Rhys Machold writes:

On June 4th, The Times of Israel reported that in 2024, annual Israeli arms exports had reached an all-time high of $14.8 billion, with Europe buying 54% of the weapons. The article noted that Israeli officials had previously been concerned that Western European allies may cancel weapons deals or sanction Israeli manufacturers over the country’s war of extermination in Gaza. Once the record-breaking export figures came out, however, Israel’s war ministry publicly argued the opposite, claiming that the campaign in Gaza was what had led to the spike in exports by demonstrating Israel’s “unprecedented operational achievements” and “combat experience.” In particular, war minister Israel Katz emphasized that the growth in Israeli arms sales was “a direct result of the successes of the [Israeli army] . . . against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the ayatollah regime in Iran, and in other arenas where we operate against Israel’s enemies.”

Katz was not the only one making such statements. Since October 7th, 2023, the narrative of Israel as a powerhouse of “security innovation”—already a core feature of the country’s self-representation for decades—has steadily gone into overdrive. In April, Hadas Lorber, head of the Institute for Applied Research in Responsible Artificial Intelligence at Israel’s Holon Institute of Technology, told The New York Times that Israel was engaged in “crisis accelerated innovation, much of it AI-powered,” which had “led to game-changing technologies on the battlefield and advantages that proved critical in combat.” In the same month, Rotem Mey-Tal, CEO of the Israeli business management and weapons technology company Robel Innovations, told The Jerusalem Post that whereas “before the war, people were building apps to find parking in Tel Aviv . . . now they’re coming back from reserve duty and building drones, battlefield support systems, and paramedic technologies.” As a result, Mey-Tal noted that seed funding for new defense start-ups had reached $4 million in each round, all thanks to “innovation” propelled by the war on Gaza.

It hasn’t just been Israelis who have advanced the claim that unprecedented Israeli “innovation” is the story of the post-October 7th moment. The narrative has become so pervasive as to be echoed by foreign reporters, corporations, governments, and even critics of the state. A recent New Yorker article, for instance, parroted the idea that “the most prominent real-time laboratory for using AI in warfare is in Israel,” a framing that is ubiquitous across the Western press. American politicians have directly echoed these talking points. “We have seen some of the best innovations coming out of Israel,” Zach Nunn, a Republican congressperson from Iowa, recently said. Nunn, who is currently spearheading a congressional proposal requiring the Pentagon to open a Defense Innovation Unit office in Israel, went on to argue that the US government should focus on how “the best technologies—and candidly the best tactics, techniques and procedures that Israel is literally field testing right now—can be replicated” by American forces. A version of this characterization has also found purchase on the left, with a range of critics arguing that the development of cutting-edge Israeli weapons technologies is a defining feature of this moment. This argument casts Gaza as a “laboratory” for repressive Israeli technology; what is first battle-tested in the Strip, such thinkers argue, later makes its way to places in the West and around the world, helping remake the entire planet in Gaza’s image.

To be sure, Israel has used new technology to deadly effect in the past few years, effectively automating mass aerial bombardment under the guise of precise targeting. But what the ossification of such facts into a “security innovation” narrative obscures is that technological transformation is not the story of Israel’s recent campaigns. This is particularly clear in the case of the Gaza genocide. From North American settlers destroying bison herds to starve Native communities to Germans weaponizing hypothermia, disease, and hard labor in concentration camps in Namibia, perpetrators of genocide have always grasped that mass atrocity can be carried out without highly advanced technologies. Israel is no different in this regard, blending a range of old, crude tactics like building demolitions, sniper attacks, fire, disease, and starvation with AI-driven aerial bombardment and drone warfare to kill and maim tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of Palestinians. [Continue reading…]