"Young Israeli computer scientists and engineers gain their training in the military, and then go on to start the kind of technology companies that have proliferated wildly in Israel and whose products are much sought after abroad. The entire Israeli hi-tech sector and not just military technology per se, is thus an outgrowth of Israel's hyper militarization. The Israeli economy's tech sector grew by 20% in 2006 alone, and Israel is now the foreign country with the second most US stock exchange-listed companies. Klein's point that Israel's military-derived technologies are an economic growth-driver because they can be tested in situ is correct, but it is insufficient for describing the magnitude of the military's tremendous penetration of the country's economy. Palestinians under occupation can indeed be seen as human "guinea pigs" and not just merely military targets, as Klein claims, but the society's militarization is far more profound than even she suggests." http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=860&Itemid=198
"After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Israel's economy was devastated, but then came 9/11, and "suddenly new profit vistas opened up for any company that claimed it could spot terrorists in crowds, seal borders from attack and extract confessions from closed-mouthed prisoners...Many of the country's most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel's status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of twenty-four-hour-a-day showroom--a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war...Israel now sends $1.2 billion in "defense" products to the United States-up dramatically from $270 million in 1999...That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world...Much of this growth has been in the so-called "homeland security" sector.
"Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector will reach $1.2 billion--an increase of 20 percent. The key products and services are ...precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock in the occupied territories. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the "global war on terror.
-
-
"Israel's
policy of erecting walls and checkpoints to seal off the occupied territories
are also "laboratories where the terrifying tools of our security states
are being field-tested Palestinians--whether living in the West Bank or what
the Israeli politicians are already calling "Hamasistan"--are no
longer just targets. They are guinea pigs." [Ibid]
Iraqis Slaughtered since the U.S. invaded
Iraq:
1,331,578
www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html
U.S. Military Personnel officially acknowledged dead in America's War
on Iraq: 4,326 www.icasualties.org/oif
The War on Iraq has
spent $665,578,410,207 USA tax
dollars so far.
See the cost in your community:
www.nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=18
Eileen Fleming, A Feature Correspondent for The Palestine Telegraph and Arabisto
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"-
Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"
