Israel, World Capital of Homeland Security Industries - Shir Hever on Reality Asserts Itself

[Jefferson23]

Mr. Hever says Israel sells weapons and equipment of repression to countries with extreme inequality

July 11, 2014

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. This is Reality Asserts Itself with our guest in the studio, Shir Hever.

Thanks for joining us, Shir.

SHIR HEVER, ECONOMIST, ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER: Thanks for having me.

JAY: So, one more time, Shir is an economist. He's researching for the Alternative Information Center, a Palestinian-Israeli organization. He's also, I should have said in the earlier introductions--I haven't yet said he's working on his PhD right now, living in Germany. But his first book, it was--came out in 2010--was titled Political Economy of Israel's Occupation: Repression beyond Exploitation.

And a lot of your work has been about the Israeli security state. I guess one of the things that doesn't get talked about enough--at least maybe we do on the The Real News, but not much elsewhere--is how much money gets made out of the security needs of Israel or the perceived security needs of Israel. Talk about how important all that is to the Israeli economy, particularly the Israeli elite.

HEVER: There was a sort of wave shape in the amount of dependency of Israel on the security economy and the military economy. During the Cold War years, especially in the '80s, there was a peak in massive investment in security and exports, and the Israeli industrial force was over 20 percent working for the military industry one way or another. Then that collapsed, especially during the '90s. There's a big shift to different sectors. Many of these big companies underwent a very severe crisis.

in full: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12101