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(lively music)

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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)