September 16,
2024
It is deeply
troubling that Israel has been allowed to join the first global treaty on
artificial intelligence (AI)—an agreement meant to regulate AI’s responsible
use while upholding human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. For 11
consecutive months, Israel has weaponized AI in its genocide in Gaza, deploying
AI-driven surveillance and automated targeting systems that have inflicted
devastating civilian harm. Yet, Israel is now celebrating its participation in
this treaty alongside the U.S., U.K., and EU, after spending two years at the
negotiating table and helping draft the first international AI treaty for
ethical AI governance. This contradiction exposes glaring hypocrisy and raises
serious questions about the international community’s true commitment to
accountability.
Destruction in the vicinity of al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, April 2,
2024. (Photo: © Omar Ishaq/dpa via ZUMA Press/APA Images)
This treaty
applies primarily to public sector AI but also addresses private sector risks.
The signatories of the treaty agree to uphold principles like transparency,
accountability, and non-discrimination, and commit to establishing remedies for
AI-related human rights violations. The treaty mandates risk assessments,
mitigation measures, and graded obligations based on specific contexts,
ensuring flexibility in its application.
Since the
beginning of this ongoing genocide, Israel has been weaponizing AI and advanced
technologies to carry out the massive and indiscriminate killing of civilians.
The Apartheid state has harnessed AI for surveillance, targeting, and
decision-making. Israel has intensified its efforts to control and oppress the
people in the Gaza Strip, continuing a long history of systematic oppression of
the Palestinian people. This misuse of technology raises profound concerns,
leading to devastating consequences for innocent lives caught in the crossfire.
Unlike the “AI
for the common good” agenda outlined in global AI treaties, Israel’s AI program
“Lavender” has emerged as a dark centerpiece of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Just two weeks into the war, Lavender’s kill lists were automatically approved,
targeting suspected militants—including many low-ranking members of Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad—with minimal human oversight. In the early weeks of
the war, Lavender flagged up to 37,000 Palestinians and their homes as bombing
targets. This weaponization of AI has led to devastating civilian casualties,
as Lavender’s broad and error-prone criteria resulted in indiscriminate attacks
on homes, causing a horrific death toll. Unlike other systems such as “The
Gospel,” which targets buildings, Lavender focuses on individuals, magnifying
the tragedy of its missteps.
While the
international treaty champions the responsible use of AI, upholding human
rights and the rule of law, Israel’s AI system “Habsora,” or “The Gospel,”
stands in stark contrast. Deployed since the onset of the Gaza war, Habsora
acts as a highly automated target generation tool for Israeli military
operations. Capable of swiftly producing target lists, it facilitates extensive
strikes on residential homes, including those of low-ranking Hamas members.
Since October 7, Habsora has led to significant civilian casualties, with
strikes often hitting homes without confirmed militant presence. The system’s
broad targeting criteria and minimal oversight have resulted in massive
destruction, as well as the erasure of the Gaza Strip’s geographic features,
and the annihilation of its people.
Prior to this
war, and in the last two years, while the surveillance state was contributing
to drafting the Convention agenda, Israel was not idle but rather
systematically automating its apartheid system. From the so-called ‘smart
shooter’ in Hebron to facial recognition technologies, it has weaponized
groundbreaking technologies to target and kill Palestinians.
Between 2020 and
2021, investigations revealed Israel’s increasing reliance on advanced
surveillance and predictive technologies to control Palestinians. This digital
oversight, part of a broader strategy, operates both as a means of repression
and as a commercial venture, with Israel testing its surveillance techniques on
Palestinians before marketing them to repressive regimes globally. The
surveillance state employs extensive surveillance, including facial recognition
and automated tracking systems like “Blue Wolf” and “Red Wolf,” to monitor and
intrude on Palestinian daily life. These technologies, coupled with Israel’s
control over the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure,
intensify the sense of constant scrutiny, infringing on privacy and stifling
freedom of expression, as well as threatening the Palestinian accessibility to
the Internet, and shutting it down whenever the oppressive state decides to
cover up its war crimes. This approach not only reinforces the Automated Apartheid
but also serves as a troubling example of how AI among other technologies have
been weaponized to serve the securitization and militarization of an Apartheid
state, which has now been given, on a golden platter, the opportunity to shape
and join the first AI treaty.
Israel’s
participation in the first global AI treaty, intended to promote ethical AI use
and uphold human rights, starkly contrasts with its actual practices. For
months, Israel has used advanced AI systems like “Lavender” and “Habsora” to
target and kill civilians in Gaza, all while celebrating its role in drafting a
treaty that claims to ensure responsible AI governance. This contradiction not
only exposes a troubling hypocrisy but also raises serious questions about the
international community’s commitment to genuine accountability. As Israel
continues to exploit AI for oppression, it undermines the very principles the
treaty was meant to uphold. The world must scrutinize this disparity and hold
Israel into account to prevent the abuse of technology and protect human rights
globally.
Alastair Crooke
Israel is entering the next phase of
its war on Palestine by completing its takeover of the Gaza Strip – from the
northern border to the Netzarim corridor. It is likely that they intend for
this area to then gradually be made available for Jewish settlement and
annexation to Israel.
In a piece titled, “Annexation,
Expulsion and Israeli Settlements: Netanyahu Gears Up for Next Phase of Gaza
War”, the Editor of Haaretz, Aluf Benn, writes, were the takeover to proceed,
“Palestinian residents who remain in northern Gaza will be expelled, as
suggested by Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, under threat of starvation and
under cover of “protecting their lives””. Netanyahu and his supporters will see
this move, Benn suggests, as a lifetime achievement: Expanding Israel’s
territory for the first time, after 50 years of Israeli withdrawals. This will
be the Israeli Right’s ‘Zionist response’ to 7 October.
This extraordinary shift was
actuated – not just through military operations – but by the stroke of a pen:
the appointment of Col. Elad Goren as head of the humanitarian-civil effort in
Gaza, which effectively, makes him ‘Governor of Gaza’ for years to come.
Less noted in the western Mainstream
media is the harsh reality that, in the course of the twenty months in which
the current Israeli government has been in power, Ben Gvir has armed a 10,000
strong settler vigilante movement that has been terrorising Palestinians in the
West Bank. The police in the occupied territories already answer to Ben Gvir’s
authority.
What is missing from this
appreciation is that whilst Ben Gvir has been assembling the ‘State Of Judea’s
novel army’, Finance Minister Smotrich, who heads the Administration of the
Territories, has revolutionized the situation for Jewish settlers and Palestinians
in the West Bank. Authority in the West Bank has been turned-over to a closed,
Right-wing messianic movement that answers only to a single man: Smotrich (the
Governor of the West Bank in all but name).
In what Nahum Barnea describes as a
stealth pincer-movement deployed by Smotrich, one arm of power has lain with
his authority as finance minister; the second arm consists in the power
delegated to him in his capacity as second minister in the Defence Ministry.
Smotrich’s, and the Israeli government’s objective – laid out in Smotrich’s
‘Decisive Plan’ in 2017 – has not changed: to induce the collapse of the
Palestinian Authority; to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state; and
to give the seven million Palestinians who live between the Jordan River and
the Mediterranean Sea a choice: to die fighting; to immigrate to another
country, or to live forever as vassals in a greater Israeli state.
Have no doubt, ‘the Decisive Plan’
for Palestinians is well underway – terrorising West Bankers to quit their
land; the destruction of social infrastructure in the West Bank (as with Gaza);
and through a harsh financial squeeze on Palestinian society – as in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s obfuscation about the
likely future of Gaza needs little further explanation. The Palestinians in
northern Gaza will face the fate of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh: They
were expelled overnight from the region a year ago, in a rapid move by
Azerbaijanis. The world saw this, and simply ‘moved on’ – in the Israeli
understanding of history. Netanyahu preferred to stay with a ‘small lie’ about
Gaza’s future, rather than say the big truth out loud.
With Netanyahu’s statement last week
on U.S. Fox News ‘that no deal for the release of hostages from Gaza is in the
making; nor even close to being sealed. And by adding that the positive vibes
(mostly emanating from Washington) were ‘false narratives’, Netanyahu
effectively launched the next phase in Israel’s war: Military action in the
north of Israel, aimed at creating the conditions for the return of its
displaced residents. These three Israeli components (north Gaza, the West Bank,
and Lebanon) mesh together. In fact, they are interlinked:
In the absence of a ‘diplomatic
agreement’ in which Hizbullah would be removed from the border region (and to
not return), Israel, by force of logic, has but two options: a Gaza ceasefire
that might pacify its northern border, or a deliberate escalation in the north,
with all its ramifications.
The notion that Hizballah would be
‘coaxed’ away from Lebanon’s border was always ‘pie-in-the-sky’. The prospects
for a Gaza deal, the mediators now say, are ‘next to zero’, so Israel’s
attention has turned northwards.
General Gantz, Chair of the National
Unity opposition party – in Washington for the Middle East America Dialogue
(MEAD) summit – and a critic of Netanyahu’s government, nonetheless seemed
reconciled to the inevitable: “The story of Hamas is old news”, he said. “The
story of Iran and its proxies all around the area and what they are trying to
do is the real issue … The military focus should shift from Gaza to Lebanon”,
adding that “we’re late on this”. “The time for [action in] the north has
come”.
U.S. General Kurilla, who commands
U.S. forces in the region, arrived at the weekend in Israel – his second visit
in a week – to complete ‘coordination with the IDF in anticipation of any
possible retaliatory Iranian and Hizbullah attack’.
Washington, though committed to
support Israel in any conflict with Iran or Hizbullah, nonetheless is worried.
Senior American officials expressed fear in recent days that a full-scale war
against Hezbollah will lead to huge damage to the Israeli home front,
especially if Iran and others from the Resistance Alliance join in.
Iran’s acquisition of advanced
Russian defence materiel has severely complicated the picture for the U.S.: It
may prove to be a game-changer when paired with Iran’s stock pile of advanced
strike missiles. Modern war has passed through a revolution. Western air
dominance has been check-mated.
The U.S. (unwisely) is committed to
engage in any conflict that extends to Lebanon and Iran – and this, per se,
likely would threaten Kamala Harris’ election prospects, as anger mounts
amongst Muslim voters in key U.S. swing states.
There is also more than a hint of
suspicion in Washington that Netanyahu would relish both hurting Biden–Harris,
and throwing the election to Trump.
Netanyahu’s ‘Great Victory’ plan to
clear Greater Israel of Palestinians is unfolding, however crushing Hizbullah
remains outstanding. Are all these ‘victories’ remotely feasible? No. They risk
rather, the collapse of Israel (as authoritative commentators such as
Major-General Brick have made clear). It is however feasible, that Netanyahu
will try to execute it. The Kahanist spirit lives on, and is today mainstream
in Israel.
This prospect casts the dark pall of
a huge black swan circling overhead the Middle East, for the months until the
U.S. election.
So too, does the Ukraine war contain
the seeds of an unexpected unpleasant surprise.
President Putin this week, at the
Vladivostok Eastern Economic Forum, suggested that the Ukraine war too, is at
an inflection point – on a par with that of the Middle East: Russia has turned
the tables on the U.S. through its response to the Kursk incursion into Russia.
Russian forces seized on the the
folly of Ukraine’s deployment of its crack brigades and prized Western armour
into a forested, lightly populated, confinement cage – and settled down to a
leisurely ‘turkey-shoot’.
Moscow refused the bait to draw down
Russian reserves on the Donbas front to deploy into Kursk. And Putin clarified,
with quiet confidence, in Vladivostok that Zelensky “accomplished nothing from
the Kursk offensive. The Russian forces have stabilised the situation in Kursk
and started pushing the enemy from border territories, whilst the Donbass
offensive has made impressive territorial gains”.
For the sake of clarity, Putin said
the enemy is suffering very heavy losses, both in manpower and equipment. This
situation, he underlined, could lead to the collapse of the front in the most
critical areas, and result in the complete loss of combat capability of its
entire armed forces.
Putin may insist that, as always, he
is open to dialogue; but his words at the end of that sentence were stark – a
collapse, “which is what we were striving for” (referring to the complete loss
of Ukrainian combat capability). These are seven key words.
To extrapolate, with the complete
collapse of combat capability almost certainly comes the unravelling of the
political architecture that is uniquely levered upon those military
capabilities – and not on any political legitimacy.
What Moscow cannot foresee is how,
or in what form, that unravelling might take.
The Kiev political structures likely
will continue their zombie existence, albeit one stripped of their raison
d’être for as long as the Biden Administration can manage it – for the sake of
saving face until elections.
President Putin may ‘talk the talk’
of mediation, but Moscow well understands that the power structure in Kiev was
drawn from the pool of racist ant-Slavs, precisely to block any accord with
Moscow. Mediation is bound to be rebuffed – that was Washington’s purpose in
empowering the Stefan Banderista bloc from the outset.
An unravelling of the Kiev political
structures, however, probably renders all the ‘would-be mediators’ unnecessary.
Put frankly, a new (cleansed)
dispensation in Kiev likely would conclude that it has little option other than
capitulation on the battlefront, to offer formal neutrality and limits to
future militarisation. And Moscow is quite able to discuss ‘that’ with
Ukrainians, without ‘help’ from outside.
Of course, a chorus will arise that
the U.S. will not be able to accept the complete collapse of Ukraine’s military
capabilities – In the run-up to the November elections, that is quite true
(rhetorically). That is why Putin keeps the ‘mediation narrative’ alive.
There is the BRICS summit ahead (in
Russia, in late October) which needs managing. The West will push mediation
until the last, in order to keep the existing Russophobic Kiev regime on life
support for as long as possible – and to keep the frozen-conflict notion to the
fore in the mind of some BRICS attendees. However, the frozen-conflict proposal
is a trap to lay foundations for a future platform of pressures on Russia.
The U.S. and UK intelligence service
chiefs may toy with the idea of striking deep inside Russia with ATACMS, but
the resort to measures (frankly) aimed to terrorise the Russian civilian
population, and to undermine Putin’s popularity, serves more to underline
western strategic failure. Yet again, the West has failed to stand up a
credible military force to overthrow a target, even one painted in full demonic
hues.
The war is lost, and the struggle to
keep the ‘enforced pretending’ going is breaking through, to be seen by all as
a false reality.
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