In this thought-provoking episode of Expert Talk by Witness Eye, we speak with Jeff Halper, an Israeli anthropologist, political activist, and co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.Halper offers a rare inside look at how Zionism functions as a settler colonial system, explaining how home demolitions are not just isolated events, but the visible expression of a much larger plan to displace and replace the Palestinian population. Drawing from decades of on-the-ground activism and anthropological insight, he breaks down how Israel built a global model of repression that is now exported worldwide—from AI-based surveillance to urban militarization.Jeff also discusses the Gaza Tribunal, the failure of Israel’s academic community to speak out, and the urgent need for a single democratic state across historic Palestine.
At one point in the interview, Jeff Halper quotes Anthony Loewenstein's book The Palestine Laboratory:
Israel's military industrial complex uses the occupied, Palestinian territories as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology that they then export around the world to despots and democracies. For more than 50 years, occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has given the Israeli state invaluable experience in controlling an "enemy" population, the Palestinians. It's here that they have perfected the architecture of control.
Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein, author of Disaster Capitalism, uncovers this largely hidden world in a global investigation with secret documents, revealing interviews and on-the-ground reporting. This book shows in-depth, for the first time, how Palestine has become the perfect laboratory for the Israeli military-techno complex: surveillance, home demolitions, indefinite incarceration and brutality to the hi-tech tools that drive the 'Start-up Nation'. From the Pegasus software that hacked Jeff Bezos' and Jamal Khashoggi's phones, the weapons sold to the Myanmar army that has murdered thousands of Rohingyas and drones used by the European Union to monitor refugees in the Mediterranean who are left to drown. Israel has become a global leader in spying technology and defence hardware that fuels the globe's most brutal conflicts. As ethno-nationalism grows in the 21st century, Israel has built the ultimate model.
The Palestine Laboratory
Unlike apartheid, which in Afrikaans means ‘separation’ whose origins can be traced back to segregation in the southern United States, which was abolished by three main (visible) factors: international pressure, the reformist will of certain white people, and, of course, the resistance of black people, embodied by Nelson Mandela. Some would say that it was the will of the government in power to continue to maintain its grip on power.
In Palestine, there are no local treaties, no laws, no international law, no UN... just the Israeli mower cutting the Palestinian weeds, over and over again.
According to J. Halper, drawing a parallel with South Africa, there cannot be a Nelson Mandela in this Palestinian laboratory; he would have died and his body disappeared before reaching adulthood...or worse, he would lead the resistance for the benefit of his Zionist programmers.
In the following two videos, J. Halper explains the dangers of normalising Trump's plan.
The huge lack of coordination between the parties involved, and the disconnect between what is happening on the ground and the various demands concerning the Palestinian cause.
Not to mention the lack of leadership on the Palestinian side.
I would add that I don't know if there will ever be “truth and reconciliation” à la Desmond Tutu between Palestinians and Jews.
Because I don't see today's Israel integrating or assimilating any race, let alone the Palestinians, to form a united people rich in diversity with the same goal of living and sharing together.
So what remains for the Palestinians, the Jews, and the rest of us?
