‘Two-state theory is fiction,’ says author Antony Loewenstein Premium

Journalist and writer Antony Loewenstein on why the world should pursue one democratic state where both Israelis and Palestinians can live together

In 2007, journalist and writer Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine called the phenomenon ‘disaster capitalism’. Writing about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina she chronicled the “orchestrated raids” on the public sphere in the wake of a catastrophic event, which economists like Milton Friedman were seeing as “exciting market opportunities.”

The German-Australian journalist and writer, Antony Loewenstein, followed in Klein’s footsteps for his 2017 book, Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing out of Catastrophe, travelling across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, the U.S., the U.K., Greece, and Australia and witnessing the reality of disaster capitalism. He found out how companies “cash in on organised misery in a hidden world of privatised detention centres, militarised private security, aid profiteering, and destructive mining.”

Last year, Loewenstein, who is Jewish, wrote the prize-winning The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World. In it, he argues that Israel’s military industrial complex uses the occupied, Palestinian territories as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology that they then export around the world to despots and democracies. For decades, occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has given the Israeli state invaluable experience in controlling an “enemy” population, the Palestinians. It’s here, he says, that they have perfected the architecture of control.

As Israel’s relentless pounding of Gaza continues, we spoke to Loewenstein on the sidelines of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Series Jaipur Literature Festival.