Professor Jeff Halper will be in Limerick to launch his new book, War against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification. The launch will take place on Wednesday 20th January 2016 at 7.30pm in The Absolute Hotel, Harry’s Mall, Limerick. It is hosted by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign as part of the End The Irish Arms Trade With Israel campaign.

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Prof. Halper provides an exhaustive survey of Israel’s weapons technology and population subjugation/control methods, for which the occupation of Palestine an Israeli live-testing facility, Halper says, thus allowing it to export high-tech weaponry that has been tested in ‘pacifying’ a population under occupation. Halper argues that this allows Israel to thrive in the global arms market, winning under-the-counter support from many governments that crtiticise it publicly, while buying and investing in its technology of repression.

This is a matter of vital importance in our increasingly surveilled, militarised and repressively policed world, and this book is an eye-opening and sobering read.

Professor Halper will also give an update on the current situation on the ground in the Palestine-Israel region.

About the Book

Modern warfare has a new form. The days of international combat are fading. So how do major world powers maintain control over their people today?

This book is a disturbing insight into the new ways world powers such as the US, Israel, Britain and China forge war today. It is a subliminal war of surveillance and whitewashed terror, conducted through new, high-tech military apparatuses, designed and first used in Israel against the Palestinian population. Including hidden camera systems, sophisticated sensors, information databases on civilian activity, automated targeting systems and, in some cases, unmanned drones, it is used to control the very people the nation’s leaders profess to serve.

War Against the People represents a new stage in Halper’s thinking. He explains, “This book began with a question that many activists like myself have asked over the years: How does Israel get away with it?”

Drawing from years of research, as well as investigations and interviews conducted at international arms fairs, Halper reveals that this practice is much more insidious than was previously thought. As Western governments tighten the grip on their use of private information and claw back individual liberties, War Against the People is a timely reminder that fundamental human rights are being compromised for vast sections of the world, and that this is a subject that should concern everyone.

About the Speaker

Jeff Halper spent nearly 20 years as head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). His previous book, An Israeli in Palestine, opens with the destruction of his friend Salim Shawamreh’s home in Anata, a village near Jerusalem. This event forced Halper, who had been a committed Zionist, to confront what is happening in the West Bank and Gaza. He is the author of An Israeli in Palestine (Pluto, 2008) and Obstacles to Peace (ICAHD, Fifth Edition, 2013).

Praise for the book

“Genuinely frightening … a brave, angry, unruly book, which inspires fear, but also hope.”
(Tom Sperlinger, The Electronic Intifada)

“This is an important book for anyone who cares about peace, the plight of the Palestinian people and the role of Israel in the world of war. Halper’s fascinating book places the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories at the heart of its role in the transnational military industrial complex and what he calls the pacification industry. A brave, analytical and innovative book from an admirable activist and thinker.”
(Andrew Feinstein, author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade)

War Against the People is not only a key to deciphering Israeli policies in Palestine, but also one of the clearest explanations that I have ever read on how important Israel/Palestine is in the world. It addresses with clarity and structure one of the most complex and yet extremely important topics of the securitisation of our society. His book has opened my eyes, and was a fascinating read.
(Shir Hever, author of The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation)

In this cogently written and extremely informative book, Jeff Halper explores Israel’s key role in the ‘global pacification industry’. The resulting alliances not only enable Israel to perpetuate the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip; the latter’s function as a human laboratory for Israel’s ‘matrix of control’ additionally make the occupation indispensable to Israel’s security industry and global positioning. War Against the People is an excellent, revealing and accessible examination of Israel’s ‘security politics’ and the changing nature of pacification worldwide in the twenty-first century.
(Mouin Rabbani, Senior Fellow with the Institute for Palestine Studies and Co-editor of Jadaliyya)

A brilliant book whose depth of political insight is driven by the spirit of one of the world’s most inspiring political activists. It lays out the way in which Israel’s war on the Palestinians has become both a model and the laboratory for a global war against the people.
(Eyal Weizman, Professor of Visual and Spatial Cultures and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London)

This profoundly important and well-researched study serves as a reminder that US-backed Israeli militarism and its devastating humanitarian impact is neither unique nor can it be seen in isolation. Halper convincingly argues that it is part of an even more disturbing global phenomenon that goes well beyond Israel and which threatens the lives and civil liberties not just of Palestinians, but of people around the world.
(Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and Coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies, University of San Francisco)