EARLY in the Gaza genocide, left-wing activist and author Andrew Feinstein was asked on a podcast by a Palestinian journalist who had lost loved ones in an airstrike: “Who made the bomb that killed my family?”.
It’s the question he and colleagues at Shadow World Investigations have attempted to answer in the book Making A Killing: How The West Profits From Slaughter In Gaza And Yemen.
Feinstein, Ruth Rohde, and Jack Cinamon began work on the “chronicle of complicity” around 2017 with the initial intention of focusing on the conflict in Yemen but began probing the genocide in Gaza as well following the events of October 2023.
Due to be released in November in the UK, the book will ultimately reveal how much money has been made from arms exports involved in the atrocities that have played out in both countries and who exactly this money enriches.
“One of the Palestinian journalists we work with and whose family story is told in the book asked Andrew on a podcast ‘who made the bomb that killed my family?’, because he had lost almost his entire family in one airstrike on their home in Gaza,” Rohde told the Sunday National.
“That’s the question we’re trying to answer in a more comprehensive way, beyond just saying what NGOs often do [which is to say] 'this is company A that made this weapon and it was used here'.
“We go further and we say ‘how does it continue to be possible these weapons end up where they’re killing so many people?’"
She went on: “The book is a chronicle of complicity […] but it’s also a bit of a sense-making exercise for people in the West who have witnessed, with a lot of frustration, what’s been happening in Yemen and Gaza and how little difference sometimes it seems like we’re making. We hope it will be a resource for people to look for truth, accountability and reconciliation.”
With contributions from investigative journalists Paul Holden and Anna Stavrianakis, the book lays out the decades-long building of relationships between Western countries and Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that “centre on profit and weapons over people”.
The authors explain some of the background of the war in Yemen and the genocide in Palestine, presenting them alongside the stories of people who have experienced this history unfolding.
They then delve into the hard logistics of who makes weapons and how they are transported and illustrate how this is all sustained in “deeply corrupt relationships of money and power” before revealing how much has been made from arms exports in these conflicts.
The book traces precisely who this money enriches – from the CEOs and executives, the politicians and lobbyists, to the enormous asset management companies that now dominate the ownership of the global arms trade and whose holdings primarily benefit the richest 1% in the West.
Finally, the authors show how this money corrupts and constrains the so-called democracies in countries like the US and UK.
Feinstein said he hopes the revelations in the book will lead to real-world outcomes.
“Ideally what we would like to see is this book leading to legal action because we name individuals, we name companies, we name governments and institutions, and if there cannot be a reckoning for a genocide we’ve seen every day on our screens, then any form of rule of law is over in this world,” he told the Sunday National.
“That’s not to say that international law and the laws of war were the perfect edifice by any means – they were deeply problematic, and effectively saying ‘war’s great, just do it a bit nicely’. But now we’re even saying ‘stuff that – do whatever you want to whoever you want’.”
The Palestinian death toll since Hamas invaded Israel in October 2023 stands at well over 70,000 according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The civil war in Yemen between the rebel Houthi movement and the government is thought to have led to the deaths of 377,000 civilians.
Holden added: “What motivates us all [is] a deep sense of moral anger around the fact we’ve had two conflicts – a genocide and a litany of war crimes in Yemen – which were facilitated and enabled by actors we can identify who walk among us and who have never been held to account, and if we don’t hold them to account now, they will just do it again.”
One individual the authors discuss in detail in the book is former UK prime minister Tony Blair and the lack of accountability seen over events such as the invasion of Iraq.
Often now deemed a so-called expert on the Middle East, Making A Killing shows how Blair has built his wealth on the back of the invasion, with Feinstein describing him as “one of the world’s most shameless and brazen war profiteers”.
The book will aim to highlight how there are many others just like him.
“If we look at what is causing these constant wars, we really see it as two primary things. First is government policy – we have deeply militaristic, and what some would describe as imperialistic, governments across the West,” Feinstein said.
“We believe we have certain rights in the world because of our histories, and there is a profound militarism that drives it.
“One of the things that further incentivises these geopolitics is that this trade, which is the most corrupt of all trades in the world, feeds our political systems.
"If you look at Tony Blair, who is worth hundreds of millions now, and you look at the way he’s constructed his wealth creation, it’s been directly and indirectly through the decision to invade Iraq, through his association with companies like BAE Systems, so there’s two intertwining aspects.”
Other sections of the book shed light on cutting-edge high-tech systems of information warfare and surveillance – delivered by the likes of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Palantir – as well as how people now referred to as “tech bros” are profiting from war.
“I’ve been doing this work [on the arms trade] for 25 years, and these are the most egregious, odious human beings I have ever worked on in my life, and they’re among the most powerful human beings on the planet today,” said Feinstein.
But as well as laying bare the eye-watering amounts the likes of politicians, companies and CEOs have made from horrors in Gaza and Yemen, Rohde said the team aim to detail the actions people can take to ensure justice is delivered and how we can prevent such atrocities in the future.
“One of the reasons this has been allowed to continue is the very entrenched relationships between the West and its closest allies in the Middle East, but we don’t want people thinking it's inevitable and nothing can be done,” she said.
“We have in the book a section on the kinds of actions that have been taken. We want to drive education and we want people to give this to people in their lives who maybe don’t know much about what’s been going on.
“The more we have a truly educated public on these issues [the better]. You never know who knows a policymaker who might be in a position where they have to make a call.”
