Skip to main content

As human tragedy continues to unfold, Israel’s arms industry profits spike

By Asad Mirza* 

The past one year has shown once again that the global community is least bothered by the human dimension, i.e. the loss of human lives of any military conflict. Further the greed to earn huge profits by arms industry is also overlooked, as it supports the economy of many of these countries.
October 7, 2024 marked one year of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank. Meanwhile, during the last one year, many other nations like the regional power Iran and Israel also got entangled into a conflict, due to Israel’s operations to eliminate the entire top leadership of the Hezbollah and Hamas, and to render these organisations completely dismembered.
To achieve its overt objectives, Israel with full impunity attacked targets in Lebanon, Syria, and even Yemen. Acting as if it has been given the target to eliminate the maximum population of these countries.
Iran’s actions against Israel were termed as response to the ‘Axis of Resistance’, but who gave the right to Israel to act in this savage manner? While, it claims to have taken these actions against Iran, Iran’s actions against Israel are termed as aggression. 
Further, the question of who is the aggressor, dominated the narrative last year completely ignoring and asking who is the intruder or usurper, hell bent on kicking the Palestinians from their own home land.
The reality is that Israel has morphed from an aggressor state to one of the world’s largest arms manufacturer and exporter. While this human tragedy was unfolding in the region, profits of Israel’s arms manufacturers were going through the roof.
This hidden aspect of the current war was explored by Turkey’s news outlet Anadolu Agency. As part of Anadolu's series marking one year of Israel's military campaign in Gaza, the agency spoke to Antony Loewenstein, author of the book, The Palestine Laboratory, on how Israel uses Palestine as a tool to boost its defence industry exports, by marking them as ‘field tested’. 
He said the war on Gaza, which has claimed more than 41,000 lives seems to be a testing ground for Israel’s new weaponry.
“Israel has been testing and using new weapons and technology in its wars. And already, it has been trying to sell those tools and technologies at various global arms fairs since October 7,” the Sydney-based author told Anadolu. He said Israeli exports reached a record $13.1 billion in 2023.
Here we should be aware of the fact that what Israel sells in the global armament market is described as ‘field tested’. Now in the post WW II and Cold War, with no access to human Guinea pigs available to the arms and armaments manufacturers, Israel has found them in West Bank. Where at its own sweet will it launches attacks on Palestinians in their homes and later sell the same weapons labelled as ‘field tested’. 
The irony is further compounded by the fact that most of these weapons are purchased by the neighbouring Arab states, most of whom profess to support the Palestinian cause, but in order to pursue their regional ambitions, they purchase arms from their supposedly arch-foe Israel.
As per a report of the think tanks Middle East Eye, Arab states that normalised ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords accounted for about 25 percent of Israel’s record $12.5bn in defence exports in 2022, signalling the deepening economic and defence links between the countries.
The 2022 price tag marked a 50 percent jump from the previous three years and a doubling in volume over the previous decade, according to Israel’s defence ministry. Drones accounted for 25 percent of the 2022 exports, while missiles, rockets or air defence systems amounted to 19 percent, Reuters reported.
Additionally, at another level, another pressing issue which must be handled by the international community, at the earliest is the human angle of the current conflict.
As per UN reports, the conflict so far has claimed at least 41,431 lives, another 95,818 injured, and 1.9 million displaced out of the estimated 2.2 million population.
A satellite imagery survey in July 2024 estimated that 63 percent of Gaza’s buildings had been damaged, including 215,137 housing units The UN Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs reported in September that 46 percent of aid deliveries were impeded or denied outright to Palestinians in need.
As bombing and ground operations spread, 86 percent of Gaza was under mandatory evacuation orders by August, leaving al-Masawi, a sliver of sand already crowded with tents in the south, the only declared safe haven. The same month, the area was struck with a polio outbreak, twenty-five years after its eradication. 
Amid the worsening situation, with no cease-fire in sight, aid organisations revived earlier warnings of impending famine. The humanitarian organisation Refugees International warned in September of increasing famine risk due to continued disruptions in aid delivery, bombing, and dislocations.
Further, more than seven hundred Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been killed since the war broke out, according to the Palestinian Authority Health Ministry in Ramallah. Since October 7, 2023, according to the UNOCHA report on September 25, 2024, Israeli authorities demolished 1,725 structures and displaced 4,450 Palestinians - double the rate of displacement in the preceding nearly one-year period. 
Even before the September escalation of conflict across the Lebanon-Israel border, nearly 100,000 Lebanese had been displaced from their homes in the country’s south due to Israeli shelling. Meanwhile, approximately 63,000 Israelis were internally displaced from the country’s north due to Hezbollah’s rocket attacks.
But starting in late September 2024, Israeli strikes on Hezbollah and Palestinian targets in Beirut and across Lebanon killed hundreds of civilians and exponentially increased internal and cross-border displacement. More than One million Lebanese have now fled their homes in a matter of days amid Israel’s invasion and bombardment.
In addition, Syrian refugees and the large migrant worker population in Lebanon were also displaced, with many sleeping on the streets or in makeshift tents, unable to access buildings that were converted into shelters for Lebanese.
In a separate stark example of reverse migration, about 230,000 people – both Lebanese and Syrians – have fled across the border into Syria. Bringing the recent regional conflicts full circle with post-2011 Arab uprising displacement and crisis, returning home is an unsafe option for many Syrians who still fear repression under the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 
Over several decades, the Middle East has experienced many large-scale, cross-border displacements for myriad reasons. The original forced displacement of Palestinians surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948 and subsequent conflicts created the world’s longest-standing refugee situation, with approximately Six million Palestinians living across the Levant. The first Gulf War, sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s and the 2003 US invasion of Iraq produced millions of refugees, with long-standing political repercussions for the region.
More recently, the 2011 Arab uprisings and the wars that followed in Syria, Yemen and Libya created millions of refugees, as well as internally displaced peoples, with nearly Six million Syrians still living in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan and another Six million displaced inside Syria. 
New layers of displacement in Lebanon – nationals, refugees, and migrant workers – as well as cross-border movement into Syria will put further strain on the underfunded system of humanitarian assistance.
Further, the current Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon is not the first-time conflict between the state and its neighbour to the north has preceded large-scale displacement. To eliminate the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982. Israel’s 1982 invasion led to the Sabra and Shatila massacres of between 1,500-3,000 Palestinian civilians – carried out by Israel’s Lebanese Christian allies – showing that military operations that do not distinguish between militants and civilians can lead to devastating impacts for displaced populations.
It is high time that various international organisations particularly the UN and nations like the US and UK, must step-up their efforts to get a cease-fire implemented in the region. The next step obviously should be to get Israel out of all occupied or annexed territories and then handle the issue of Israel’s burgeoning arms industry, but for that the West will have to curtail its own arms manufacturing and buying, by putting a stop to the arms race.
---- 
*New Delhi-based senior commentator on international and strategic affairs, environmental issues, an interfaith practitioner, and a media consultant

Comments

TRENDING

Campaign group urges INDIA alliance to release Jharkhand manifesto to counter BJP’s 'divisive' agenda

By Our Representative  The Loktantra Bachao Abhiyan, an advocacy group, has issued a press release urging the INDIA alliance to release a Jharkhand-specific manifesto to counter the BJP’s "divisive" electoral agenda. With just two weeks remaining before the assembly elections, the INDIA coalition has yet to announce its plans and priorities for the state. Meanwhile, the BJP's campaign, according to the press release, is centered around communalism, divisiveness, and distraction from Jharkhand's core issues.

Tributes paid to pioneer of Naxalism in Punjab, who 'dodged' police for 60 yrs

By Harsh Thakor*  Jagjit Singh Sohal, known as Comrade Sharma, a pioneer of Naxalism in Punjab, passed away on October 20 at the age of 96. Committed to the Naxalite cause and a prominent Maoist leader, Sohal, who succeeded Charu Majumdar, played hide and seek with the police for almost six decades. He was cremated in Patiala.

Israel's 'war crime': 18,000 children died not just from bomb explosions but also starvation

By Sandeep Pandey*  Last year 6 years old Madiha was a guest during Diwali at our home in Lucknow. Listening to the sound of fire crackers bursting outside she remarked, ‘It appears as if we’re in Gaza.’ She has probably no idea of the extent of damage and loss of life that has taken place in Palestine but can relate to sound of crackers as bombs exploding over Gaza.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Will Left victory in Sri Lanka deliver economic sovereignty plan, go beyond 'tired' IMF agenda?

By Atul Chandra, Vijay Prashad*  On September 22, 2024, the Sri Lankan election authority announced that Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led National People’s Power (NPP) alliance won the presidential election. Dissanayake, who has been the leader of the left-wing JVP since 2014, defeated 37 other candidates, including the incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe of the United National Party (UNP) and his closest challenger Sajith Premadasa of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya. 

Will Bangladesh go Egypt way, where military ruler is in power for a decade?

By Vijay Prashad*  The day after former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina left Dhaka, I was on the phone with a friend who had spent some time on the streets that day. He told me about the atmosphere in Dhaka, how people with little previous political experience had joined in the large protests alongside the students—who seemed to be leading the agitation. I asked him about the political infrastructure of the students and about their political orientation. He said that the protests seemed well-organized and that the students had escalated their demands from an end to certain quotas for government jobs to an end to the government of Sheikh Hasina. Even hours before she left the country, it did not seem that this would be the outcome.

A Hindu alternative to Valentine's Day? 'Shiv-Parvati was first love marriage in Universe'

By Rajiv Shah  The other day, I was searching on Google a quote on Maha Shivratri which I wanted to send to someone, a confirmed Shiv Bhakt, quite close to me -- with an underlying message to act positively instead of being negative. On top of the search, I chanced upon an article in, imagine!, a Nashik Corporation site which offered me something very unusual. 

How pseudo-liberals 'went wrong' in judging DY Chandrachud as Chief Justice India

By Shamsul Islam*  DY Chandrachud took charge as Chief Justice of the Indian Supreme Court (SC) on November 09, 2022. On this occasion many of the pseudo-liberals who claimed to be defenders of the democratic-secular polity of India manifested great happiness. They declared that the time of SC being an appendage of the RSS-BJP government headed by PM Modi was over as Justice Chandrachud was a liberal judge committed to the democratic-secular polity of India. 

In the pantheon of Indian cricket, VVS Laxman as symbol of elegance, resilience, unselfish brilliance

By Harsh Thakor*  On November 1st, legendary Indian cricketer VVS Laxman celebrates his 50th birthday. Known for his elegance, Laxman turned impossible matches on their heads with a style that captivated cricket fans worldwide. He wielded his bat like an artist’s brush, finding gaps on the field with surgical precision, creating innings as meticulously as a sculptor carves a masterpiece. Born in Hyderabad, Laxman inherited the stylistic lineage of local icons ML Jaisimha and Mohammad Azharuddin, blending it with a grace reminiscent of Gundappa Viswanath.