settlers.
So imagine that, the Israeli settlers
they have their own systems here.
These checkpoints are where the latest
frictionless technology is tested,
including this AI enabled remotely controlled gun,
which fires stun grenades, tear gas and sponge chip bullets.
It's made by Israeli company Smart Shooter.
These checkpoints also boast
Israel's most comprehensive data gathering tool,
Wolf Pack.
From 10 to 15 cameras are on the checkpoint.
This is where they use Red Wolf and Blue Wolf.
The Israeli military recently
invented two systems Red wolf and Blue Wolf.
Blue wolf in the soldiers phones.
They take your photo, then they know all details about you.
Where you've been, where you go,
what you like, what
you don't like, your private things.
Then there is another system.
The Red Wolf is set up in the
checkpoints and in the control rooms,
and it's profiling Palestinians
according to their political stance.
When the soldiers scan a
Palestinian's face, they get a traffic
light style indication of their supposed risk.
White, for Palestinians who are not doing
anything about the occupation.
You have yellow and you have orange.
For example, I'm a human rights defender, I am red.
It means check him, make his life harder.
He's a suspect.
So the frictionless technology actually enables a lot more
friction for some people.
They use us as simulation objects for their technology.
Israeli security solution companies, they install
cameras, sensors, drones and they
tested it on us without our consent.
Do they sell it?
Do they use it for other research?
What kind of data do they collect?
It seems to be the often secret partnerships
between the military and private sector that have helped Israeli
companies become world leaders in their fields.
In 2019, a report revealed that Israeli company
Anyvision had installed turnstiles in the West Bank
and was collecting movement and biometric data
from the tens of thousands of Palestinians forced to use them.
Early investor Microsoft pulled their
funding after this was revealed.
The company changed its name to Oosto and says it works in 43
countries, with clients including
casinos, airports and schools.
(tense music)
Another Israeli company, Viisights,
make behavioral recognition systems
that watch CCTV feeds for any threats.
The company actually created the ability to take a real time
video stream and understand
what's going on within the stream.
The company is supported by the Israeli military.
It's marketed for use in cities, prisons and refugee camps
around the world.
We're in Abu Dis in East Jerusalem and I'm standing
next to a old but now derelict hotel owned by Palestinians.
And during the second intifada,
in the early 2000s, the separation wall
was built, and it's kind of surrounded now on all sides.
No one can access it.
The owners can't use it. The guests are not coming.
But what Israel has done is on the top,
they've installed surveillance cameras.
The location is patrolled by police
and private security 24 hours a day.
Just a minute ago we
saw them move, probably to watch us.
Minutes later, four young Israeli police
officers with machine guns approached us.
So what are you doing here?
We’re just filming a documentary about
the situation here.
(van horn)
This formerly Palestinian run hotel,
taken over by the military
and turned into a surveillance post,
could be seen as a microcosm of the occupation.
But what is visible is just part of the overall picture
of how the occupation surveils Palestinians.
First, there is the physical
infrastructure of walls and checkpoints.
The checkpoints record movement data and biometric information.
Then they have CCTV cameras, which are monitored by AI
for perceived threats of violence, and
that in turn is hooked up to databases
like Red Wolf, which track everyone's political profile.
But there's also a more fundamental
level of surveillance, which is that
most of the phone and internet system is routed through Israel.
Israel is
controlling the ICT infrastructure in
the occupied Palestinian territory,
which means that Palestinians are not able
to have safe access to the internet.
With control of basic communications infrastructure
the Israelis know every phone number and can tap any call.
Israeli intelligence also have teams
monitoring all the social media platforms.
Many Palestinians, basically they don't
share their political opinion online
because they would be afraid of being
interrogated or arrested by the Israelis.
I find it remarkable that sometimes blanket
CCTV coverage, analyzed by artificial intelligence
and backed up by biometric movement
tracking just isn't enough surveillance.
I'm off to meet a man who once presented
such a threat to the authorities
that they deployed the world's most invasive spyware on him.
Anthony, hi, and lovely to meet you.
Ubai Al Aboudi didn’t look threatening to me.
He runs the Bisan Center, which
campaigns for the rights of Palestinians.
Do you have any idea why you were targeted?
I think it has to do with the targeting
of any kind of Palestinian civil society.
Israel sees us as, part of,
establishing that there is a Palestinian people.
How did you hear that
your phone had been infected by Pegasus
and why do you think that happened?
You're working with Palestinian human
rights organization Al Haq, right?
I was contacted by Al Haq in late 2021.
They found that, one of their
employees had Pegasus on his phone.
I had my device checked, and he
told me that my phone was infected
by Pegasus spyware.
A couple of days later, the Israeli,
Minister of Defense,
Benny Gantz, designated six Palestinian civil society
organizations as terrorist organizations,
- Including Bisan? - Including Bisan.
Pegasus is unique spyware that can
access every aspect of your phone.
It can take control of your camera, your microphone,
and broadcast it to those controlling the software.
They can see your location, access your data
and see what's on your screen,
including encrypted messaging apps.
Is there anything you feel like you can do,
or do you ultimately feel like there's
not much you can practically do?
It was explained to me by a citizen lab
that once a state actor goes after any citizen
or small organization, there's
basically very little they can do.
Pegasus is produced by Israeli
surveillance company NSO, and is marketed
to government agencies as a tool
for fighting crime and terrorism.
In 2021, an investigation revealed
that around 50,000 people worldwide
potentially had it on their
phones, and a large number of them
were journalists, lawyers, dissidents
and human rights defenders.
One, two, three, four we don't want your cyber war.
It's no accident that this spyware was developed in Israel.
Much of NSO staff is drawn from the Army's
Cyber Intelligence Unit 8200.
(brooding music)
This unit is tasked with
gathering intelligence from electronic communications
and conducting cyber warfare against Palestinians.
It's known for being highly innovative and spinning out
successful cyber security companies like NSO.
To find out how 8200 has helped Israel become a global leader
in surveillance technology,
I'm meeting Yaakov Peri, a former director of the Shin Bet
intelligence agency.
This one here was you, dressed as an Arab in Gaza.
When do you think that was?
- 88. - 1988.
Can you say what you were doing?
No.
Okay.
That's 68. Yeah.
- Okay. - Nablus.
Okay. So the first year after, six day occupation.
Yeah? - Yeah.
Here we have all kinds of ways to smuggle.
What are these, hangers?
- Hangers.
- With explosives? - Yeah.
How has Israel sold itself, really for decades now,
as a global leader in
defense and homeland security equipment?
You cannot defend yourself only by a human...
sources. You have to use also a technology
in order to be on the, beating side,
Israel had to be very, very, very
creative to find solutions that,
you cannot buy in the,
market or the,
around the world.
One of the innovators is unit 8200.
It's been around for many years.
Talk a little bit about, based on
your experience, what that unit is.
We have developed a unique technology
how to, where to tape
whom will be taped
and the ability to reach, to top secret,
say... that usually are hidden.
We say that if a ruler
wants to do something,
it's easy in his mind, but he cannot do it alone.
He has to share it with at least one,
two, three or four people who are close to him.
And we have developed technologies
that can reach the right people
that we will tape and know.
So 8200 became a
one of the secrets of the Israeli intelligence.
I'm not asking you to reveal top
secret intelligence, but give a sense,
what are the kind of methods that Israel
was using to try to get that intelligence?
If you want to follow a certain terrorist or a set, the cell,
you have to be equipped
with a surveillance technology that gives you the advantage to
watch him without him sensing you.
You have to develop ammunition,
which you can use in a remote control for a long distance.
So sometimes your headquarters is in Tel Aviv,
and the terrorist cell is in Gaza Strip.
And you want to,
kill somebody.
You have to be very, very accurate.
You have to be with a...
The best technology
that you will not be accused,
by killing innocent people.
We are getting hit!
Send the Lanius!
Israel is a leader in remote
controlled bombing with small drones
like the controversial Lanius.
Elbit Systems presents, Lanius...
search and attack in one new, innovative,
autonomous, lethal solution.
They're part of the class of small, highly maneuverable
quadcopters getting extensive use for the first time in Gaza.
The high budget promo suggests it may have been battle
tested in Palestine, and the drone is exactly
what Peri is describing.
And lethality in a complex urban environment.
A remote controlled
explosive that can be put next to the target.
Israel is now about the ninth or 10th
biggest arms seller in the world.
It depends every year. How does Israel
become, for a relatively small country,
one of the biggest arms sellers in the world?
Yeah, it's true that Israel is
one of the biggest arms sellers.
We have been also selling a,
all the technology
that can help you to deal with terrorists.
But I mean, the whole world is dealing with terrorist activity.
So the market is big.
I would say that 80% of the technology
that we have developed in Israel
is not top secret.
It's something that you can share with other,
organisations, mainly,
security agencies and armies.
For instance, the most common technology
that we have developed here is the Iron Dome.
And now we can
sell Iron Dome to the whole world.
With a wave of its innovative wand,
Rafael has developed a first-of-its-kind
counter rocket artillery mortar CRAM system,
with pinpoint accuracy
interceptors against asymmetric threats: Iron Dome.
(missile)
The Iron Dome is often used to refer
to all of Israel's anti-missile interception systems.
Together, they make Israel a world leader
in anti-missile protection
and are a showcase for Israel's weapons companies,
who are keen to promote how
cutting edge and innovative they are.
Arrow three.
The Arrow system counters high altitude ballistic missiles
and is made by Israel Aerospace Industries.
IAI also makes the Kfir jet,
heron drones and its own Jericho ballistic missiles.
They claim to offer comprehensive
solutions in all domains.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine,
IAI are marketing the interception systems
to European countries.
To find out more about Israel's military industrial complex,
I'm going to meet security and
intelligence expert Yossi Melman.
Israel from the outset decided
we have to build our own,
strong military industrial complex.
That realization has always been in the mind of Israel.
We have to be, on top of our enemies.
From the scientific, technological point of view.
Israel's been developing a range
of new technologies and weapons,
certain kind of robotics, certain kinds of drones.
Quadcopters.
Explain a bit about what you understand is being used.
There has been a major shift in the
focus of the Israeli industries.
If 30, 40 years ago, Israeli industries were still selling
rifles, pistols, ammunition.
Nowadays they have moved to more
advanced technological equipment.
The logic is very positive to try to minimize Israel's
own casualties, it's safer to first move into the tunnels
with the robot rather than sending your foot soldiers.
A formation of autonomous aerial and ground systems can provide
unprecedented ISR capabilities to
units on the tactical edge...
Legion X is the integrated combat system
for controlling autonomous robotic
vehicles and drones, all made by Elbit,
Israel's largest private weapons producer.
Search and destroy Legion X is maximized.
Now worth nearly $10 billion, Elbit promotes
itself as leading the world in automation and robotics.
(low volume tense music)
And this technical mastery is key
to how Israel has governed Gaza.
Israel directly occupied Gaza from 1967
to 2005, when the Israeli army and settlers withdrew.
But Israel retained de facto control
over the fundamentals of the territory.
Power, water, who could enter and leave,
how far fishermen could go from the shore,
and even how many calories people have to eat every day.
(tense music)
The depth of this control was
constantly updated with technology.
In 2021, Defense Minister Benny Gantz launched a smart fence
stuffed with the latest tech,
including tunnel detection equipment.
In 2021, Israel
unveiled a huge amount of new technology around Gaza.
They spent billions of dollars.
They claim that it was going to keep Israel
safe, was going to keep
Palestinians, essentially in Gaza.
What exactly was being put in place around that time?
Well...
all sorts of equipment.
Israel surrounded Gaza with all these technologies:
facial recognition, hacking telephones,
visual intelligence from drones,
reconnaissance flights, reconnaissance balloons.
Israel had the phone numbers
of many Hamas members, and not only
Hamas members, also innocent people.
That information came from bugging and
listening and observatory equipment.
So, so Gaza was surrounded by their equipment and Israel,
believed that they can control the population
and they control, above all, Hamas.
The domestic security service,
Shin Bet and the military
intelligence... they almost adored...
worshipped technology.
But on October the 7th, 2023,
as part of a highly coordinated offensive,
Hamas drones attacked the watchtowers,
disabling the CCTV and automated guns.
With few soldiers on the border,
the army claims they were effectively
blind to what unfolded.
Hamas fighters quickly overran multiple bases,
which were sparsely manned and not prepared.
(gunfire)
(explosion)
It is said that thousands of Hamas fighters
and other Palestinians broke out of Gaza by land, sea and air.
It was the most deadly single day in Israel's history.
(gunfire)
Israel claims that 1200 people were killed,
nearly 800 of them civilians and most of them Israeli,
and that another 250 were taken back to Gaza as hostages.
According to Hamas and international organizations,
these numbers have been inflated.
Hamas' attack begs the question
of how this multi-billion dollar smart fence,
armed with radar, CCTV and surveillance drones
could miss an assault that took years to plan
and rehearse.
So I'm on my way to see Israel Ziv,
who's a former Israeli general,
and he used to actually head the
Gaza command for the Israeli army.
And on October 7th, he grabbed a gun
from his home near Tel Aviv
and went down to near the Gaza border to try to,
as he says, kill Hamas terrorists and rescue hostages.
So let's go see him.
Explain what happened to you on October 7th.
I've learned that I'm still good, even with the pistol.
I had a chance to rescue quite a few people, you know.
Some of them were hiding
in the area that Hamas control.
What do you think,
as far as we know, went horribly wrong?
Everything.
It's a system collapse.
I think Israel took one step
too far, relying too much on technology, which, in an area
like Gaza, was very convenient to put all those visual toys,
you know. And it gave the feeling that we are protected.
But maybe it wasn't the technology that failed.
We know that IDF soldiers monitoring Gaza reported
increased Hamas activity in the
months leading up to October the 7th.
We saw the maneuvers, we saw the preparations.
We have listened to the plans.
We have photoed the terrorists coming.
I know, but for sure that
in the Israeli secret service
and the Israeli intelligence Army Intelligence Service,
the information was there. - Before October 7th?
- Before October. - Yes.
But nobody thought that it's really going to happen.
Everybody thought that, you know, Hamas would not dare.
Maybe they do a terror act, but not such an operation.
The biggest failure starts from the higher level of command,
which actually refuses to... to believe
or to see it coming.
Despite the supposed failure of
the technology to stop the October the 7th attack,
2024 is predicted to be the best year
yet for Israel's arms industry.
(tense music)
And while the Israeli army may have
been slow to react, on October the 7th
they quickly announced their
intention to unleash hell on Gaza.
(explosions)
What Israel calls the Swords of Iron war,
has resulted in unprecedented
levels of death and destruction.
I've come to one of the few
places in Israel where you can see that with your own eyes.
I'm in the Israeli town of Sterod
and behind me is Gaza.
We're pretty much as close as we can get.
All these religious Jewish people
who are behind me gathered
as the sun is going down. Many of them actually want to settle
Gaza, occupy Gaza, build settlements in Gaza,
and they're treating it almost like a family get together.
There are kids, they're having fun
they're smiling and taking photos.
It's pretty surreal.
Seeing Gaza here and knowing
what's happened since October 7th,
the mass destruction, the mass killing,
it's... yeah, pretty overwhelming.
(atmospheric music)
The war has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians
and seen more than 80% of Gaza's buildings rendered unusable.
It might look like random destruction.
But Israel would claim
these are all valid targets,
and they're all generated by the
latest innovation from unit 8200,
a new system powered by artificial intelligence.
(tense music)
I've come to Tel Aviv to meet the investigative team
who first revealed how AI is being used in Gaza.
Some in the military felt that the systems that existed
were not giving them, in previous wars,
enough targets.
Talk a little bit about what that meant practically.
In previous wars, what is called in Israel,
the target bank, was very swiftly, was empty.
Previously they would produce
200, 300 targets a year,
and now they can produce it in an hour.
The AI targeting systems are only
possible because, as we've seen,
Israel collects data on every aspect of Palestinian life.
The system, called the gospel, also takes in historical
and geographic data to generate infrastructure locations
that the AI thinks are probably linked to Hamas.
These include tactical targets like military bases and tunnels.
But there's another category
called power targets that include
residential towers and civic buildings
like schools and medical centers
and Al Shifa hospital.
They are being hit, you know, there to create
a psychological effect on the Gazans,
pushing them to go against Hamas.
Of course, this didn't happen.
The Israeli army says Al Shifa, housed the
Hamas command and control center.
The bombing of it resulted in over 1000
people being killed, injured or disappeared.
25,000 people in the surrounding area
were also displaced.
Israel never provided evidence
that it had found the command and control center.
To identify individual Hamas members,
Unit 8200 created Lavender.
This analyzes the key behavior
traits of active Hamas operatives,
where they go, who they talk to, who is in their phone contacts,
and then looks for anyone in Gaza
with similar characteristics.
What are they talking about?
What kind of words they're using?
All these kinds of things, you create a list
of possible members of Hamas from the very low level,
or even people that are not
really part of the military wing.
This is basically a death list.
Once you are there,
you are a legitimate target.
(explosion)
The Al Rimel neighborhood, known
as the backbone of Gaza, was hit in December 2023.
The Israeli army said it was
because there were Hamas operatives
concealing themselves there.
The entire area was devastated.
What the AI generates is not facts,
but targets with a statistically probable link to Hamas.
Despite this, the systems have led to another change,
a rise in the acceptable level of civilian deaths.
(atmospheric music)
Prior to this war, a very senior,
Hamas commander,
there was collateral damage of, let's say, five
maximum ten persons.
In this war
it was decided that for very junior
Hamas militants, the collateral damage decided
was between 15 and 20.
His family, and his neighbors
could be killed in order to kill him.
And if it's a senior Hamas militant,
then the numbers over 100, sometimes 300,
and we know it happened.
I wanted to know what someone close
to the Israeli military thought about this use of AI.
It's really kind of a big step, you know, for war
in terms of intelligence and also decision making,
because it's doing the right selection
and put in front of the decision maker much better and clearer
picture in order to take a decision.
We did of course
ask former General Zeev about claims Israel and its
AI systems were perpetrating a genocide in Gaza.
His response?
The standard line that the Israeli
army is the most moral in the world.
So I became a big factor in this whole component
of Intel decision making, command and control,
of the modern fight.
Storing surveillance on an entire population
generates a vast amount of data.
Enter Google and Amazon,
who have been building cloud
services and data farms in Israel
since 2021 under a deal called Project Nimbus.
After the war began, the army's computing
division said they were collecting
so much data they had to move some
of it onto the civilian cloud.
8200 is using a cloud service by Amazon
to store huge amount of
information about people in Gaza,
and that this cloud was used, at least to help
some of the attacks.
I've been looking at how Israel's
army and tech sector benefit
from conflict in Palestine,
but could it also be true of other
countries and multinationals?
To find out more, I met with Paul Biggar,
the founder of a billion dollar tech company.
Google's motto used to be don't be evil.
And it seems like a lot of these big tech companies Amazon,
Google and others have no issue with working with Israel.
In fact, they're often expanding their contracts.
Do they not care about the reputational damage?
Fundamentally, they're about making money.
Getting that cloud revenue.
You know, may have started as a
$600 million contract, but it is,
expanding massively over the years.
So we are talking, at the stage where,
where they may be getting billions
and possibly tens of billions of
dollars from Israel via Project Nimbus.
They're also setting themselves up as the de facto people
to talk to when your government needs to, needs to scale.
And so there's a lot more governments
that are a lot larger than, than Israel.
And Google wants to be first in line for those contracts.
And more importantly, they've realized
there aren't any reputational consequences
for what it does.
So it's not just Israel that uses the Palestinians
to test their products on.
It's actually the whole world.
(atmospheric music)
And there's no greater arena for testing weapons
than a live war.
(explosion)
The Iron Sting is a guided mortar
marketed as a precision weapon.
The Iron Sting is so precise
that it can even hit a specific room
without causing damage to other rooms in the same building.
This is its first use in battle.
(explosion)
And looks like it might have damaged
more than one room.
At least two Israeli companies have made drones
stable enough to handle gunfire.
This is Elbit's bird of prey,
seen here accompanying an armored bulldozer into battle.
(strident music)
Eyewitnesses in Gaza
say these drones with guns are proving terrifying and deadly.
Arms experts have told us the last moments
of the life of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar
were likely filmed on one of these drones.
His final act to throw a stick at it.
(tense music)
Talk about some of those things
in Gaza that Israel has been doing
militarily since October 7th,
and why you think that might be appealing to other nations?
Everybody knows that
you know, Israel is very advanced in the technology,
but definitely after such a, such a war in Gaza,
when people see the demonstration
in real life and it's working,
it creates, you know, the needs and understanding how crucial
those things are and how critical for
others to, to hold it and to have it.
Now, Israel has physical access to Gaza,
they're rolling out many of the surveillance techniques used
in the West Bank.
Unit 8200 is giving soldiers
and drones, AI enabled surveillance technology
to search for anyone linked to Hamas or other rebel groups.
The system relies on technology from Corsight, an Israeli video
analysis company, and the Israeli army is also using
Google Photos, which can identify people
from just a fraction of their face.
We are basically speaking about a
system where the government where
the private sector producing and exporting
the facial recognition technique,
they test those technologies in Palestine
and the occupied Palestinian territory.
So occupying people is profitable
because it's not only you take the resources of the land.
Now we are speaking about digital occupation, where also
your data is a new resource to develop new technologies
and to start selling that worldwide to
profit from oppressing other people.
But perhaps the most advanced and game
changing weapon being used in the Gaza war
is the targeting of human beings by artificial intelligence.
So do you think that tools like
Lavender, the Gospel, there's a decent
chance of Israel could potentially be selling
those tools to other militaries?
I think it's a very fair possibility
that Israel will sell it.
And this is, I think, one of the reasons
they allowed our story to be published.
Just explain a bit what you mean by that.
You have to file any report that relates to the military,
to the military censorship, and they can allow, disallow.
I suspect there were people in
Israel who wanted the world to know
that they have very, very sophisticated
AI surveillance methods that can collect and kill.
Being here again, I've seen how physical
barriers and high technology divide
this land in a way many human
rights organizations call apartheid.
I've seen how this has allowed Israel
to create world leading surveillance
and arms industries who export their products globally.
(atmospheric music)
We are in Tucson, Arizona, and it is searingly hot.
I can smell the freedom here.
But that much vaunted freedom needs regular enforcement,
especially as we're right on the border with Mexico.
Since 2021, more than 6 million
refugees and migrants have been detained
crossing into the USA overland,
driven by collapsing economies,
violence and climate change.
One thing that's really clear is that what Israel has been doing
for decades in Palestine is very attractive to people
who are trying to secure the US-Mexico border.
So the technology and the companies
who are operating in Palestine
are often appearing in other countries
around the world, including right here
on the US-Mexico border.
(moody guitar playing)
But first,
to understand what it means to cross the border here,
I'm heading into the desert to meet Joel Smith.
He describes the challenges facing the migrants.
The object is to get the kids
to the Tucson area and get out of here,
get out of the desert itself.
So what they have a choice of now
is going across the mountains to avoid border patrol,
they don't like the inaccessible areas
you can't get to without a vehicle.
The US-Mexico crossing is the
deadliest land route for refugees
in the world, with over 600 deaths recorded in 2022.
And the more remote the route, the more dangerous it is.
How's it look?
A little bit dirty.
Usually they come from, places where they
really don't understand, deserts.
Right.
They think there's going to be a stream.
They think there's going to be a creek
somewhere they can get water from.
But there's absolutely nothing here.
Right.
But people aren't dying of starvation out here,
they're dying of thirst.
And what forces people to take these precarious routes,
of course, is the famous wall along the border with Mexico.
In Tucson, Arizona,
illegal traffic dropped 92%.
If you really want to find out how
effective a wall is, just ask Israel.
This section predates President Trump,
but under his first administration,
Israeli firm Elta was paid
half a million dollars to come up with prototypes
for his dream of a coast to coast wall.
What we see here is the physical fence.
We don't see huge amounts of surveillance
technology, but we know it's here.
There are various parts of this
border which use Israeli made Elbit
surveillance towers.
And now we're going to look for those surveillance towers.
I'm going to speak to one of the world's experts about it.
Todd Miller is a journalist who's been studying
the US-Mexico border for over 15 years.
He's taking me to see one of the 55 Israeli Elbit
surveillance towers dotted across this landscape.
They're actually working together.
And that's, that's why they call this the virtual wall.
Right?
These towers are equipped with night vision cameras
that could see at least 7.5 miles away.
Regular cameras, thermal energy
cameras, and a ground sweeping radar system
that supposedly has a, 13 mile radius.
Probably we're standing on an underground motion sensor.
So if you are walking and you step
on one, it sends off a beeping sound
in like the command and control center
where they're watching the video feeds.
Then they're able to zoom in, like, say,
they see somebody walking on the hill...
- Or us. - Or us.
It might be zooming in right...
on us at this, at this very moment.
Exactly.
On one visit here, a Border Patrol
agent boasted to him that just seeing
the towers on the hill forced
migrants to take more remote routes.
And then he said, well, then we go to what is a chokepoint,
and we intercept the people when
they come through the chokepoint.
There's a correlation between people dying
and these towers that work in
tandem with the actual border wall.
(tense music)
I'm with the San Diego Sheriff's Department.
I'm the homeland security
director for the state of Alabama.
American law enforcement
has been turning to Israel for training
and equipment since 9-11.
What is happening this evening is a compelling
chapter in the war on terror.
Tonight's meeting is the culmination
of a week in which top American law
enforcement officials traveled to
Israel to meet their counterparts.
And that relationship has boosted sales of Israel's
so-called homeland security technology.
The Arizona police are among many US forces
using the services of Israeli company Cellebrite.
This allows them to extract all the
data from mobiles in their possession
without a password.
And the border has been patrolled by a Hermes
450 drone, also made by Elbit Systems.
This is the promo
created in the bid for the towers contract.
Phrases like "securing the
world's most challenging borders"
are how the Israeli companies
remind customers that their products
might have been tested in Palestine.
(brooding music)
The tech park at the University of Arizona
was keen to get Israeli companies to locate here
at the time Elbit was awarded the tower contract.
We are going to meet
Bruce Wright, who used to head the Arizona
tech park when he was a big
figure in encouraging Israeli companies
to come and work here and train.
So we're going to meet him in his gated community
(brooding music)
Good to meet you.
Welcome to Tucson.
Elbit is an Israeli
based company, but they created a US subsidiary and they wanted
to demonstrate this technology along the US-Mexico border.
We jumped on that opportunity because
of our knowledge and understanding
of Israel and what was happening with that technology in Israel.
They were in some ways very far ahead of the United States
in trying to use technology to manage
their problems, whether they be,
you know, terrorism or border
crossings or whatever it might be.
(vibrant electronic score)
National border security is often challenged
by difficult topographic conditions
and vast areas of interest.
Since Elbit secured the $200 million Arizona deal,
the fixed towers have made it into
the current Torch-X borders promo.
Elbit systems has the technology,
knowhow and real world
operational experience.
Torch-X is also used by the Israeli
army on the border with Gaza.
and coastal protection solutions.
This is Amy Juan
and the co-op farm in the Tohono O'Odham nation.
It's as far as the eye can see.
So yeah, we're a pretty special farm.
Because their land crosses the US-Mexico border,
they have the surveillance towers across their territory.
It's a loss of privacy, it's a loss of freedom.
And if anything, it's not just them keeping an eye
on movement across the border,
it's them keeping an eye on us.
What Border Patrol presence has done
was basically make everybody suspect.
To go from a people
and a place that have basically been left alone,
for centuries, to being an occupied, militarized community,
it is very traumatizing.
(brooding music)
What's been so clear, being here in Arizona is that
there is not just a direct
connection between what's happening
in Palestine and here on the US-Mexico border
in a physical sense, but also an ideological sense.
The perception in the US in some parts
is that Israel has been successful
in managing, pushing back Palestinians.
And the same thing can be done here to push people, migrants
in more and more extreme ways,
which inevitably leads to more deaths.
Mexico is our next destination, so we're heading
to the border town of Nogales, which is a major crossing point.
We're in the line
to cross from the US to Mexico,
I'm gonna have to turn the camera off.
And you can't take guns either,
just to keep the authorities happy.
(gentle, relaxed music)
Here we are, Mexico City.
So loud!
This incredible country of 130 million people
is renowned for its culture, food and music.
(music continues)
But it's almost as well known
for its ongoing battles with drug cartels.
430,000 people have been killed
since the start of this drug war nearly two decades ago.
(tense music)
This roundabout in the center of Mexico City is dedicated to
some of the estimated 60,000 people who've been disappeared,
often with the collusion of law enforcement.
In 2014, there were 43 students who disappeared.
Ten years on, there's been no justice, no accountability.
It's a huge scandal here.
And remarkably, there's actually a real
deep connection to Israeli spyware.
Eduardo Ibanez has been a regular
at this protest encampment for the last ten years.
Three were killed
and the remaining 43 were taken into custody by local police.
They have not been seen since.
Various investigations have revealed
the involvement of the army,
but failed to locate the bodies of the missing.
(tense music)
Led by the families, the movement for justice
was seen as a threat by successive governments,
and the Israeli spyware Pegasus
was deployed on them.
We're going to see Centro Pro
a legal firm here in Mexico City, who represented
some of the 43 disappeared families,
and to find out how they were Pegasussed,
which appears to be a verb now.
In 2016, things were tense as the lawyers contested
the government's account of what had happened to the missing,
and then their private phone calls were
suddenly all over the national media.
I received messages, of,
phone call that I have had with one of the parents of the 43
that was being published in a big newspaper from, Mexico.
This phone call with one of the parents
was presented in a way that suggested
that we were talking about dirty money,
and the whole, presentation was
signed by a drug cartel and so on.
When that happened, we were shocked.
It was my voice.
It was a private phone call.
You become afraid of what else can
they have of your private life.
Then in 2022, Apple's customer protection system
alerted them that they were the
subject of a state sponsored attack.
Nowadays, you have everything on your phone.
There is nothing that we can do basically to prevent it.
What everybody says is that this technology evolves faster
than what we can do,
you know, in a small NGO in, Mexico City.
At the time of the first attack,
no one knew how this had happened
or who else might be targeted.
Until this man helped identify the spyware.
Hi! - Hi!
But before we could talk,
he wanted to check that my phone wasn't infected.
It will not only compromise you,
but everyone who has contacted you.
So it's, it's surveillance
that goes beyond their main target.
What we're gonna do
is that we are going to see if we can find something.
Pegasus can now get into your phone
without the user needing to click a link.
It takes control of your camera, your microphone,
and broadcasts it to those controlling the software.
They can see your location, access your data
and see what's on your screen,
including encrypted messaging apps.
So it's good. - It's negative.
Yeah.
This phone didn't
show signs of the types of infections
that we check for including Pegasus.
How often do you use these tools to check?
Are we talking daily?
Yeah, almost.
When the lawyer's phones were first compromised in 2016,
Luis started investigating who was behind it.
This is the first contract
to get access to Pegasus, almost $3 million.
And it mentions also the number of targets
because normally the number of licenses
that this particular client acquired,
which were 500, that means that you
can spy 500 phones at the same time.
During this period... 10,000
or even more people were targeted with Pegasus
in Mexico, many of which were journalists,
human rights defenders, activists,
politicians, government officials themselves.
Another sales document, this one from 2022,
revealed the Mexican army was
acting in an unconstitutional way.
The heading of the email and the document,
it's called... (indistinct)
or like "deadly document"... something like that.
That supposed to be funny? - I don't know if it's
supposed to be funny or it's supposed to
like indicate that it's very secret.
The final user of this, director of Military Intelligence Center,
this agency was secret, but it was also illegal.
They don't have any legal
authorization to do surveillance.
Mexico's army is huge.
Almost a state within a state.
And Mexico is the world's biggest user of Pegasus spyware.
It's controlled by the Army
Intelligence Center behind gate four of this massive camp.
It's totally secretive.
There's no way I can actually get in there.
Have a chat, which would be nice.
Love to see the files.
Despite the evidence, the Army still denies they use Pegasus,
and that dynamic gives Israel potential leverage
over Pegasus customers.
(tense music)
They could reveal their clients.
They have allegedly backups
of all the people that have been surveilled.
Definitely, that gives Israel power over
the Mexican position.
For example, the Mexican army has no legal basis
to acquire or deploy a tool like Pegasus.
That definitely plays a role into
how belligerent the Mexican government or how,
outspoken it is on,
issues like the apartheid
or genocide going on in, in Palestine.
After gaining access to Pegasus in 2011, Mexico's
tradition of supporting Palestine
at the United Nations shifted.
And after Netanyahu visited in 2017, Mexico announced
it would abstain on several pro-Palestine resolutions.
The use of Israeli technology
is even more profoundly embedded in the European Union.
(army marching drums)
The EU is the second largest buyer
of Israeli weapons.
(marching band music)
Israeli so-called smart fence technology
is being installed on Europe's
land borders to control migration.
And we're here in Samos, Greece
just two kilometers from Turkey,
to see how Israeli surveillance tech is central to the EU's
vision for border security. We're meeting
Petra Molnar, who is an anthropologist
and a global expert on migration and borders.
Good to see you.
Samos, I think, is a really important
place to try and understand,
because it was one of the first camps
that was constructed to deal with a mass influx of people
who were escaping the Syrian war back in 2015, 2016.
On the hillside, just outside the main town of Vathy,
the old camp was built for 650 people
that was rapidly overwhelmed, with up to 9000.
(brooding music)
It was a bustling
city within a city, almost kind of spilling down the hillside
like a glass of milk into the city of Vathy there.
People had to build their own
ramshackle tents, and there were reports of rape and violence.
I mean, obviously the conditions were horrific,
but it had a bit of like a community feeling to it.
(atmospheric music)
People were surviving.
There was a school.
People would cook and spend time together.
As we kept getting more and more people on the island,
the authorities decided that
something had to be done to this camp.
And therefore they obviously decided they
want to build something more high tech
and bigger.
Yeah, that's right,
with money from the European Union and
Samos was the first camp like this that was constructed.
It's just over the hill there.
And it is very, very different from this one.
In 2021, thousands of refugees were moved
to the new Closed Control Access Center, or CCAC.
Much better living conditions,
but at the same time, increased
security provisions for the benefit
of asylum seekers,
for the benefit of the staff
and for the benefit of the local communities.
This CCAC is up a hill eight kilometers from the town.
What really strikes you first,
like it's a massive block of concrete.
It's sunbaked. It's so hot.
It's just, you know, there's very
little vegetation inside the camp
and also so much surveillance.
When we went in for the official opening,
we were able to go inside the containers
where people are living and there
are cameras in the corridors.
There's also cameras on some of the taller poles.
People have reported drone usage,
and where the data is going
and who it's being shared with is not exactly clear.
So what is it like to live there?
Rouli came from Syria and was
moved from the old camp to the CCAC.
You see the wires, the cameras, the...
security guard, the police, like...
Where am I? I am in Guantanamo now.
Sometimes I was exiting my container to get fresh air.
Like, I cannot be in this box.
You look here like there is a camera.
You look there like there's a camera.
You turn like this, there is a camera.
And then beside that, like everywhere,
there are police officers, security guards.
You're controlled. Your life, it's... under control,
twenty four seven.
You feel like everyone like is staring at you.
Like as you are, like...
Like... the most dangerous person in the world.
(tense music)
I want to know what all this surveillance is for.
So I'm meeting an NGO that provides
legal support to asylum seekers.
When people are registered and the Closed Control
Access Center, they're required to
give their fingerprints multiple times.
And part of this is for the asylum procedure.
It's for the Eurodac system
that's an EU wide database of fingerprints of asylum seekers.
But it's also for Hyperion, this biometric
AI technology that the CCAC has in place,
that's 100% funded by the EU.
So they have a biometric card, and when they leave the facility
and when they come back in, they have to scan the card
and scan their fingerprint to be able to enter and exit.
When you look at the Ministry of Migration's website,
you can see that they report that
there's, behavioral or motion
recognition analytics that is being
used in the Centaur system.
To our understanding, there's CCTV cameras and drones,
which are then, live streamed to a control center in Athens.
This is known as Centaur and controls the Samos CCAC.
and four other similar camps.
At the heart of it is a system supplied by Octopus,
an Israeli firm whose customers include the Israeli military.
Octopus allows simple
management of entire security events from one screen.
And on Samos, we discovered that the behavioral analytics is done
by Israeli company Viisights,
which is supported by the Israeli
army and intelligence services.
It goes to these policies of
exclusion and technologies of control.
I mean, I was in the occupied West Bank last year
and some of the infrastructure that
you see there is replicated here.
I mean, it is the kind of same
thinking that technology can be used
to manage people
and control people and keep people away
that you don't want on your territory.
Key to Europe's efforts to keep people away
are the Heron drones Israel uses to surveil Gaza.
In 2020, Israel Aerospace Industries
signed a $50 million deal to provide the drones
to the EU's border force Frontex.
Introducing
Heron Maritime UAS with a multi-sensor payload
tailored to the mission and with 24 hours of endurance.
Known as a fixed wing drone, the Heron has a range of up
to 1000km from its base in Malta.
Unlike a ship on the sea, a drone has no obligation
to rescue vessels in distress.
Instead, Frontex passes the location of
migrant boats to the Libyan Coast Guard.
The boat capsized during the interception.
The EU pays Libya to intercept migrants.
In just the first ten months of 2024,
over 18,000 people were stopped from
reaching Europe.
There's people in the water now. - Yeah.
A lot, a lot of people in the water.
All of them.
At least 28,000
people have died in the
Mediterranean in the last decade.
The Greek government and the EU deny that they do pushbacks.
What do you think their logic is in doing so?
They want to make the passage into the EU
as difficult and as violent as possible,
so that other people are dissuaded from coming,
because the more technology
you have, the more, the bigger your surveillance dragnet is.
And people also know that.
And so they will take riskier routes
to try and avoid that surveillance.
In 2019, the Greek Coast Guard signed
a deal with Israeli company Elbit
for a full combat suite, enabling patrol boats to control
fleets of drones and conduct surveillance
far beyond the line of sight.
The army acquired an Israeli made Heron drone for border
duty in 2020, and the Coast Guard has had one since 2022.
(gunshots)
This footage shows the Coast Guard illegally
pushing a boat out of Greek waters
and into Turkish waters, known as a push back.
It's something Rouli experienced multiple
times during his attempts to reach Greece.
They were like, hitting us with the iron, metal.
And they were like, destroying the motor
and asked us, like to throw the oil,
(indistinct)
to not be able to cross after when they... leave.
We've made contact with someone who works
at this high tech camp, and he doesn't want to be identified.
So we have to go out of town to interview him.
And we're on the way there now.
The whistleblower says that in 2020, Greece
adopted a policy to push back 100% of the boats.
So they started pushing every boat back...
- To Turkish waters. - To Turkish waters.
He says after 2020, almost no one arrived at the camp.
After March 2020,
the numbers to Samos were ridiculous,
I think it was like 25 people in total.
But you cannot have zero arrivals for the whole year.
They proved that they can control 100% of the arrivals.
That changed in June 2023, when
the Greek coastguard tried to tow
a refugee boat, the Adrianna, but instead
capsized it, killing nearly 600 people.
Suddenly, Greece's border
practices were under the spotlight.
They changed their policy.
They stopped doing pushbacks.
He says that for Samos, the pause
resulted in more people in the camp.
And that's why from 300 people, 400 people that were there,
within two maximum three months, we had 4000 people in the camp.
The reason behind that is because
they stopped doing pushbacks.
We've looked at the official data for
arrivals and the numbers in the camp,
and they broadly support what he's saying.
Makes sense that Greece and Israel are very close.
They've never been closer, defense deals.
But it's more than that. Both countries sell themselves
as a model
to how to keep unwanted populations out.
(lively music)
We just arrived in Delhi
in India and it is predictably overwhelming.
And we know already that
India buys more arms off Israel than anyone else.
But actually we've come to discover,
is the relationship more than that?
As India overtakes China as the world's most populous country,
the government is keen to increase
its high technology manufacturing,
and this has led to deep ties with Israel.
We're on our way to meet some farmers in Punjab state,
not that far from Delhi.
And the reason we want to do this
is that we've discovered that they
have been attacked early this year
by drones, and there's a connection
with how Israel treats Palestinians.
So we want to go and speak to them, understand what happened.
This was the response of the authorities to Sikh farmers
peacefully protesting at the removal
of price protections for their crops.
Six months later, they're still
camped out on the motorway in protest.
Pushpinder Singh remembers how the police used a tactic new
to India: dropping tear gas from drones.
This is one of the farmers' leaders.
He shows me the empty canisters, some of
which they said had come from the drone.
Interrupted by the monsoon,
we go to their makeshift headquarters.
That's the drone.
Dropping tear gas?
The police drones were supplied by Driishya,
a company owned by the state of Haryana.
To find out more
we met the former chief operating officer of Driishya,
also a former wing commander in the Indian Air Force.
In 2018, Haryana sent a delegation
to Israel, politicians and police.
Why did they go there and what were
they hoping to learn from a country
that describes itself as a leader in homeland security?
Haryana's chief minister led
the delegation, which visited Israel Aerospace Industries,
where they were briefed about
innovations in aerospace and defense.
At the time of the Indian visit,
Palestinians were peacefully protesting on the Gaza border.
It was here the Israeli army pioneered
the practice of using drones to drop tear gas on protesters.
The Israeli army
also shot and injured over 36,000 people
and killed 200.
At the Indian farmers protest,
the Driishya drones were initially being used
for surveillance of the farmers,
says the wing commander.
This is far from the only exchange of ideas and weapons
between India and Israel.
I promise to defend you.
In this Bollywood style song
Israel sings his allegiance to India.
Shield you and support you.
While dancing around the products of
Israeli missile manufacturer Rafael.
I believe in you.
To find out how this relationship came about
I'm meeting defense expert Rahul Bedi.
Hi! - Hi! Lovely to meet you.
How are you? - He says things changed
when India's previous main weapons supplier,
the Soviet Union, collapsed in 1991.
Israel sensed an opportunity.
India was a very ready and a very hungry customer.
India is currently the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons,
buying nearly 50% of total exports.
But it's more than a customer.
Under the Make In India policy,
the Adani Group and Israeli company
Elbit are making a version of the
Hermes 900 drone in Hyderabad.
Israel Aerospace Industries has set up
a joint venture with Bharat Electronics
to maintain the IAI design medium range surface to air
missiles used across India's armed forces.
And India has made its space
launch capacity available to Israel.
With surveillance satellites
to surveil their borders
in Gaza and in the Northern Territories.
They launched another satellite soon after.
It was called RISAT, R, I, S, A, T,
with the X-ray radar supplied by IAI,
Israel Aircraft Industries, which helps India
monitor its line of control with Pakistan.
(crowd noise)
After October 7th, there was a huge increase in pro-Israel
social media posts by right wing Hindu groups like this.
This street level support enables
more establishment Hindu nationalists
to go even further, especially around
India's disputed territory of Kashmir.
This is a dawn of a new era
in the great friendship between India and Israel.
I think it heralds a flourishing of our partnership
to bring prosperity and peace for both our peoples.
At the offices of the independent news site
The Wire, I'm meeting its founding editor.
How would you describe the shared values and relationship
between Modi, Netanyahu, Israel and India?
The official definition of Israel now is as a...
homeland for Jews
and Jews are the only authentic Israelis.
Israel is a Jewish state.
Their counterparts in India envision India as a Hindu state,
as a Hindu Russia, where Hindus are the only authentic...
Indians.
So I think that's very important glue that binds the,
the two governments at this stage.
After independence in 1948,
India saw itself as a post-colonial leader
and was one of the first to recognize Palestine.
But that's been shifting since India has
been a large customer of Israeli weapons.
And in 2024, India abstained
on the motion to end the occupation in Palestine.
It's really quite appalling the way
in which the current Indian government
has reversed India's long standing
support for the people of Palestine,
going back to before India was an independent country.
(bright music)
Far from criticizing Israel for its war on Gaza,
India's booming defense industry is now exporting explosives,
missiles and drones to Israel.
So when we came here,
we knew that India buys more arms from
Israel than anyone else in the world.
But actually what we've discovered being here,
is it really there's a cultural
affinity between India and Israel,
which is kind of about racial supremacy.
Both nations admire each other's racism.
But before India,
Israel had an even murkier brush with racial supremacy.
I've come to South Africa
to see to what extent Israel helped support
the apartheid regime here.
So we're in Cape Town, South Africa,
and first, we're at the
richest, poshest part of the city
to see this incredible wealth.
It's no accident that Seapoint remains
one of the wealthiest areas in South Africa.
Under apartheid, only white people were able to live here.
(gentle music)
Instituted in 1948,
the apartheid policy was a form of
racial discrimination that saw whites,
coloreds and blacks living under
different legal and economic systems.
Non-white people were forcibly moved
from the city and put into townships
where many still live today.
So just on the way to a township on the outskirts of Cape Town
where we're going to see the
reality of what apartheid was like.
And we're going to meet up with a woman
called Henriette, who was campaigning
against it for years.
There are townships on either side of this
highway established during apartheid,
to provide labor for the factories
a bit further down.
(gentle music)
This is the outskirts of Langa,
the black township.
Even now, it's dominated
by informal settlements built by people
who can't find any other housing.
It's just so shocking and enraging.
On the other side of the highway
is Bonteheuwel, a township established for colored people,
which included those who were mixed race,
indigenous and of Asian heritage,
where I'm meeting Henriette.
Hello. - Hello.
(dog barking)
Wow, what a beautiful garden.
(gentle music)
I was born in the apartheid system, so for me it was normal.
Nie blankes... whites only, Europeans only.
It was ingrained in you
that this is not for you.
These are for white people.
And something like a train
you could see the different standards.
We would sit on hard wooden
benches in the train, and they would have cushy,
seats.
How was apartheid enforced exactly?
The police and the army during the 80s, they felt
that they had to be present like
they were stationed at our schools.
It was nothing for them to march up and down our corridors.
Or if they weren't stationed there, they
were doing the rounds on our streets.
So, they were everywhere.
(brooding music)
Apartheid was resisted from the beginning,
but by the 1980s,
the African National Congress
and other groups were organizing mass protests.
(crowd noise)
Henriette was one of the activists.
(atmospheric music)
This is what's called Freedom Square.
Yeah.
We would sit, waiting on news, waiting on who's been arrested,
waiting on what is the next plan.
We had a running battle here with the police, for instance,
and the police would come there.
We would throw stones about whatever.
Then I would quickly run.
I would go and grab a grandchild in a pram
and come back and watch the police
as if I did nothing.
Or pretend that you were the mother.
Yes. Yes. - Right.
Whatever you need to do, right? - Yes.
Despite these efforts, Henriette was arrested
14 times by the police,
who routinely beat political organizers.
I had comrades of mine who were tied to beds.
They would put things up their rectums.
Males whose genitals
were banged into filing drawers.
(brooding music)
Women being taken by the hair
thrown from one wall to the other, to the other.
(crowd noise)
Internationally, there was a growing movement of boycott,
divestment and sanctions against apartheid.
By the 1980s
South Africa was economically and culturally isolated.
Only a few countries, including the UK
and US, offered the regime any support.
To add to those economic sanctions
wouldn't help negotiations.
It would only make things worse.
But South Africa had another secure partner
throughout this period of isolation.
Israel.
(crowd noise)
I'm meeting an investigator of economic crimes
and human rights violations.
We got a range of of documents here
that come from different archives
that tell different parts of the story, I suppose,
of the South African Israel relationship,
kind of at the height of apartheid.
This is from 1976.
They really need stuff quite desperately.
So they've purchased, six, 130 millimeter
ammunition systems from Israel for 2.7 million rand.
Israel in general was a huge supplier
of ammunition to the apartheid state.
An additional option has been obtained for the purchase
of 14,000 white phosphorus shells.
From the mid 1970s
South Africa was at war,
trying to topple the left wing government
of the newly independent Angola.
In 1976,
South African Prime Minister John Vorster visited Israel amid
speculation the countries were working on an arms deal.
If you look at the amount of weapons being bought, around
1 billion USD from the 70s into the 80s by the apartheid state,
that's an incredible
inflow of money into the Israeli economy just when they need it.
And so just from a demand perspective,
it's an important relationship.
But then of course, there's the
secondary benefit to both states,
which is the kind of co-creation of weapons technology.
So there's a flow of funds happening,
but there's also a flow of expertise
that the apartheid state
is able to use Israeli tech to build their weapons technology.
Israel also supplied equipment
used to repress the anti-apartheid
movement, including water cannons
made by an Israeli kibbutz.
But the relationship went deeper than just weapons.
This is from Milan to the Chief of General Staff
for the Israeli Defense Force
and I think this is the telling line.
"It is comforting to know that
South Africa does not stand alone
in facing criticism from the international community.
Our respective countries will have to withstand this
in all its many manifestations.
And we keep up our determination."
And this is an example.
But you see in other places
the South Africans and the Israeli
officials writing to each other with
that kind of mutual understanding
of we're under siege, we're under attack,
no one understands us.
But you do.
These two countries also
work together on the development of their nuclear weapons.
South Africa supplied Israel with uranium in the 1960s,
and they exchange technology.
Towards the mid to the late 1980s,
when South Africa have essentially developed,
nuclear weapons capacity,
we know that there are high level
discussions between the Israelis
and the South Africans about
missile technology and developing
kind of mid to long range missiles
that could carry a nuclear load.
South Africa gave up its nuclear
weapons along with apartheid in the 1990s.
But by then the army and security services
were dependent on Israeli security tech
and have remained so in many sectors,
including with water cannons.
It's perhaps not a surprise then
that it's a post apartheid government
that's mounting the most serious
challenge to Israel's war in Gaza.
In keeping with our obligation as a
state party to the Genocide Convention,
our government has approached
the International Court of Justice to
prevent the unfolding genocide in Gaza.
What we've uncovered
and detailed is the huge and close links between
Israel and apartheid South Africa for decades.
And I think it tells us a lot about how Israel was willing
to use its technology not only to survive,
but to support other regimes
that agree with its vision of racial supremacy.
(crowd noise)
I've come back to Israel
to try to understand where this idea comes from.
This is one of the regular protests
calling on the government to
bring the hostages home from Gaza.
So hundreds of thousands of people that way,
hundreds of thousands people that way,
a sea of Israeli flags.
And there's a stage over there where some family
members of hostages are speaking and demanding
the government makes a deal with Hamas to free the hostages.
I want to hear how people are thinking about the war on Gaza.
At the beginning, I was like, I don't care from the other side.
- Yeah. - They brought it on themselves.
Yes.
But now, when we know...
when we understand, we want the killing to stop.
And your solution to that is to, is it to end the war
or is it to make a deal? - To end the war?
To make a deal, to end the war.
Bring all of them back home.
Save lives...
of... of them,
of our soldiers... the people on the other side.
You mean Palestinians?
They also have innocent people.
A lot of people in Israel, even on the left, centre left,
actually don't give a damn about Palestinian life in Gaza,
in the West Bank.
And this is... actually this is part of the problem
because people here are fighting for democracy,
but actually they're fighting for democracy for the Jew,
for the Israeli,
not even for the Palestinians who live in Israel.
To find out why this is,
I'm meeting outspoken journalist Gideon Levy.
He puts it down to what he calls the Israeli mindset.
Most of the Israelis, including the secular ones,
if you scratch under the skin, you will see
they truly believe that we are the chosen people.
And being the chosen people means that we have privileges.
It means that nobody can tell us what to do.
And it's becoming clear that Israel
sees what happened on October the 7th
as justification not only to
destroy Gaza, but to resettle it.
The only way to prevent that from happening again
is to return the entire strip to Jewish sovereignty,
to be an integral part of the land
which it was always meant to be.
Right.
That's the only real way to bring peace.
No one's really sanctioning Israel
for arms or really anything.
How does it get away with it?
Israel developed a very sophisticated strategy,
namely, any criticism about Israel is anti-semitism.
I don't think there is one state in the world
who has the same freedom to do whatever it wants
without legal limits,
without moral limits, without any international limits.
I don't think there is one state in
the world that not only ignores endless
resolutions of the international community,
but is also the darling of the West.
On this global journey
one of the things that really struck me is how ubiquitous
Israeli surveillance tech is, border tech,
but not just equipment actually, its ideology.
Because in some ways, what...
I'm investigating is not just the Israeli arms industry,
which is huge and growing,
it's also an idea, this idea that Israel is selling a model,
a way to... separate
and control unwanted populations;
minorities, so it's Muslims or others.
So much of the world increasingly
is dealing with the climate crisis,
growing numbers of refugees, well over 100 million.
And as much of the world moves to the right and the far right,
they see this country where I am now, as that model.
And in fact, despite what Israel's doing
right here in Gaza,
they see that in fact, as a reason
to copy Israel even more,
because Israel is already selling and
promoting and marketing the repressive tech
and weapons that they're using
in the mass slaughter in Gaza behind me.
(tense music)