SuperHumanizer Podcast

The Palestine Laboratory: War Tech Tested On Humans

• Dr. Hani Chaabo, Antony Loewenstein • Season 1 • Episode 8

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Join Antony Loewenstein, renowned journalist and author of several best sellers including, "The Palestine Laboratory", as he delves into his journey of unlearning Zionism and exposing the Israeli industrial military complex. This episode reveals startling insights from Lowenstein's in-depth research, uncovering the global impact of Israeli arms dealing and the marketing of advanced military technology "battle tested" on humans, including repressive mass surveillance and AI-powered warfare. This episode also explores sentiments in the Jewish disapora, geopolitics, human rights and the future of conflict resolution.

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Hani: Welcome to Superhumanizer podcast, where we promote empathy and understanding in polarizing viewpoints through stories told by people living them. Hello everyone. I have a very special guest with me today on Superhumanizer, Anthony Lowenstein. Anthony is a Jewish German Australian journalist, filmmaker, and author of several thought provoking bestselling books, including the Palestine Laboratory, which investigates the Israeli industrial military complex, and also won the Australian Pulitzer, the Wackley Book Award.

Hani: Anthony is a profound humanitarian. He won the 2019 Jerusalem Peace Prize, one of Australia's leading peace awards for his work on Israel and Palestine and spent four years living in Jerusalem from his own journey of unlearning Zionism to standing up to repression and intimidation at the level of governments.

Hani: Anthony, you're not just a super humanizer, you're a mega humanizer. Thank you so much for being here. 

Antony: Thank you so much for having me. Very kind introduction. 

Hani: Thank you. I'm so excited to learn much from you today, but before we begin I'm going to play a game with you called what brings you joy. Is that okay?

Antony: Let's do it. 

Hani: Anthony, my friend, what brings you joy? 

Antony: Playing table tennis. Nice. How often do you do that? Not as much as I should. I used to play a lot and then over the last years with life, young family, Palestine, Gaza, it's been hard to find that time, but I recently, probably on the urging of my partner to get back into it more regularly.

Antony: So yeah, it's something I did it recently for two hours, not that long. But for those two hours, I did not think about work at all, which is very rare for me. When I say the moment is principally about what's happening in Gaza. So that was a relief. 

Hani: Yeah. I'm glad you have your stress reduction practices to care for yourself so you can keep going into the world.

Antony: Thank 

Hani: you for that. Thank you. What brings you joy? 

Antony: I used to be a film buff years ago. I used to watch literally a film every day, which of course, In my life now is impossible because of life, work, family, kids. But I'm trying to also get back into that to do that more regularly. My partner often jokes that when she goes out for a dinner or whatever with friends, she goes, you're going to watch a depressing film, aren't you?

Antony: Like it's said as a joke, but actually it's true. A documentary about war or something, which makes me sound like not a very fun person, but I think I am, but yes, I often watch quite grim material, which is not always ideal, but yes, watching more films that are just for fun.

Antony: Could be just even trashy films that are entertaining. 

Hani: Nice. A wide variety from a reality check to getting lost in a story. Beautiful. How old are your kids? 

Antony: Nearly four and six and a half. So young, not babies, but young. 

Hani: Yes. Still tiny. You have to be on all the 

Antony: time. 

Hani: No, I have two cats.

Antony: It's a lot of work. 

Hani: Yeah. My husband is my child sometimes 

Antony: go, we're not quite as difficult. Okay. Wow. Okay. That sounds like you should be in 

Hani: therapy about that. Yeah. No, I'm just 

Antony: kidding. Maybe you 

Hani: are. Yeah. I'm always in therapy. I'm a mental health specialist. I was going to say, that's your vibe. It's part of my job.

Antony: Yeah. 

Hani: Okay. One last one. What brings you joy? 

Antony: To have good friends to talk about issues sometimes it might be about work, but, just to be able to share things with them that could be a stress buster or whatever, or, yeah, so I guess good friends. And that can sometimes be something that many of us don't spend enough time working on that because friends just don't stay around forever because you hope they do.

Antony: It's obvious to say that, right? 

Hani: That's wonderful. Community is so important. I feel like, especially in this moment, it's definitely been my saving grace. Thank you for that. Tell 

Antony: me, yeah, so what brings you joy? 

Hani: You, Anthony, you bring me joy and accepting to come on Superhumanizer. It's just such an honor and a gift to have somebody of your dedication to humanity come on and share because this is what this podcast is about.

Hani: I know that everybody listening to you is just going to walk out a little bit more profound and more aware. So thank you so much for coming on. You brought me joy. Nshalla. Nshalla. What else? So it's turning to spring right now in the desert and I have some beautiful trees in my yard and one of them in particular makes these really beautiful white flowers and it just, it takes away.

Hani: It's an illusion as if we're not in the desert. So that tree really brings me joy. 

Antony: A tree that you look after or your husband? 

Hani: My husband. 

Antony: Got it. 

Hani: You got that. You got that. 

Antony: So you enjoy his handiwork essentially. 

Hani: Yes. Yes. His handiwork brings me joy for sure. All these plants behind me are all planted by my husband.

Hani: We have literally trees in our living room. He's just obsessed. He calls himself the plant daddy. And I really benefit from that. That brings me a lot of joy. It's nice. 

Antony: It looks great. 

Hani: It works. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for playing that game with me. I really enjoy getting to know people through their joys.

Hani: So let's begin. Tell us about 

Antony: where you're from and your background. So I was born in Melbourne, Australia, and in the 74. And so this year is a big one. I'm 50, apparently later in the year. I'm an only child and I grew up in a pretty liberal Jewish home. And what that meant was Israel wasn't the center of our lives, but Israel was something that was there.

Antony: It was in the background. It was seen as something that we should support, which is pretty common in many Jewish families. I'd say then, and really still now, most of my family had never been to Israel. It's not like they were spending their summers there or learning to love Israel. But the argument was always given to me that God forbid something happens to us.

Antony: Jews, again, like the Holocaust. It's somewhere that we can go as a safe place. Most of my family were killed in the Holocaust. And Melbourne had, and still has strangely enough, one of the highest proportion of Holocaust survivors in the world, interestingly enough. So that I think has really contributed to a pretty conservative Jewish community, very pro Israel.

Antony: And I would say pro Israel is always the wrong word. We use that word, but actually it's. Pro occupation. I went to a non Jewish school. I had a bar mitzvah at 13, like many Jewish kids. And as I grew up in my teenage years, I started noticing a real antipathy towards Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims in my community.

Antony: And obviously back then, showing my age, there wasn't really the internet. So it was more what I was hearing at Shabbat dinners or whatever. And it was just, it seemed this sense that maybe that week there'd been a suicide attack somewhere in Israel. Who knows? Something had happened. There was a belief that yeah, Palestinians are wanting to kill us.

Antony: And I was wrinkly told that. Palestinians and Arafat, who was then the leader of Palestinians, they were the new Nazis. I heard that all the time. And of course, what do you do with Nazis? You fear them. You hate them. You have to attack them, right? Exactly. And I think that dehumanization, which I think is central to how so many Jews still see Palestinians today.

Antony: It starts early on in the home, in the synagogue, in your communities, not all Jews. Obviously there are some Jews who are not like that. And I'd say increasing numbers of young Jews, in fact, reject that. 

Hani: Thankfully. 

Antony: Thankfully. But yes, in general, it's a pretty common belief. It's very much framed as us or them.

Antony: It's us or them. It's Jews or Arabs. And frankly, after what we've been through, it needs to be us. This is really how it goes. So yeah, I went to university in Melbourne. I studied arts. I did history and film. I never studied what I'm doing now. I never studied journalism. Wow. I was obsessed with, some listeners will know Terence Mallick, who's an American filmmaker who made a lot of films, but one of his most famous films is called Days in Heaven, which came out in 1978 with which a year.

Antony: It's an extraordinary film, and I spent my honors year literally studying that film. It sounds like ridiculous. Really? Wow. But if people haven't seen it, it's worth seeing. It's an extraordinary piece of work. But I think I wanted to be a writer. I edited the student newspaper. I didn't really know what else to do.

Antony: I wasn't qualified for anything. I moved to the UK and a lot of Australians moved to London because it's easy for us to get a work visa there. It's a sort of weird colonial. Relationship that we still have with seriously, it's quite odd. England is a fascinating place. Politically it's pretty horrible these days, but England and London, some people know London is a great city.

Antony: It really is a great city. By 2003, I started being a journalist professionally. I moved to Sydney and I've been living overseas for a lot over the years, which we can get to, but yeah, I've been a journalist for over 20 years now. I've got that sort of haggard, never iron my shirt vibe.

Hani: In true Australian fashion. 

Antony: I was talking to someone a few days ago, it's this sort of unofficial journalist look, which not that I think about this consciously, it's saying like, it's crumpled shirt look. I just haven't ironed in like 10, 15 years. It doesn't matter because this is how we roll.

Hani: That's how you roll. You're going to dangerous spaces. So why iron your shirt?

Antony: Why Iron your shirt? 

Hani: Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing that. When did you start to exit these ideas? These very Zionist ideas. How did you start coming out of that? 

Antony: I think probably in a way, when I was a teenager, I wouldn't have, if you'd asked me then I wouldn't have said that, but what I sensed really early on when I was growing up was this real irrational hatred, dehumanization, dislike of Palestinians.

Antony: Most of whom, people who were saying it, had never met a Palestinian. I'd never met a Palestinian. It sounds pretty crazy now, maybe in a way, but I think many young Jews even today do not meet Palestinians. Now, obviously you can meet a Palestinian and still hate them. Of course, that's possible.

Antony: But as we know, meeting people who are different to you generally helps you regard them with less suspicion. Doesn't always work that way, right? As you'd know, but often it does. So if you have this image and you're told they're a threat, they're a threat, they're a threat, they're a threat to us, which in a way was weird because if you're a Jew in Melbourne, a Palestinian is not a threat to you.

Antony: They're just not. Now, obviously one can argue about if they're a threat in Israel, I would argue not, but you can have that conversation and argument, but if you're in Melbourne or New York or London. They're just not. a threat to you, and yet we're told that they are a threat. I was told that a lot. So I suppose I started questioning and unlearning that and I used to hear all this racism at my synagogue.

Antony: I don't really go to synagogue anymore. I think there is a real unwillingness in many parts of the West to talk about racism within the Jewish community. We talk about racism within the wider community, Christian community, Muslim, and yes, there's obviously racism. Some Muslims are racist.

Antony: Some Christians, of course they are, but this is weird. I think a lot of people in the media feel uncomfortable talking about racism led by Jews, because they say Jews themselves went through cataclysmic events, which was the epitome of vile racism, the Holocaust, and therefore how can Jews be truly racist?

Antony: Now, what I'm saying is that the occupation and Israeli policies and many in the Jewish diaspora that support that, racism is central to it because you can only really justify or explain or defend bad, horrendous things. Policies, if you don't see Palestinians as equal because they deserve equal rights, they're a threat to us, right?

Antony: So we need to put them in essentially cages, either literally or figuratively. So I guess I started on learning that when I was a teenager, got to University. Started reading Edward Said and Noam Chomsky all the favorites. Actually ended up spending time with Chomsky in the last 20 years.

Antony: Remarkably lovely. Sadly, Saeed died in 2003, I think, so I didn't get a chance to meet him, but yeah, so I started reading these people again, this is before the internet, which I think has radically changed this whole conversation. So I guess I started in my teenage years, feeling a real discomfort with hearing awful, what seemed to me, irrational racism against Arabs and Palestinians and Muslims.

Antony: Although 9 11 had nothing to do with Israel Palestine directly, you could argue indirectly Bin Laden talked about the Arab world and America's support for Israel As a so called justification for the attacks, which obviously were outrageous and disgusting, but directly it was not about, it was not about Palestine.

Antony: But I think for many in the Jewish community in Australia, the U S and elsewhere, it gave them permission to be deeply Islamophobic. I mean, I saw that extensively. In the Jewish community after 9 11 they're a threat to us. Look, they're putting planes into buildings. These people are crazy.

Antony: And of course there are some crazy Muslims. Yeah, of course. Of course, crazy Jews. There are crazy extremists everywhere. Of course, everywhere. Of course. But it's, but as the media doesn't talk that much about extremist Jews. Yes. They sell us a few bad apples in the West Bank who are crazy settlers.

Antony: And what I'm saying to people now is, Israeli society and Jewish diaspora society has been radicalized in the last, you could argue 80 years, but especially in the last 20, 30, to allow and support and fund and back and arm what is essentially a garrison ghetto. And there's something, and again, I wouldn't have had the language when I was 15, but there's something deeply ironic about the reason Zionism came into play was early Zionists said we can never be safe in Europe as Jews.

Antony: There's always people who hate us, and there's some truth to that. There's no doubt that there's, they were not wrong about that, but their argument was, therefore we need to build our own stage as it turned down on the backs of Palestinians to make us safe, apparently. And what I'm saying now is Israel is now building itself a ghetto within the Middle East for a people who are escaping the ghetto after hundreds of years of oppression is something deeply ironic.

Antony: And 

Antony: disturbing about a state that was born out of trying to escape a ghetto. 

Hani: Yes. 

Antony: Obviously Zionism began before the Holocaust and Jews were put into ghettos for centuries, culminating in the Holocaust, the Warsaw ghetto and many other ghettos. 80 years on and essentially Israel is building literally walls.

Antony: It's literally walling itself in on all sides. 

Hani: So that's why you call it a ghetto because it's walled in. 

Antony: Oh ghetto can be obviously ghetto of the mind, right? It doesn't have to be literal walls, but Israel is literally, has literal walls around itself. It's not bringing it safety or security.

Antony: I would argue that Israel has never been more unsafe. And I say that based on some actions. This was before October 7. Actions that Israel has taken in response to October 7, the five months of just insane bombardment, killing and massacres has made Jews and Israel a thousand times more unsafe.

Antony: But see, you and I say, of course, but that rhetoric is not heard in the Jewish community and it's not really 

Antony: heard in Israel. It's just not. 

Hani: It's more of the rhetoric that you talked about, the conditioning of fear mentality, us versus them. It's actually fueling that. And unfortunately in the Jewish communities, and it's really sad that the conditioning has been going on since the Holocaust.

Hani: And it almost feels like it's getting even more extreme. Israeli society is getting more radicalized. Especially after October 7. 

Antony: Definitely after October 7. Something I've said for a while, and sadly I've seen it manifest itself a lot in the last five months, is the more extreme Israel becomes, the more extreme its supporters in the diaspora must become as well.

Antony: So you need to keep pace. Obviously there are growing numbers of Jews who are speaking out Jewish voice for peace, younger Jews. Yes. And that gives me some hope. So I'm not denying that there aren't growing numbers of Jews who are joining me. But the sad reality is that a size or proportion of Jews are driving with Israel off a cliff.

Antony: That is the reality. And the more extreme they become, those Jews and non Jews who support them in the, whether it's the some mega people, some Republican, some Democrats, whoever it may be, they will go with Israel off the cliff. As it becomes more extreme, more racist. And I fear this finally, the great tragic irony is that Israel is not, it is conceivable that in the coming decades, Israel could become a theocratic state.

Antony: Very possible. 

Antony: And 

Antony: Jew, obviously Jewish theocratic state, because the people who want that, their vision is the Taliban. That is their ideal vision, obviously Jewish, not Muslim, 

Hani: Jewish version. Absolutely. 

Antony: Exactly. And people often, this is my point about, there is this weird reluctance in so much of the West to acknowledge that this is not a handful of crazy settlers it's them, but it's more than that.

Antony: It's a sizeable proportion of people who this is what they want. And they are frankly winning at the moment. Yes, they are. They are. They're in the ascendancy in Israel. Not the so called liberals. 

Hani: Right. They're in power. I've heard you say that you oppose there being a Jewish state, which is such a big statement to say, because that can automatically be turned into, you want to genocide everybody in Israel.

Hani: But I understand why that's something I learned from you and the language of it. You talk about ethno nationalism and the threat of that, and that's why you oppose a Jewish state, can you comment more 

Antony: yeah, My comments about opposing a Jewish state, although obviously I'm Jewish and therefore I have more of a connection, so to speak, to that issue, but I feel equally about a Christian ethnostate or Hindu or Muslim.

Antony: I'm opposed to any state based on religion and many are, the whole Middle East essentially is, and I would say the Middle East, I'm generalizing here, but the Arab states mostly are dysfunctional because of their leadership. Right. Mostly backed by us in the West. Not talking about the Arab people, obviously, the Arab leaders, who by the way 

Hani: I'm Lebanese, so I agree with you.

Antony: Okay Lebanon is but what can one even say about what's happening there? It's just, you know, my concern around, I believe Jews have the right to safety. I'm not someone who says, as some do, that the outcome in Israel Palestine needs to be put off, take all the Jews back to Europe.

Antony: That is insanity. I don't even know what that means, frankly. 

Hani: Another displacement is that the 

Hani: solution? 

Antony: Exactly. It's a bit, but as there is some on the left for one of them who'd say, so they said, I've seen this a lot since October 7th, maybe you have as well online, all these Jews should just go back to your, it's ahistorical.

Antony: It's just ridiculous. It's, as you say there obviously needs to be a process of dezionizing of Israel. Yes. There needs to be what I call, I have a book 

Antony: out. 

Hani: De Zionizing. Wow. I haven't heard that word before. 

Antony: I think it's, I think that's, it's essential. Now, I'm not saying you remove or, I mean, look, the idea of saying that you can go through a process in the end of five years:

Antony: no Israeli Zionist is delusional. That's not going to happen that way. The issue is that, as I talk about, I had a book out recently. It's called After Zionism, which was co edited with the Palestinian man, Ahmed Moore, who's in your country, the U S from Rafah, actually was born in Rafah in Gaza and talks about what a one state solution would look like, a secular state, and no one in that book advocates, there's a collection of essays with Jews and Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, no one's saying kick the Jews out to Europe.

Antony: No one's saying that there needs to be a process of the idea of kicking someone out of a home because they themselves are being kicked out is the solution to nothing. That is not the solution here. Having said that there needs to be a process. which we're very far away from, akin to what South Africa did, a truth and reconciliation event process that, and South Africa, people often use that as a model for what could happen in Israel Palestine.

Antony: And to some extent, some of that's true. On the other side of it, South Africa today is deeply, the polite way to put it, South Africa is a mess. There's no other way to get around that because of corruption and a range of issues, the fear that. The majority of white South Africans had before 1994 when apartheid ended was, if we end this apartheid, we are going to have genocide against us, that all the blacks are going to rise up and kill us.

Antony: This was the rhetoric, whether it was believed or not, who knows, but that was there. I think some whites did believe that. And I'm not denying that there is hatred between some Arabs and  the Israelis, I'm not denying that it's real. And October 7th probably made that worse, but we are on this merry go round of suggesting as Biden has been saying, let's get back to a two state solution.

Antony: It's like there's a zombie solution that is never going to happen that you can't really kill, but while Israel continues to settle and occupy Palestinian land. So for me, de Zionizing though in a way probably needs to start much more in the diaspora than it's going to in Israel. Yes, there are Jews in Israel who are not Zionists.

Antony: They're a small minority. I'm friends with some of them and there's like 10 of them and I know them all. I'm joking when I say that, but they're a very small minority and bless them. They've got a very big challenge in a country. 

Hani: We love them. We love them. We 

Hani: hope the best for them. We want them to win.

Hani: We want them to be prime ministers and Knesset people. We want them to rule Israel. Please rule Israel. 

Antony: Totally. But that's not going to happen anytime soon, right? So I think that process though is starting to happen in the Jewish diaspora, including in the U. S. And that is the threat to the Jewish establishment.

Antony: That is why they so often are so heavy handed. Now, just give you one small example. Some listeners may have heard the Oscars this week, which I mostly ignore, but there was one filmmaker, Jonathan Glazer, who's a British Jewish filmmaker, made the Zone of Interest, which is an extraordinary film people haven't seen.

Antony: It's about the Holocaust and the film is not about Israel, Palestine at all. However, he won one of the major Oscars at the event and gave a speech, a very short speech, it goes for a minute. People can find it easily online, essentially saying, I'm paraphrasing here, I'm ashamed as a Jewish man, that my faith has been hijacked by people who are essentially assaulting Palestinians.

Antony: I'm paraphrasing what he said. The response to that hardly radical speech was epiplexy. In elements of the Jewish establishment, he was condemned by the Israeli government. He's called an anti Semite people like Noah Tishby and others. Who's this sort of weird, failed actress who is, I don't know what she's doing with her life.

Antony: But anyway, did this long thing saying there was like vile Jew hate for the Oscars. In other words, the idea that a Jewish person, I don't know anything about Jonathan Glazer. I'm sure he's a liberal Jew would be my guess, not religious, says something which is so true and compassionate. Is essentially compared to a Nazi.

Antony: I saw some people suggest he was no better than a Nazi. I think to myself, this is my point goes to what I said before. The more extreme Israel becomes. The more extreme it's supporters must become as well. They will double and triple down. And the threat that someone like him, he's one person, but the threat that someone like him poses, he's got a global audience.

Antony: Millions have watched him. I'm sure he's going viral on social media, et cetera, is that the idea of a Jew saying that my religion has been hijacked. By extremists who are defending and supporting the worst policies. And one thing that I say is finish on this point is that I have a line of this in the book and I'm paraphrasing myself, but it's something along the lines of Jewish trauma, which is undeniable after the Holocaust has been weaponized in the service of occupation.

Antony: And it's the most destructive thing because it's being used to justify, again, I wrote this before October 7th, but it's even more relevant since it's being used to justify the most hideous, violent policies. And that's something that. People like me can't stand and we speak out. 

Hani: Thank you for being, that human.

Hani: It sounds like from a very young age, your wisdom, your compassion was there. You were repulsed by racist ideas, supremacist ideas. And here you are and almost 50 with your heart doing so much to, yeah, because you don't look it by the way. 

Antony: Thank you. I was 

Antony: waiting for that Hani. Come on. I was waiting for that.

Hani: It's true. I'm going to take a poll on social media when we post 

Hani: this and I'm going to show it to you. 

Hani: Does he look 50? 

Antony: I was going to say, it's natural. There's no artificial, just for the record anyway, no, no Botox. 

Hani: But yes, I definitely agree with you. And it's so sad that speech wasn't even posted on the Oscars website.

Hani: Just to metaphorically talk more about that. Thank you for saying all that. I'd love to dive into your book. The Palestine Laboratory, what a profound book. Oh my goodness. My mind was blown with every page. It's an award winning book. It's a national bestseller. It's also caused so much controversy to the point where the Australian government went after you and you had access to declassified documents, experts, and even whistleblowers.

Hani: Can you tell us first, and this might be an unconventional question, but can you tell us about the people who contributed to your research? 

Antony: Let me just briefly summarize what the book's about then so people can know. So the book essentially is a, I lived in East Jerusalem with my partner for a number of years and I started researching this about nine years ago.

Antony: But essentially the research, the book talks about how Israel has run the longest occupation in modern times. And over those years, decades, they've learned huge amounts of tools and technologies to repress Palestinians. That's obviously bad enough, but what they've done through that experience is to market it to a global audience.

Antony: So you have dozens and dozens, in fact, over a hundred, no one even knows the exact number, but around 130, 140 countries on the planet. So the majority of nations on earth who have bought some form. Of Israeli repressive technology, surveillance, weapons, drones, whatever. And the laboratory is that Palestinians are guinea pigs.

Antony: The weapons are tested on them. And this is not some conspiracy theory. The book's got 50 pages of end notes. The evidence is overwhelming. It's there. And it's, and by the way, this is happening still in Gaza. In the last five months, Israel's live testing weapons. And as we speak some viewers may have seen this and I can assure you when they do that, this is not just for an Israeli.

Antony: domestic audience to try to convince them that they're winning the war. And obviously we can argue about that, but it's for a global audience. It's a global market and many nations, despite what they say, including in the Arab world, are looking at what Israel's doing, believe me, with admiration, not shame, that is the reality.

Antony: They won't say that, but what we will find out in months and years to come, when they're buying some of that repressive tech, I guarantee it, this is how it works. The people I spoke to so many, but I spoke to, for example, some listeners will be aware of Pegasus, which was a infamous Israeli spying tool that gets put on your phone, your Android, your iPhone, and without you knowing, and all your information is essentially sucked up, it essentially becomes a weapon against you.

Antony: Your phone can be switched off, and they can still use the microphone and camera against you when it's switched off. Pegasus is only one of them. It's the most infamous, but there are many others as well. And this has all been, by the way, tested initially by people who worked in the IDF to repress Palestinians, so hence the laboratory.

Antony: I spoke to many victims of that, India, Mexico, and elsewhere, and people whose lives were upended. Now, Pegasus doesn't kill you per se. It's not a gun. It's not a missile. But for people in say Mexico for a range of reasons is the biggest user of Pegasus in the world. Mexico is obsessed. And this was both in the right wing governments in the past and the nominally left wing government now.

Antony: I'll be questioning how left wing it is, but self described left wing government. They're obsessed with it. They go after political enemies, opponents, critics, dissidents, journalists, and there's no global regulation about these weapons. I have a quote in the book, which I was getting from the New York Times, and I questioned whether this is true, but they, two journalists, they wrote, and again, I'm paraphrasing, something like, spyware, which is what Pegasus is, Is as significant globally as the nuclear weapon.

Antony: Now, I would probably question that because nuclear weapons can kill literally billions and spyware cannot, but putting that issue aside, it's a profound, awful development in society. So speaking to many victims of this a woman in Mexico who was a journalist whose husband was murdered by probably the cartels, God knows.

Antony: She discovered after his death that he'd been spied on before then she was being spied on through Pegasus. Never found out who really did it. Never had accountability, never really found out much more. Mexico is a, as some listeners will be aware, is a, in parts at least very violent states where the drug cartels control, frankly, far too much of the nation.

Antony: Her story was very moving because it just made you realize that weapons like this. Which feel in Mexico about as far away from Israel as you can get. When I spoke to her, she said, when she found out that an Israeli spyware tool, she was baffled thinking what is Israeli technology doing in my country?

Antony: And the government had bought it because it was, it is such an effective weapon. It's a weapon against anyone who they want to go after. It's been used across Europe. It's been used, this is Pegasus in, we don't even know how many countries, but 80, 90, a hundred countries. To this day, I still see stories come out regularly.

Antony: A few weeks ago. It's used in Jordan against dissidents, against human rights workers. Everywhere. Another example that comes to mind and it's worth mentioning briefly is that Israeli drones, which often are tested literally over Gaza are appearing in very many places around the world, including the EU. So the European union after 2015, as listeners remember, there was a huge surge of migrants coming mostly from Africa and the Middle East and European officials didn't want to repeat that essentially.

Antony: So all those people were let in that one, one and a half million. And essentially Europe has created this kind of fortress Europe. Which means that if you're white and Ukrainian, you're welcomed. And I support Europe welcoming Ukrainians in. What Russia has done in Ukraine, I think is horrendous and it continues to be so, but nonetheless, it's pretty clear what's going on here.

Antony: If you're white and Christian, please enter. If you're Brown, black or Muslim, sorry. Don't come. So in the Mediterranean, where the EU has made a decision, they don't say it's officially, but this is the reality to let people drown, because that's what's happening. There's very few rescue boats. And that is a drone drones that are going over the Mediterranean 24 seven.

Antony: There Israeli drones, they're unarmed and they're monitoring the Mediterranean and they are then sending this information back, this vision back to the EU makes a decision, is this boat going to be rescued or not? And often what happens is the EU sends this information to the Libyan coast guard.

Antony: The Libyan coast guard is being paid insane amounts of money by the EU to, inverted commas, rescue these people and take them back to Libya. As some listeners will be aware, in the last 15 years, Libya has essentially become not just a failed state, but there are literally slave markets. The what's happening in Libya is beyond comprehension.

Antony: And. The Israeli drones are a key part of that infrastructure and the EU wanted to get those drones because they were inverted commas battle tested over Gaza. So again, you see how these technologies initially starting in Palestine directed against Palestinians end up proliferating globally. 

Hani: It's like the unique point of these weapons are that they are battle tested and people want to buy them because of that. And there's one story that you mentioned in your book that really like just shook me to my core. Apparently at an expo where they were selling military equipment an Israeli group was doing that.

Hani: Part of the selling materials was a video of basically the weapons being used on people being killed. In this case, these people were Palestinians. And you said that if if in America. We used a video like this, it would be, completely banned. Like America would never use these kind of materials to sell arms.

Hani: So I had, my thought is there a difference between how Israel acts as an arms dealer and how other nations act as arms dealers?

Antony: Andrew Feinstein, who is a British journalist I interviewed him, who saw that at an Arms Fair. For listeners interested, he's done a book called The Shadow World, which is this amazing, one of probably the world's best books on the arms industry.

Antony: So if people want to read more about that, they can, but yes, I interviewed him for the book and that anecdote is in there. The Israeli arms industry is the 10th biggest in the world. America's industry is the biggest. America's arms industry is about 40 percent of the globe. And in 2023, the global arms industry was the biggest ever.

Antony: It was 2. 3 trillion US dollars. It's never been higher. The arms industry is one of the biggest industries in the world. And the illegal drug trade is one of the biggest in the world. And it's interesting that both of those are remarkably similar, actually, because corruption is deeply embedded within it.

Antony: And so the U S remains the big daddy selling weapons to pretty much anybody. And in my view, fueling conflicts globally, Israel is not number one or number two. The other, top 10 is, often Russia and there are other nations that do horrible things in the arms industry by definition.

Antony: Although it sells itself as increasing global security, which is obviously insane, it is fueling instability. Israel is number 10. Israel is never going to be number one. But the difference, with Israel is that it has in its backyard a ready made population of occupied people that it can test 24 seven.

Antony: So the US, for example, did a lot of battle testing in Iraq and Afghanistan. They're doing a lot of battle testing in Ukraine as we speak, as the Ukrainians are for new weapons. But so Israel's not the only country that does that. But as I show in the book, and this is partly why I wanted to have in the book, a bit of a pot of history, because I think a lot of people know something about the U S complicity with repression after world war two, supporting the most hideous regimes in the world, Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere. What is far less known is the Israeli involvement in that. So the book, for example, opens with a story about Chile when Pinochet basically took power in a coup on 9 11 in 1973. I have in the book, a lot of the personal story about a Jewish person whose father was taken by the regime and was murdered by them essentially now lives in Israel.

Antony: But the reason I put that in there was that although it's known how the U. S. Kissinger and others was central to backing that regime. At various points after that coup, Israel was the biggest arms dealer for Pinochet, not America, Israel. A lot of people's response to the book, which has been overwhelming.

Antony: I've never had a book like this kind of response has just been shocked by this history. People are shocked by what's happening now, but shocked by that reality. And I think it's partly because Israel in the sixties and seventies became, which continues to this day, America's wingman, basically. So in many places around the world, even where America could not sell weapons, for whatever reason, some congressional bloc, Guatemala is a good case, in Guatemala in the 80s, the Guatemalan regime was committing genocide against its indigenous population for various reasons at the time the U. S. could not supply weapons, but who did? Israel. Training. weapons to a genocide. Myanmar, I'm going to finish on this point, Myanmar, which is a much more contemporary example. Myanmar, according to the UN, committed genocide against the Rohingya Muslim population in the last decade. After that was said to be genocide, Israel still sold surveillance equipment.

Antony: Now, America sells weapons to immoral regimes too. Let's be all, let's be clear, so does Russia. Many of them do. It's not just Israel, but the difference I would say in a way is that Israel claims, no one who believes this, I don't know, to be this moral beacon when the history, which is largely hidden and unknown shows just this.

Antony: Ugly degradation. The only countries that I don't think they sell weapons to these days is nations like North Korea, Syria, Iran. Now, as far as we know, Iran is their designated enemy who the hell knows, right? You never know. They used to sell weapons to Iran before 1979, which was a deeply repressive regime.

Antony: The book has a section about that. So yeah. The Israeli arms industry is very ugly and dirty and often used and tested first in Palestine. 

Hani: I've heard you mention that 25 percent of the arms exports from Israel go to also autocratic Arab regimes. And that to me was mind blowing. It's on some level, does that explain why these Arab actors haven't really budged about Gaza and Palestine?

Hani: Absolutely. 

Antony: Yes. The short answer is yes. So that figure comes from the latest arms figures we have from Israel come from 2022. We haven't got last year's figures yet. We'll get them soon. The 2022 was 12. 5 billion US dollars, 24 percent of which, so a quarter, were Arab autocracies, UAE, Bahrain, and others.

Antony: What were they buying? Surveillance equipment and repressive technology to repress their own people. And I think you have to remember the context for this, that many of those Arab states, which are all repressive, are so scared of an Arab spring type event, that their own people rise up and say, we'd like more rights, please.

Antony: They're buying, inverted commas, the best repressive tech in the world from Israel. And I think that does explain a lot that sure, since October 7, yes, a few Arab states have recalled their ambassador and they've tut tutted Israel and said, Oh, please stop the violence. Firstly, it's all. Secondly, they're very happy for Hamas to be destroyed.

Antony: Whether that's even possible as debatable, but for militarily to be crushed and they have to really give deference to their own people who they know are very angry about what their own leaders are doing or not doing in Palestine. But I can tell you, none of them are going to cut ties with Israel.

Antony: None of them, barring some massive escalation or I don't know, it's been mass slaughter now, but even worse slaughter, you can't say never it's possible, but I do not see it likely that any Arab states will cut ties with Israel. None of them have, because they want to maintain that not just an arms relationship, but also what they perceive to be a way to get to Washington often goes via Israel.

Antony: So if you are not good friends with Israel, you will not be good friends with whoever's in the White House, Biden, Trump, whatever. None of that's going to change, by the way. Trump gets in, in November, I think, someone who is a profound opponent of Joe Biden, believe me. On these issues we're talking about, Trump will be not much different.

Antony: I mean, You could argue he's going to be worse. He's not going to suddenly, I mean, he may cut funding for Ukraine. That's, That's a different story. In fact, Israel is hoping that Trump wins, by the way. 

Hani: Of course. Yeah, 

Antony: very much so, which is sort of on one level crazy.

Antony: Think how could America be more pro Israel than they are now, but Israel, if you read the Israeli press, they are livid that Biden and his people even say anything critical. They're not doing anything. They're still giving them the weapons, when they said to say, Oh, we're a bit concerned about civilians in Gaza.

Antony: How dare you say that? Really? Two state solution. How dare you say that? How dare you? Israel is just, Israel has become a rogue state. And I do not really see any likelihood that if Trump gets in, he's going to suddenly cut funding or ties to Arab states. In fact, if anything, he likes autocracies a lot because that's what he wants to run in America.

Hani: Yes, of course. He likes the same 

Hani: thing. 

Antony: He wants the same thing. And in fact, he deeply admired. It's funny during the, I remember the 2016 campaign, he was actually a bit critical of Saudi. Curiously enough, during the campaign, when he was in power, he was deferential beyond belief. And I can guarantee you if he wins in November, that'll continue.

Antony: He sees Saudi as a reliable, inverted commas, reliable partner and a source of money. So, Yeah, the issue here is not particularly Biden or Trump. That those relationships will not change. And the so called normalization deal that was talked about between Saudi and Israel, which is undeniably being put on ice because of October 7th.

Antony: To me, it's very conceivable in years to come. That'll happen. It would not surprise me. Saudi will sell out the Palestinians if they get the chance. They don't care. They don't care. They haven't cared for years. The Saudis would be, I'm talking about the Saudi regime now, obviously, not the Saudi people, the Saudi regime they're thugs.

Antony: And as far as they're concerned, they can get good deals and buy the most sophisticated surveillance repressive tech from Israel. Everyone's a winner. 

Hani: They've already used that with Jamal Khashoggi, right? 

Antony: And many others. Absolutely. And his family and his wife and many others after his death surveilling them.

Antony: I mentioned that in the book that yes, he was clearly surveilled before his death in Istanbul by Israeli technology that had been sold to the Saudis. There's no question about that. Everyone denies it, but the evidence is clear. 

Hani: Yeah. Crazy. And you talk about other versions of this technology that are being used by China and Russia.

Hani: When we talk about the new nuclear bomb, this mass surveillance technology is definitely the new nuclear bomb. And also we're seeing AI being used now on the ground. And I've heard you say that AI is actually killing more people. And then we saw these, deliberately, huh? And then we saw these robot dogs also recently being used there.

Antony: Israel is testing huge amounts of new repressive tech, robot dogs in Gaza, suicide drones, something called quadcopters, which is basically a drone with a weapon attached and killing people. There's doctors in Gaza and civilians, including people I know who are saying they're seeing injuries they've never seen before.

Antony: And that's, that fits with history here of, in every, Israeli onslaught against Gaza pretty much for the last 15 or so years. This is what happened. Israel is using certain weapons. Doctors don't know how to treat them. They don't know what's going on. Obviously this, this, this conflict, this war.

Antony: Genocide is on a whole different scale to anything in the past. AI enabled warfare. There's been a lot of talk in the last years about AI. is talk from America and Israel. AI is going to make war cleaner. We're just going to, we're just going to go after the terrorists. It's first, there's no evidence of that actually happening.

Antony: And B, the point in Gaza from Israel's perspective is sources that I'm speaking to and Israeli journalists who I trust are also hearing the same thing is carnage is the point. Mass, that is the point. The point is not to pinpoint so called terrorists. That is not the point. The point is to literally level Gaza and anyone with two eyes can see that what's happening in Gaza is to make it uninhabitable.

Antony: I was speaking to a colleague a few days ago who was saying. And I agree with him that what is going to happen in Gaza in years now, is there's going to be a permanent tent city. This is what is happening to Gaza. Those who can't get out, won't get out for whatever reason will be living, many of them, for years in tents. If people say that's not true, what's the alternative? What is it? There are, the buildings mostly have been destroyed. That takes years to repair. God knows 

Hani: who's 

Antony: going to pay for it, which is unclear. 

Hani: Egyptian president said it would cost 90 billion, which is like.

Antony: Where's that money? Who's going to pay for that? Who's going to pay for it? Maybe a few Arab state throwing a couple of bucks here and there, but who's going to pay for it? So essentially. The aim, I would argue, is to make life so intolerable and so unlivable that Palestinians say, you know what, we're going to leave.

Antony: Now as to go, where is the question? I don't know. I mean, Obviously some are going to Egypt. Some are trying to go further afield. Very few companies are taking many Palestinians in, including my country. I'm Australian, but I'm also German and Germany has been its own, wow, world of awfulness on this issue.

Antony: Just this real vile. bigotry. In other words, they feel like they have to, their guilt over the Holocaust appears to be transformed into complete deference to Israel. And also anyway, that's separate sort of issue, but yes. So yeah, I'm worried. I am really worried about, yes. As I said, so all this testing that's going on by Israel is being looked at by many countries with deep interest.

Antony: In other words, what I say is look at what countries do, not what they say. Obviously their words matter. But many of those nations, I guarantee you, Hani, are gonna buy those weapons. And those tools, because they've been tested in a war zone in Gaza and inverted commas, they've worked. 

Hani: I've heard you say that the effect that this is going to have on the military industrial complex of Israel is it's actually going to fuel more success and selling more weapons. It's not going to have the opposite effect. 

Antony: No. In some ways, some people would might think after October seven, which was clearly it.

Antony: Profound intelligence catastrophe for Israel. Clearly lots of people killed. It was a disaster. The military disappeared for, hours and hours. The whole thing was a catastrophe from their perspective, but you think on the face of it, that would negatively impact their arms. And if people would say, hang on a minute, I'm going to buy technology from these guys.

Antony: I am moderately confident that will not happen. That because Israel has now spent five months and the war is not over, this is still going, and there's been all these examples of Israel testing, and there's often stories in the, you don't read it so much in the foreign press, but the Israeli press often weirdly, with all its faults, and there are many, often just has stories.

Antony: There was a story recently just about explaining that they're using robot dogs. The story was, you can argue it's basically an advertisement. You could argue in a way that it is, but it was a fairly straight story. And interesting as someone who researched this story, I thought this, this is what's going on.

Antony: This is the reality. And until there are things like arms embargoes, until there are Israeli soldiers or generals or politicians put on trial somewhere, this impunity will not end. Because most Israelis at the moment, as many viewers or listeners will know, they want the war to continue. There's an anti war.

Antony: Yes, the anti war segment in Israel, it does exist, but it's tiny, sadly, again, the 10 people that we know, I mean, again, I'm being unfair to the 12, but you know what I'm saying? It's small, It's small. And that, that is the effect of decades of dehumanization of Palestinians. I do not know of any equivalent, so called Western state, everyone's got racism.

Antony: Your country certainly does. My country certainly does, obviously, but I cannot think of a Western country that has become as radicalized and as racist as Israel. And this is based on not an opinion, but a public opinion polls about how they view living in the same apartment block as an Arab, seeing an Arab at your kid's school.

Antony: There are sizable proportions of Israelis, not five people, but sizable who say, I don't want that. And this is long before October 7th. And I can imagine October 7th has made those figures even worse, frankly. 

Hani: I don't know of any other Western state that militarizes the whole population where it's mandatory, right?

Hani: Like there's no other, to my knowledge. You mean going 

Antony: to the military, you mean? 

Hani: Yeah. Everybody has to go into the military and that in itself is an act of radicalizing your population. And yeah, coming from Lebanon and running away from there, moving to the US, Arguably, we can say Christian nationalists and all these things, like they're the version of that over here , but Israel is not any less extreme than all of the countries around it.

Hani: It's just better armed and has more friends in protective places. 

Antony: And yet, if you say something like that, in many Western media related circles, you would be seen as an extremist. They would say, what are you talking about? That is crazy talk. They're going to say, you're going to tell us that Israel is more extreme than Saudi.

Antony: I would say Israel is far more dangerous than Saudi. I think Saudi. Is a danger because I think it's often funded Wahhabi extremism for years. It's deeply problematic as you would put it mildly. But Saudi does not have the power of Israel. Saudi is a powerful state of sorts, but nothing like Israel.

Antony: And yeah, even that comment, as I said, which to me is sensible, would Put you well outside the so called mainstream consensus, right? If you say it. 

Hani: I saw a video today of a woman who was trying to stop a bus that's taking orphans from Gaza to the West Bank and basically calling those children terrorists.

Hani: The level of dehumanization to not be connected to your own parenthood, it's not enough that your government killed their whole families. You also want them to be eliminated? I mean, Isn't that what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust? It's just ridiculous. 

Antony: Yes. And I think what is so despairing about that is that all that kind of behavior is making those Jews more unsafe.

Antony: Like in no rational way is what Israel is doing now in Gaza, in the West Bank, it's making them profoundly more unsafe. This is no other way to view that and Jews around the world. And this idea somehow, and it's been worth saying this, that, Netanyahu has said for many years, and he's been prime minister seemingly forever, far too long, is that, obviously I'm paraphrasing what he said.

Antony: Things like, when we were in Europe in the second, the thirties and forties, we did not have arms. We didn't have a country. We were basically lambs to the slaughter. And now we have a state and now we're powerful and we're going to use it to stay safe. And if the world doesn't like it, well up yours.

Antony: That's essentially what he has said for years. And that view is very common in much of the Jewish diaspora. I still hear that all the time. A version of that, that we being Jews finally have a strong state and everyone hates us. They've always hated us. They're always going to hate us. And it's ironic.

Antony: I often quote Gideon Levy, the great Israeli journalist who says, Israel is the only country that occupies they want sympathy for them being the occupier. They want sympathy. The idea of saying, hang on a minute, you're the one occupying, you want the world to sympathize with you? How is that viable?

Antony: It's crazy. Absolutely. Yeah. 

Hani: And we will sympathize once we see humanity happening from that society. And what's happening right now is just a lot of inhumanity that keeps being fueled, unfortunately, but I'm hoping that love always wins. I'm going to be cliche here, but I'm hoping that, we will see the shift, hopefully more towards a compassionate solution.

Hani: Nshalla ya rabb nshalla. There were attempts to censor your book even at the level of the Australian Parliament, which actually played in your favor, propelling the Palestine Laboratory to become a national bestseller.

Hani: What is your message to other journalists who are wary of tackling Israel and Palestine because of facing the same repression and intimidation that you faced? 

Antony: That attempt to silence the book. In fact, was for my first book, "My Israel question", which came out in 2006.

Antony: No, it's fine. It's fine. That book, there was attempts to shut it down. The Israel lobby tried to get the book pulped that was condemned in parliament. It was just crazy. This is a few years ago. There wasn't the same attempt with this book, although this book has become a global bestseller now, which is good.

Antony: I'm 

Hani: glad. Yeah. So yeah, they left you alone. They're like, we can't go after this guy. 

Antony: I think that's sort of giving up. I thought we're not going to work with them anymore. My message to journalists, really anybody, I get so many messages from people, Jew, non Jews saying, we want to speak out. We don't know how to do it.

Antony: We don't want to be accused of anti Semitism. This is even Jews saying this. My message is always do speak out. And especially to Jewish people, I say, who often write to me and say things like, it's hard in my family, I'm going to be condemned by my brother, by my sister, by my girlfriend, my boyfriend, whatever, I'm going to be shunned by my family, I'm going to be shunned.

Antony: If I speak too critically about Israel, my response to that is always, if not now, when are you going to speak out? Like, how bad does it need to get for us as Jews to say, is it going to be 50, 000 dead? Maybe you feel better speaking up as half a million Palestinians. How many people need to be killed before you, and I say that with love and respect, not to condemn people for, I understand they have their own pressures and I'm lucky.

Antony: I mostly don't have that anymore. People have their own communities, their own families. They want to have friends and allies. I get that, but there are Jewish groups that are supportive that do exist, including an Australian in the US that have like minded people. So that's what I would say to Jewish people, that your angst ridden uncomfortableness is no longer enough.

Antony: Cause I often heard for years, a lot of Jewish people would say to me, look, it's occupation, it's really terrible, it's complicated. Like, no, sorry. We are long past new feeling angst ridden. Within yourself, within your family, we're long past that now, maybe that was acceptable in 1968, maybe, but we're long past that now.

Antony: It's been half a century plus. Now is the time to speak it. And there are growing numbers of Jews that can be allies around that. For other people who are not Jewish, who often are scared, and they say this to me, we're going to be accused of anti Semitism. That's the worst thing you can be called is like an anti Semite or a pedophile or something, just horrible.

Antony: To which I would say do not buy into this weaponization. Anti Semitism is real and it worries me and it's getting worse. And it's like real, I'm talking about real anti Semitism attacks against Jews who are religious or synagogues. I'm not denying that. And it's increased in some parts since October 7th.

Antony: It's real. Saying free Palestine or from the river to the sea is not anti Semitic. And too often, the Jewish establishment will tell the wider community, we see you, you saying free Palestine is essentially negating our existence. It's absolute nonsense. And people need to not, feel scared that by saying that, going to a protest.

Antony: Buying a book, sharing something on Instagram, whatever is your vibe that you'll be shunned. Now, if people do shun you, find new friends. I mean, Obviously that's easy. 

Hani: You will be welcomed into another group's arms who are more human. 

Antony: Yes. And again, I understand people have to have their own situations. I get that.

Antony: But what I say to journalists is. Particularly those in the mainstream, New York Times and others, who are, there are, the New York Times has got a lot of questions to answer about a lot of coverage for 80 years really, but there are good journalists who work there of course, there's lots of them, so of course there are good people amongst not so good people.

Antony: If you can't write and speak honestly now, when is it going to happen? What is happening in Palestine now is far worse than the Nakba. It's far worse. This is where we're at more displacement and more debt. The Nakba was 80 years ago and the world and mostly Palestinians are still processing that.

Antony: So just think about we're at this moment here, which is still ongoing, where people are being killed and displaced at a greater level than that. Are we still going to be dealing with this in 80 years? Yes. And therefore I say to people, now is the time to speak up, to write. Post on Instagram, tell your friends, join a community group, whatever it is, now is the time, because we need numbers, we need more people, and it's finally fine, there is, there's some hope I do have is that, and this is based on public opinion polls, Jews and non Jews, growing numbers of young people, 18 to 35, are shifting their views, there's no doubt about that.

Antony: Before October 7th, by the way, but certainly since I'm not saying it's a majority, but certainly a sizable proportion, including in fact, Biden voters, according to polls, young and old want a cease fire as one example, which of course Biden is sitting on his hands about there is a shift going on and. Do not be gaslit and told that by supporting that, simply a ceasefire, as many pro Israel forces will say that essentially means you think Hamas should kill Jews.

Antony: Sorry, what are you talking about? In other words, don't be scared with that potential pushback, because you might get that. and find allies who will support you in that. So I guess I would say, if not now, people, when. 

Hani: Thank you so much for saying that. And I will add, you are a wonderful example of somebody who didn't let the propaganda get to him, who stood up to the machine.

Hani: And here you are, you're thriving, you are inspiring so many of us, you're teaching us, you are, we are all now part of your movement. You helped us. And so those people will also be part of your movement. I hope they take your advice. Thank you so much. 

Antony: Thank you, Hani. Inshallah. 

Hani: Inshallah. I love your use of the word.

Antony: I heard it so many times living in East Jerusalem for years, that it used to start, not that many Jews say it for the record, but I like it. It says so much in one word. And somewhere it's not religious at all. It says a lot to me. 

Hani: It's not religious in the Arab world. It's not religious. A lot of words that end with Allah are not religious in the Arab world.

Hani: Yeah. Yeah. And I want to just comment on this show brings an Arab and then a Jewish person, an Arab and then a Jewish person. And I've heard so many Jewish people use Arabic words and just be so aware of Arabic, which is really beautiful. 

Antony: I guess not many Arabs say Hebrew words. I'm 

Hani: learning. I'm learning.

Hani: No, I agree with you. I'm learning. I'm learning. 

Antony: Yeah. And I guess people often say Hebrew maybe. I guess some people in the Arab world will think of Hebrew and they connect it to Israel. So I understand it's a bit more complicated 

Hani: Anthony, thank you so much. 

Hani: It really was a blessing and a joy. Thank you. The gift is ours. Thank you so much. Thank you. So to just end our time together, I'm going to say a little prayer. Is that okay with you? 

Antony: Sure. 

Hani: May all beings everywhere thrive in peace and dignity and share in all our joys and freedoms and may we see true peace in the Middle East for all in our lifetime.

Hani: Inshallah. 

Hani: Inshallah. Thank you. 

Antony: Thank you.