‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
thousands of Palestinians — most of them women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting — were wiped out by Israeli airstrikes, especially during the first weeks of the war, because of the AI program’s decisions.
The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.
By Yuval Abraham, April 3, 202, + 972 Magazine,
In 2021, a book titled “The Human-Machine Team: How to Create Synergy Between Human and Artificial Intelligence That Will Revolutionize Our World” was released in English under the pen name “Brigadier General Y.S.” In it, the author — a man who we confirmed to be the current commander of the elite Israeli intelligence unit 8200 — makes the case for designing a special machine that could rapidly process massive amounts of data to generate thousands of potential “targets” for military strikes in the heat of a war. Such technology, he writes, would resolve what he described as a “human bottleneck for both locating the new targets and decision-making to approve the targets.”
Such a machine, it turns out, actually exists. A new investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals that the Israeli army has developed an artificial intelligence-based program known as “Lavender,” unveiled here for the first time. According to six Israeli intelligence officers, who have all served in the army during the current war on the Gaza Strip and had first-hand involvement with the use of AI to generate targets for assassination, Lavender has played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war. In fact, according to the sources, its influence on the military’s operations was such that they essentially treated the outputs of the AI machine “as if it were a human decision.”
Formally, the Lavender system is designed to mark all suspected operatives in the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), including low-ranking ones, as potential bombing targets. The sources told +972 and Local Call that, during the first weeks of the war, the army almost completely relied on Lavender, which clocked as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants — and their homes — for possible air strikes.
During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.
Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called “Where’s Daddy?” also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences.
The result, as the sources testified, is that thousands of Palestinians — most of them women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting — were wiped out by Israeli airstrikes, especially during the first weeks of the war, because of the AI program’s decisions.
“We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,” A., an intelligence officer, told +972 and Local Call. “On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
The Lavender machine joins another AI system, “The Gospel,” about which information was revealed in a previous investigation by +972 and Local Call in November 2023, as well as in the Israeli military’s own publications. A fundamental difference between the two systems is in the definition of the target: whereas The Gospel marks buildings and structures that the army claims militants operate from, Lavender marks people — and puts them on a kill list.
In addition, according to the sources, when it came to targeting alleged junior militants marked by Lavender, the army preferred to only use unguided missiles, commonly known as “dumb” bombs (in contrast to “smart” precision bombs), which can destroy entire buildings on top of their occupants and cause significant casualties. “You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs],” said C., one of the intelligence officers. Another source said that they had personally authorized the bombing of “hundreds” of private homes of alleged junior operatives marked by Lavender, with many of these attacks killing civilians and entire families as “collateral damage.”
The following investigation is organized according to the six chronological stages of the Israeli army’s highly automated target production in the early weeks of the Gaza war. First, we explain the Lavender machine itself, which marked tens of thousands of Palestinians using AI. Second, we reveal the “Where’s Daddy?” system, which tracked these targets and signaled to the army when they entered their family homes. Third, we describe how “dumb” bombs were chosen to strike these homes.
Fourth, we explain how the army loosened the permitted number of civilians who could be killed during the bombing of a target. Fifth, we note how automated software inaccurately calculated the amount of non-combatants in each household. And sixth, we show how on several occasions, when a home was struck, usually at night, the individual target was sometimes not inside at all, because military officers did not verify the information in real time.
STEP 1: GENERATING TARGETS
‘Once you go automatic, target generation goes crazy
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… once the list was expanded to include tens of thousands of lower-ranking operatives, the Israeli army figured it had to rely on automated software and artificial intelligence. The result, the sources testify, was that the role of human personnel in incriminating Palestinians as military operatives was pushed aside, and AI did most of the work instead……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
STEP 2: LINKING TARGETS TO FAMILY HOMES
‘Most of the people you killed were women and children’
…………………………… in the case of systematic assassination strikes, the army routinely made the active choice to bomb suspected militants when inside civilian households from which no military activity took place.
…………………………………………………….. these programs track thousands of individuals simultaneously, identify when they are at home, and send an automatic alert to the targeting officer, who then marks the house for bombing. One of several of these tracking softwares, revealed here for the first time, is called “Where’s Daddy?”
………………………………. Evidence of this policy is also clear from the data: during the first month of the war, more than half of the fatalities — 6,120 people — belonged to 1,340 families, many of which were completely wiped out while inside their homes, according to UN figures.
………………………………….. “In the end it was everyone [marked by Lavender],” one source explained. “Tens of thousands…………………………. Lavender and systems like Where’s Daddy? were thus combined with deadly effect, killing entire families, sources said………………………………………………
STEP 3: CHOOSING A WEAPON
‘We usually carried out the attacks with “dumb bombs”’
……………………………. In December 2023, CNN reported that according to U.S. intelligence estimates, about 45 percent of the munitions used by the Israeli air force in Gaza were “dumb” bombs, which are known to cause more collateral damage than guided bombs.
…………………….. we usually carried out the attacks with dumb bombs, and that meant literally destroying the whole house on top of its occupants. But even if an attack is averted, you don’t care — you immediately move on to the next target. Because of the system, the targets never end. You have another 36,000 waiting.”
STEP 4: AUTHORIZING CIVILIAN CASUALTIES
‘We attacked almost without considering collateral damage’
…………………………………………………………………………….. Sources told +972 and Local Call that now, partly due to American pressure, the Israeli army is no longer mass-generating junior human targets for bombing in civilian homes. The fact that most homes in the Gaza Strip were already destroyed or damaged, and almost the entire population has been displaced, also impaired the army’s ability to rely on intelligence databases and automated house-locating programs.
……………………………………………………………………………… ‘Entire families were killed’
Intelligence sources told +972 and Local Call they took part in even deadlier strikes. In order to assassinate Ayman Nofal, the commander of Hamas’ Central Gaza Brigade, a source said the army authorized the killing of approximately 300 civilians, destroying several buildings in airstrikes on Al-Bureij refugee camp on Oct. 17, based on an imprecise pinpointing of Nofal.
………………………………………………………………………………………………… Such a high rate of “collateral damage” is exceptional not only compared to what the Israeli army previously deemed acceptable, but also compared to the wars waged by the United States in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. ……………………………………………………………………………
STEP 5: CALCULATING COLLATERAL DAMAGE
‘The model was not connected to reality’
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… “the collateral damage calculation was completely automatic and statistical” — even producing figures that were not whole numbers.
STEP 6: BOMBING A FAMILY HOME
‘You killed a family for no reason’
The sources who spoke to +972 and Local Call explained that there was sometimes a substantial gap between the moment that tracking systems like Where’s Daddy? alerted an officer that a target had entered their house, and the bombing itself — leading to the killing of whole families even without hitting the army’s target. “It happened to me many times that we attacked a house, but the person wasn’t even home,” one source said. “The result is that you killed a family for no reason.”……………………………………………………………………. https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
The Mutually Reinforcing U.S. and Israeli Empires
By Ralph Nader, April 5, 2024, https://nader.org/2024/04/05/the-mutually-reinforcing-u-s-and-israeli-empires/
The U.S. government’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s annihilation of Gaza – torrents of heavy weaponry, diplomatic and political cover, and vast majorities in Congress swearing fealty to Netanyahu’s extremist regime – is usually attributed to AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the powerful domestic pro-Israeli government lobby, organized in every Congressional District, with its abundant campaign cash and its many personal contacts in Congress and the Executive Branch.
This is only a partial explanation of the US-Israel alliance. A far more formidably entrenched factor is that Israel and the U.S. have overlapping Empires – one in the Middle East and the other globally – with deep common purposes. Here are some examples of how these empires operate in tandem.
Both Empires violate international laws with impunity. The U.S. sends special forces, drones, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, anywhere and anytime it wants – especially the case of Iraq and Afghanistan. National boundaries and sovereignty mean nothing. Similarly, Israel completely dominates the Middle East militarily, bombing, sabotaging, and killing whomever it wants in neighboring countries. It has attacked Lebanon and Syria routinely with its air force, artillery, and invaded Lebanon on the ground, prompting feeble responses it always labels “terrorism.”
Both Empires consider every military operation defensive. They say they never conduct offensive attacks, but when they do, they invariably describe them as self-defense. Israel slaughters Palestinians decade after decade in the Palestinian territories while claiming self-defense. With the second most modern military in the world, backed by the U.S., Israel invades, engages in nightly destruction of Palestinian homes, seizes Palestinian land and water for their colonies, imprisons thousands without charges, including women and children, inflicts collective punishment, operates many checkpoints and imposes embargoes, sieges and blockades. All of these unlawful actions are claimed to be taken in the name of self-defense.
The U.S. has 750 military bases in over 80 countries, 26 military installations in the Middle East, runs the provocative NATO military alliance, and digs into the South China Sea. All this is also claimed to be done in the name of self-defense.
Both Empires have collaborating military-industrial complexes and are major arms exporters. As the chief innovator in weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. and its companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing welcome feedback from the Israeli military on how their weapons fare in its attacks. Palestine has become a major testing ground for the most super-modern surveillance technology. (Check out the book, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World by Antony Loewenstein, 2023).
Both Empires wield “force projection” as atomic bomb powers, though Israel refuses to join the non-proliferation treaty.
Despite their many wars and raids on defenseless populations, both incurred a rare counter-attack (9/11 & October 7) when advance warnings by advisors were ignored (GW Bush and Netanyahu) and military defenses were AWOL. After being attacked, both Empires went berserk and responded with massive killing of civilians by overwhelming invasions.
Both Empires lie repeatedly regarding their tactics and strategies. Recall Rep. Ron Paul’s terse recognition that Bush and Cheney “lied us into invading Iraq.”
Both Empires control the United Nations Security Council with the U.S. veto shielding whatever Israel does. Both occupy or control land that is not theirs, violating international laws.
Both Empires violate their legal duty as occupiers to protect the civilian population’s well-being. Both have restricted humanitarian assistance and critical civilian imports – Israel savagely in Gaza and Palestine, and the U.S. in Iraq under Bill Clinton. Both decline to estimate their aggregate civilian casualties.
Both Empires’ leaders, Biden and Netanyahu, profess to practice their respective religions, though they are violating the basic precepts of both their religions in implementing their violent wars.
Both Empires spend little time pressing for ceasefires, peace negotiations, and the stability of peace treaties. They find such restraints as unacceptable curbs on their freedom to wage war.
Both Empires, contrary to their fundamental juridical documents, in the case of the U.S., our Constitution, operate as elected dictatorships in conducting military and foreign policy. The Congress and the Knesset become supine and surrender to the Executive and, for Israel, the ruling executive coalition. In the U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court has long ruled that no citizens of our country, not even individual members of Congress, “have legal standing to sue” the U.S. government for either initiating illegal wars or engaging in additional illegal tactics like torture or corruption.
To remove the challenges from “We the People” against a lawless government, the Supreme Court has endorsed the “state secrets” doctrine. It authorizes the government to demand the dismissal of constitutional claims, in federal court, based on killings, torture, kidnapping, or otherwise by alleging the defense would require disclosure of national security information.
The Israeli Supreme Court doesn’t worry about the Israeli military machine.
Both Empires have a so-called free mainstream media that mostly toes the Empire party line and knows its permissible place in the overall profit-making power structure. Both have a small independent media that is still able to dissent, however futilely, though the U.S. has no counterpart to the outspoken Israeli newspaper HAARETZ.
There are some differences between the two Empires. Israel attacked the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 171, and mostly got away without consequences. (See, The Intercept article: Fifty Years Later, NSA Keeps Details of Israel’s USS Liberty Attack Secret by Miriam Pensack).
Prosperous Israel persuades the U.S. Congress yearly to provide Israel with billions of dollars, mostly for military arms, and is about to get an additional $14.1 billion – the Biden genocide tax on Americans – as Netanyahu’s terror state continues intensifying his Palestinian Holocaust. (The reported casualty toll is lethally undercounted. See the March 5, 2024 column: “Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza”).
If Biden’s people privately object to some Israeli off-the-wall slaughter of courageous journalists, United Nations staff, aid workers, patients in hospitals, and the starvation of babies, Netanyahu can softly say to Biden and Blinken, “Joe, Tony, why don’t you take up your complaints with OUR Congress.”
Patrick Lawrence: ‘Automated Murder’: Israel’s ‘AI’ in Gaza
In the Lavender case, the data it produced were accepted and treated as if they had been generated by a human being without any actual human oversight or independent verification.
A second AI system, sadistically named “Where’s Daddy?”—and how sick is this?—was then used to track Hamas suspects to their homes. The IDF intentionally targeted suspected militants while they were with their families, using unguided missiles or “dumb” bombs. This strategy had the advantage of enabling Israel to preserve its more expensive precision-guided weapons, or “smart” bombs.
“intelligent” weapons proven effective in Gaza were major attractions when Israel marketed them last month at the Singapore Airshow, East Asia’s biggest arms bazaar.
dehumanized, grotesquely technologized future
By Patrick Lawrence and Cara Marianna / Original to ScheerPost, April 9, 2024
ZURICH—“Technological change, while it helps humanity meet the challenges nature imposes upon us, leads to a paradigm shift: It leaves us less capable, not more, of using our intellectual capacities. It diminishes our minds in the long run. We strive to improve ourselves while risking a regression to the Stone Age if our ever more complex, ever more fragile technological infrastructure collapses.”
That is Hans Köchler, an eminent Viennese scholar and president of the International Progress Organization, a globally active think tank, addressing an audience here last Thursday evening, April 4. The date is significant: The day before Köchler spoke, +972 Magazine and Local Call, independent publications in Israel–Palestine, reported that as the Israel Defense Forces press their savage invasion of the Gaza Strip, they deploy an artificial intelligence program called Lavender that so far has marked some 37,000 Palestinians as kill targets. In the early weeks of the Israeli siege, according to the Israeli sources +972 cites, “the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based.”
Chilling it was to hear Köchler speak a couple of news cycles after +972 published these revelations, which are based on confidential interviews with six Israeli intelligence officers who have been directly involved in the use of AI to target Palestinians for assassination. “To use technologies to solve all our problems reduces our ability to make decisions,” Köchler asserted. “We’re no longer able to think through problems. They remove us from real life.”
Köchler titled his talk “The Trivialization of Public Space,” and his topic, broadly stated, was the impact of technologies such as digital communications and AI on our brains, our conduct, and altogether our humanity. It was sobering, to put the point mildly, to recognize that Israel’s siege of Gaza, bottomlessly depraved in itself, is an in-our-faces display of the dehumanizing effects these technologies have on all who depend on them.
Let us look on in horror, and let us see our future in it.
We see in the IDF, to make this point another way, a rupture in morality, human intelligence, and responsibility when human oversight is mediated by the algorithms that run AI systems. There is a break between causality and result, action and consequence. And this is exactly what advanced technologies have in store for the rest of humanity. Artificial intelligence, as Köchler put it, is not intelligence: “It is ‘simulated intelligence’ because it has no consciousness of itself.” It isn’t capable, he meant to say, of moral decision-making or ethical accountability.
In the Lavender case, the data it produced were accepted and treated as if they had been generated by a human being without any actual human oversight or independent verification. A second AI system, sadistically named “Where’s Daddy?”—and how sick is this?—was then used to track Hamas suspects to their homes. The IDF intentionally targeted suspected militants while they were with their families, using unguided missiles or “dumb” bombs. This strategy had the advantage of enabling Israel to preserve its more expensive precision-guided weapons, or “smart” bombs.
As one of +972’s sources told the magazine:
We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity… . On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.
Once Lavender identified a potential suspect, IDF operatives had about 20 seconds to verify that the target was a male before making the decision to strike. There was no other human analysis of the “raw intelligence data.” The information generated by Lavender was treated as if it was “an order,” sources told +972—an official order to kill. Given the strategy of targeting suspects in their homes, the IDF assigned acceptable kill ratios for its bombing campaigns: 20 to 30 civilians for each junior-level Hamas operative. For Hamas leaders with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, +972’s sources said, “the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander.”
In other words, Israeli policy, guided and assisted by AI technology, made it inevitable that thousands of civilians, many of them women and children, would be killed.
There appears to be no record of any other military deploying AI programs such as Lavender and Where’s Daddy? But it is sheer naïveté to assume this diabolic use of advanced technologies will not spread elsewhere. Israel is already the world’s leading exporter of surveillance and digital forensic tools. Anadolu, Turkey’s state-run news agency, reported as far back as February that Israel is using Gaza as a weapons-testing site so that it can market these tools as battle-tested. Antony Lowenstein, an author Anadolu quotes, calls this the marketing of “automated murder.”
And here we find ourselves: Haaretz, the Israeli daily, reported on April 5 that “intelligent” weapons proven effective in Gaza were major attractions when Israel marketed them last month at the Singapore Airshow, East Asia’s biggest arms bazaar. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
the Biden regime is culpable in inflicting these multiple wounds on humanity in one other dimension we must not miss. With its incessant attempts to suspend us in a virtual reality of its making, distant from what it is doing in our names, it leads us into the dehumanized, grotesquely technologized future Köchler describes just as surely as the Israelis do as they murder human beings wholesale with AI weapons and kill innocent children with remotely controlled sniper drones. https://scheerpost.com/2024/04/09/patrick-lawrence-automated-murder-israels-ai-in-gaza/
Israel Prepares For Potential Strike On Iranian Nuclear Sites
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202404108916
In the wake of last week’s airstrike in Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Israel has reportedly indicated its readiness to target Iranian assets should Iran launch a direct retaliatory attack.
According to a report by the London-based Elaph News, citing an “anonymous Western security official,” Israel has been conducting air force drills, specifically preparing to target Iranian nuclear facilities and other critical infrastructure.
The airstrike killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi, alongside six other senior members of the IRGC.
Although Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the strike, both Damascus and Tehran have blamed Israel.
However, unnamed US intelligence sources, as reported by CNN, suggest that Iran is unlikely to launch a direct attack, fearing retaliation from both the US and Israel.
Instead, Iran will more likely use its regional proxies, which since Iran-backed Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, have launched attacks from Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
Both Iran and its proxy groups, including Hezbollah, have pledged revenge for the strike. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s adviser has warned that Israeli embassies are no longer safe, while Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has promised an imminent Iranian response.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a recent security cabinet meeting, “Iran has been acting against us for years — directly and via proxies. And, therefore, Israel acts against Iran and its proxies — defensively and offensively”.
As the Israeli military bolsters its manpower and defenses, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced that Israel has “completed preparations for a response against any scenario that would develop against Iran.”
Israel’s ‘Where’s Daddy?’ AI system helps target suspected Hamas militants when they’re at home with their families, report says
Business Insider, Rebecca Rommen , Apr 7, 2024,
- An Israeli AI system called “Where’s Daddy?” tracks suspected Hamas militants to their homes.
- Civilians are often “collateral damage” in the following strikes, one unnamed officer told +972 Magazine and Local Call.
- The IDF has said it “makes various efforts to reduce harm to civilians to the extent feasible.”
…………………………………………………. (Subscribers only) https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-ai-system-wheres-daddy-strikes-hamas-family-homes-2024—
Death by Algorithm: Israel’s AI War in Gaza
April 10, 2024 by: Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/death-by-algorithm-israels-ai-war-in-gaza/
Remorseless killing at the initiation of artificial intelligence has been the subject of nail-biting concern for various members of computer-digital cosmos. Be wary of such machines in war and their displacing potential regarding human will and agency. For all that, the advent of AI-driven, automated systems in war has already become a cold-blooded reality, deployed conventionally, and with utmost lethality by human operators.
The teasing illusion here is the idea that autonomous systems will become so algorithmically attuned and trained as to render human agency redundant in a functional sense. Provided the targeting is trained, informed, and surgical, a utopia of precision will dawn in modern warfare. Civilian death tolls will be reduced; the mortality of combatants and undesirables will, conversely, increase with dramatic effect.
The staining case study that has put paid to this idea is the pulverising campaign being waged by Israel in Gaza. A report in the magazine +972 notes that the Israeli Defense Forces has indulgently availed itself of AI to identify targets and dispatch them accordingly. The process, however, has been far from accurate or forensically educated. As Brianna Rosen of Just Security accurately posits, “Rather than limiting harm to civilians, Israel’s use of AI bolsters its ability to identify, locate, and expand target sets which likely are not fully vetted to inflict maximum damage.”
The investigation opens by recalling the bombastically titled The Human-Machine Team: How to Create Human and Artificial Intelligence That Will Revolutionize Our World, a 2021 publication available in English authored by one “Brigadier General Y.S.”, the current commander of the Israeli intelligence unit 8200.
The author advances the case for a system capable of rapidly generating thousands of potential “targets” in the exigencies of conflict. The sinister and morally arid goal of such a machine would resolve a “human bottleneck for both locating new targets and decision-making to approve the targets.” Doing so not only dispenses with the human need to vet, check and verify the viability of the target but dispenses with the need to seek human approval for their termination.
The joint investigation by +972 and Local Call identifies the advanced stage of development of such a system, known to the Israeli forces as Lavender. In terms of its murderous purpose, this AI creation goes further than such lethal predecessors as “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which identifies purportedly relevant military buildings and structures used by militants. Even that form of identification did little to keep the death rate moderate, generating what a former intelligence officer described as a “mass assassination factory.”
Six Israeli intelligence officers, all having served during the current war in Gaza, reveal how Lavender “played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war.” The effect of using the AI machine effectively subsumed the human element while giving the targeting results of the system a fictional human credibility.
Within the first weeks of the war, the IDF placed extensive, even exclusive reliance on Lavender, with as many as 37,000 Palestinians being identified as potential Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants for possible airstrikes. This reliance signalled a shift from the previous “human target” doctrine used by the IDF regarding senior military operatives. In such cases, killing the individual in their private residence would only happen exceptionally, and only to the most senior identified individuals, all to keep in awkward step with principles of proportionality in international law. The commencement of “Operation Swords of Iron” in response to the Hamas attacks of October 7 led to the adoption of a policy by which all Hamas operatives in its military wing irrespective of rank would be designated as human targets.
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Officers were given expansive latitude to accept the kill lists without demur or scrutiny, with as little as 20 seconds being given to each target before bombing authorisation was given. Permission was also given despite awareness that errors in targeting arising in “approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.”
The Lavender system was also supplemented by using the emetically named “Where’s Daddy?”, another automated platform which tracked the targeted individuals to their family residences which would then be flattened. The result was mass slaughter, with “thousands of Palestinians – most of them women and children or people not involved in the fighting” killed by Israeli airstrikes in the initial stages of the conflict. As one of the interviewed intelligence officers stated with grim candour, killing Hamas operatives when in a military facility or while engaged in military activity was a matter of little interest. “On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
The use of the system entailed resorting to gruesome, and ultimately murderous calculi. Two of the sources interviewed claimed that the IDF “also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians.” Were the targets Hamas officials of certain seniority, the deaths of up to 100 civilians were also authorised.
In what is becoming its default position in the face of such revelations, the IDF continues to state, as reported in the Times of Israel, that appropriate conventions are being observed in the business of killing Palestinians. It “does not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives or tries to predict whether a person is a terrorist.” The process, the claim goes, is far more discerning, involving the use of a “database whose purpose is to cross-reference intelligence sources… on the military operatives of terrorist organizations.”
The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, stated how “deeply troubled” he was by reports that Israel’s bombing campaign had used “artificial intelligence as a tool in the identification of targets, particularly in densely populated residential areas, resulting in a high level of civilian casualties.” It might be far better to see these matters as cases of willing, and reckless misidentification, with a conscious acceptance on the part of IDF military personnel that enormous civilian casualties are simply a matter of course. To that end, we are no longer talking about a form of advanced, scientific war waged proportionately and with precision, but a technologically advanced form of mass murder.
Brutal, chaotic war – norms, conventions and laws of conduct are being erased
Alastair Crooke, April 8, 2024, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/04/08/brutal-chaotic-war-norms-conventions-and-laws-of-conduct-are-being-erased/—
We stand on the cusp of what might be termed Chaotic War. Not the formula often used by Israel to intimidate adversaries; this is different.
Israeli reporter Eddie Cohen said, in the wake of the attack on the Iranian Consulate: “We are very clear that we want to start a war with Iran and Hezbollah. Do you still not understand?”
“Israel wants to drag Iran into a full-scale war in order to be able to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities”, though these facilities are beyond American and Israeli reach, buried beneath mountains.
Cohen, and of course, Israel’s military leadership, will know that; but Israel nonetheless is locking itself into a logic that can only lead to defeat. Iran’s nuclear facilities are safe from Israeli assault. The destruction of civilian Iranian infrastructure, which is out in the open, may kill many, but will not, per se, collapse the Iranian state.
Trita Parsi places Israel’s objective in attacking the Iranian Consulate in Damascus in a different context:
“An important aspect of Israel’s conduct – and Biden’s acquiescence to it – is that Israel is engaged in a deliberate and systematic effort to destroy existing laws and norms around warfare.
Even during wartime, embassies are off-limits [yet] Israel just bombed an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus.
Bombing hospitals is a war crime, [yet] Israel has bombed EVERY hospital in Gaza. It has even assassinated doctors and patients inside hospitals.
The ICJ obligated Israel to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Israel actively prevents aid from coming in.
Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited under international humanitarian law. Israel has deliberately created a famine in Gaza.
Indiscriminate bombings are illegal under international humanitarian law. Biden himself admits that Israel is bombing Gaza indiscriminately”.
The list goes on and on … However, Israel’s breach of Vienna Convention immunity accorded to diplomatic premises – plus the stature of those killed – is highly significant. It is a major signal: Israel wants war – but with U.S. support, of course.
Israel’s aim, firstly, is to destroy the norms, conventions and laws of warfare; to create geo-political anarchy in which anything goes, and by which, with the White House frustrated, yet acquiescing to each norm of conduct obtrusively trodden underfoot, allows Netanyahu to grip the U.S. bridle and lead the White House horse to water – towards his regional End of Times ‘Great Victory’; a necessarily brutal war – beyond existing red lines and devoid of limits.
As symbolically significant as the Damascus attack is that the U.S., France and Britain – after a brief ‘hat tip’ to the Vienna Convention – refused to condemn the levelling of the Iranian Consulate, thus placing the shadow of doubt over the Vienna Convention’s immunity for diplomatic premises.
Implicitly, this refusal to condemn will be widely understood as a soft condoning of Israel’s first tentative step towards war with Hizbullah and Iran.
This Israeli chaotic ‘Biblical’ nihilism, however, bears no relationship in purely rational terms to Netanyahu’s aspiration for a ‘Great Victory’. The reality is that Israel has lost its deterrence. It won’t return; the deep anger across the Islamic world generated by Israel through its massacres in Gaza during the last six months precludes it.
Yet, there is a second, adjunct reason why Israel is set on deliberately flouting humanitarian law and norms: Israeli journalist, Yuval Abraham reports in +972 Magazine in great depth how Israel has developed a AI machine (called ‘Lavender’) to generate kill lists in Gaza – with almost no human verification; only a “rubber stamp” check of about “20 seconds” to make sure the AI target is male (as no females are known to belong to the Resistance’s military).
The blatant extra-legality behind the Gaza ‘kill list’ methodology, as reported by Abraham’s various sources, can only be immunised and sheltered through normalising them as but one amongst a general pattern of illegalities – and in effect, claiming sovereign exceptionalism:
“[T]he Israeli army systematically attacks the targeted individual whilst in their homes — usually at night whilst the whole family is present — rather than during the course of military activity … Additional automated systems, including one, [callously] called “Where’s Daddy?” were used – specifically to track targets when they had entered their family’s residences… However, when a home was struck, usually at night, the individual target was sometimes not inside at all”.
“The result is that thousands of Palestinians — most of them women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting — were wiped out by Israeli airstrikes, especially during the first weeks of the war, because of the AI program’s decisions”.
“”We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives when they were in a military building … or engaged in a military activity,” A., an intelligence officer, told +972 and Local Call. “On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation – as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations”.
In addition … when it came to targeting alleged junior militants marked by Lavender, the army preferred to only use unguided missiles, commonly known as “dumb” bombs (in contrast to “smart” precision bombs) which can destroy entire buildings on top of their occupants and cause significant casualties. “You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs]”.
“… The army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians … in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander – the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander”.
“Lavender — which was developed to create human targets in the current war — has marked some 37,000 Palestinians as suspected “Hamas militants”, most of them junior, for assassination (the IDF Spokesperson denied the existence of such a kill list in a statement to +972 and Local Call)”.
So, there it is – no wonder Israel might seek to camouflage the details within a normalised general array of transgressions against humanitarian law: “They wanted to allow us to attack [the junior operatives] automatically. That’s the Holy Grail. Once you go automatic, target generation goes crazy”.
it is not difficult to speculate what the ICJ might determine …
Does anyone imagine that this flawed Lavender AI machine would not be asked to churn out its kill lists, were Israel to decide to surge into Lebanon? (Another reason for normalising the procedures first in Gaza).
The key point made in the +972 Magazine report (with multiple sourcing) is that the IDF were not focussed on pin-point elimination of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades (as claimed):
“It was very surprising for me that we were asked to bomb a house to kill a ground soldier, whose importance in the fighting was so low”, said one source about the use of AI to mark alleged low-ranking militants:
“I nicknamed those targets ‘garbage targets.’ Still, I found them more ethical than the targets that we bombed just for ‘deterrence’ — high-rises that are evacuated and toppled just to cause destruction”.
This report makes clear nonsense of Israel’s claims to have dismantled 19 out of 24 Hamas Battalions: One source, critical of Lavender’s inaccuracy, points out the obvious flaw: “It’s a vague boundary”; How to tell a Hamas fighter from any other Gazan civilian male?
“At its peak, the system managed to generate 37,000 people as potential human targets”, said B. “But the numbers changed all the time, because it depends on where you set the bar of what a Hamas operative is. There were times when a Hamas operative was defined more broadly, and then the machine started bringing us all kinds of civil defence personnel, police officers, on whom it would be a shame to waste bombs”.
Just last week, War Cabinet member and Minister Ron Dermer, was delegated to travel to Washington to plead that the IDF success in dismantling 19 Hamas battalions justified an incursion into Rafah to dismantle the 4 to 5 battalions that Israel claims still remain in Rafah.
What is clear is that AI was a key Israeli tool to its Gaza ‘Victory’. Israel was going to sell a ‘smoke and mirrors story’ based on ‘Lavender’.
By contrast, Palestinians, who are aware of their quantitative inferiority, have a very different outlook: they switched to a new way of thinking that gives the simple act of resisting a civilisational meaning – a path to metaphysical victory (and quite possibly a kind of military victory), if not in their lifetimes, then for the Palestinian People, thereafter. This constitutes the asymmetrical nature of the conflict that Israel has never managed to understand.
Israel wants to be feared, believing this will restore its deterrence. Amira Hass writes that regardless of any revulsion for this government and its members: “The vast majority [of Israelis] still believe that war is the solution”. And Mairav Zonszein writing in Foreign Policy, notes that “The Problem Isn’t Just Netanyahu, It’s Israeli Society”:
“The focus on Netanyahu is a convenient distraction from the fact that the war in Gaza is not Netanyahu’s war, it is Israel’s war—and the problem isn’t only Netanyahu; it’s the Israeli electorate … A large majority—88 percent—of Jewish Israelis polled in January believe the astounding number of Palestinian deaths, which had surpassed 25,000 at the time, is justified. A large majority of the Jewish public also thinks that the [IDF] is using adequate or even too little force in Gaza … Putting all the blame on the prime minister misses the point. It disregards the fact that Israelis have long advanced, enabled, or come to terms with their country’s system of military occupation and dehumanization of Palestinians”.
Yet neither Israel, nor the U.S., has a comprehensive strategy for this mooted war. Israel’s approach is all tactical – claiming to have degraded Hamas; turning Gaza into a humanitarian hellscape and setting the scene for the “decisive plan” devised by Bezalel Smotrich for the Palestinians. Amira Hass again:
“Either agree to an inferior status, emigrate and be uprooted ostensibly voluntarily, or face defeat and death in a war. This is the plan now being carried out in Gaza and the West Bank – with most Israelis serving as active and enthusiastic accomplices, or passively acquiescing in its realisation”.
The U.S. ‘vision’ is also tactical (and far removed from reality) – Imagining the transformation of Gaza into a ‘Vichy collaborator’ statelet; imagining that political pressure by the French in Lebanon will force Hizbullah’s retreat from its ancestral lands in south Lebanon; and imagining that the Biden White House is able to achieve politically through pressure what Israel cannot do militarily.
The paradox is that, with Israel and the U.S. being dependent on an ‘image’ that has been confused with reality, this too works to Iran’s and the Resistance Front’s advantage. (As the old adage goes, ‘do not disturb an adversary who is making mistakes’).
As Support For Gaza Goes Mainstream, Don’t Let The Empire Co-Opt The Movement
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 06, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/as-support-for-gaza-goes-mainstream?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143329859&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Opposition to the slaughter in Gaza appears to be getting more mainstream, which is obviously great, but when political impulses go mainstream it means there’s going to be a massive and concerted effort to funnel public sentiment in a direction that doesn’t damage the interests of the empire.
They’re going to try to blame this all on Netanyahu.
They’re going to insist that Israel itself is fine and the only thing that went wrong was a fluke incident in which an aberrational right wing faction briefly got into power.
They’re going to try to wash the western empire’s hands of the mass atrocities it directly facilitated in Gaza.
They’re going to try to frame Biden as a basically decent politician who found himself trapped in an impossible situation.
They’re going to keep pretending a two-state solution is right around the corner and doing everything they can to stall out meaningful change on Palestinian rights, while blaming any obstacles to peace on the Palestinian resistance.
They’re going to pollute the information ecosystem with a deluge of messaging which is all designed to counter the notion that Gaza means the entire status quo needs to be overhauled — with regard to Israel-Palestine, with regard to US foreign policy, with regard to the US government itself, and with regard to the western power structure in general.
They’re going to say everything they need to say to ensure that everyone understands that the basic status quo in Israel, the United States and the western world is working perfectly fine, and this was all just an innocent little oopsie poopsie caused by a few bad apples.
They’ll justify, they’ll excuse, they’ll exonerate, and then they’ll distract, moving public attention on to the next big thing and allowing the amnesia of the daily news churn to wash Gaza from our attention — all while pretending to be on our side.
This messaging will need to be fought tooth and claw. We cannot allow them to neuter this political moment with spin and propaganda. We need to make sure their criminality remains front and center of public awareness, and we need to push for the real revolutionary changes that Gaza plainly proves are needed.
Let mainstream sentiment turn against the current Israeli regime and bring an end to the butchery in Gaza, but don’t let the imperial narrative managers co-opt anything. Don’t let them hijack the zeitgeist that’s been building.
View all words and actions of the western political-media class with aggressive skepticism, and push back forcefully every time they try to push public sentiment in a direction that advantages the empire.
Israel targeted aid convoy ‘car by car’ – charity founder
https://www.rt.com/news/595400-israel-targeted-aid-convoy-car-by-car/ 7 Apr 24
Jose Andres has dismissed the IDF’s claim that the deadly attack on the World Central Kitchen aid workers was a ‘mistake’
The Israeli attack that killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity group in Gaza was not a mistake, as the convoy was targeted “systematically, car by car,” the group’s founder and celebrity chef Jose Andres told Reuters on Wednesday.
Three Britons, a Polish national, an Australian, a Palestinian, and a dual US-Canadian citizen were killed in the incident, which has sparked international condemnation.
Israel’s military, the IDF, knew the aid convoy’s movements as there had been clear communication between the WCK and IDF, Andres said.
“This was not just a bad luck situation where ‘oops’ we dropped the bomb in the wrong place,” the chef told Reuters.
The convoy was made up of three cars, including two armored vehicles, which clearly displayed the WCK logo. All three were hit during the strike.
According to the chef, after the IDF attacked the first armored car, the team was able to escape and move to the second armored vehicle. The second car was then attacked, forcing the volunteers to move to the third.
The aid workers tried to communicate to make clear who they were, Reuters cites Andres, but the third car was then hit, “and we saw the consequences of that,” he concluded.
Andres’ account of the events echoes Tuesday’s report in the Haaretz newspaper that said that the IDF bombed the convoy three times intentionally, as it suspected that there was a Hamas operative among the aid workers.
The Israeli leadership apologized for the incident. IDF Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi called the incident a “grave mistake” and said the military had no intention of harming WCK aid workers. The general blamed the strike on misidentification. Israeli President Isaac Herzog expressed “deep sorrow and sincere apologies” to Andres. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested that such “tragic” and “unintended” incidents happen “in wartime.”
The air strike was condemned by Israel’s staunchest allies the US, UK, and other countries, including those whose nationals were among the dead.
According to the UN, at least 196 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s offensive six months ago. Hamas has previously accused Israel of targeting aid distribution sites, Reuters notes.
Israel declared war on Hamas after the Palestinian militants carried out a surprise cross-border raid on October 7 last year, killing some 1,100 people and taking more than 200 hostages. The Israeli military campaign has since left nearly 33,000 people dead, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Israel Lets Some Aid Into Gaza So The US Will Keep Giving It Weapons To Kill People In Gaza
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 06, 2024
Israel has generously and compassionately reopened the Erez crossing to allow aid into Gaza, as it is the only way to ensure that the US will keep sending them weapons to kill the people in Gaza.
Biden sent Netanyahu one warning about a failure to protect civilians possibly costing Israel its US support and the crossing opened immediately, which proves (A) that Israel has been intentionally starving Gazans by closing entrances off from aid and (B) that Biden could have ordered this to stop at any time.
The Biden administration approved another weapons package for Israel on the same day Israel killed a bunch of international aid workers in Gaza and bombed the Iranian consulate in Syria. But please, tell me more about how frustrated and angry and outraged and upset Biden’s feelings are feeling toward Israel.
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The huge amount of western outrage and sympathy we’re seeing over the IDF assassination of an international aid convoy compared to the systematic extermination of Palestinians we’ve seen over the last six months confirms the west only regards white people as full human beings, which is a point we’d already seen driven home by the disproportionate amount of outrage and sympathy we saw over Ukraine.
But you know what? We’ll take it. Things are that desperate that if you can only support an end to the Gaza genocide if you see six westerners get killed, I say welcome aboard anyway. Hopefully this is the beginning of the formation of an actual conscience that’s worth a damn.
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The mass media are reporting that the preliminary IDF debrief into the killing of several World Central Kitchen employees in Gaza has found that the multiple strikes were not carried out with the intention of killing those workers, a report which if you ask me has big “CIA Says It Has Found No Link Between Itself and Crack Trade” energy.
Haaretz has a new article out titled “At Singapore Airshow, the Gaza War Was a Selling Point for Israeli Weapon Manufacturers,” which is exactly what it sounds like. One of the ugliest things about this dystopia is that acts of mass military slaughter are always immensely profitable for a specific industry. They’re profitable in and of themselves, even before you add in things like land and resource grabs, just by helping to market and sell more weapons.
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Stop calling this a “war”. A war doesn’t involve conversations about whether or not a walled-in population should be allowed to have food, medicine and electricity. If you have that much control over a population, you can’t be at war with it. You’re just killing a bunch of prisoners.
Biden and his cohorts aren’t mad at Netanyahu for committing a genocide, they’re mad at Netanyahu for not hiding a genocide………………………………………..more https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-lets-some-aid-into-gaza-so?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143320632&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
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British Rebellion Grows Against Arming Israel
London’s mayor, 50 Labour MPs and Winston Churchill’s grandson have joined widening calls to defy Israel’s impunity by demanding the U.K. stop sending it arms, reports Joe Lauria
Joe Lauria, in Bradford, England, Consortium News, April 4, 2024
Even Winston Churchill’s grandson is calling for Britain to stop shipping arms to Israel.
Asked whether it was time for Britain to stop sending weapons to Israel after it killed seven international aid workers this week, the Conservative peer Lord Nicholas Soames said, “It’s probably time that that happened now, yes, I think if we’re determined to show that we are not prepared to countenance these ongoing disasters.”
The rebellion within British ruling circles against knee-jerk support for is Israel is spreading after the killing of the aid workers and after leaked audio recordings on Saturday revealed the British government is ignoring the advice of its own lawyers not to continue supplying weapons to Israel for its Gaza operation without risking complicity in crimes against humanity.
[It took Westerners, including three Britons, being killed to spur this action after more than 32,000 Palestinians are dead. It also forced Israel on Friday to sack two military officers and reprimand two top commanders for “serious” errors in killing the aid workers, who were in marked cars. There’s nothing like the fear of an arms cutoff to make Israel try to do something.]
On Wednesday, more than 600 British lawyers, academics and retired senior judges — including three who sat on the country’s Supreme Court — wrote to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak imploring him to cut off military aid and even called for sanctions against the most senior Israeli leaders.
The rebellion is erupting in both major parties, as well as in the Liberal Democrats, which on Thursday wrote to No. 10’s ethics advisor to urge a probe into whether U.K. arms sales could be a breach of Britian’s ministerial code. The letter said “the UK must not be complicit in breaches of international humanitarian law,” The Guardian reported.
The Labour Party is in upheaval as the mayor of London and 50 Labour MPs on Thursday said Britain should no longer arm a state that is increasingly unable to hide its crimes. “In my view, the fact the government is not publishing the legal advice, one can only draw one conclusion,” Mayor Sadiq Khan told the Politics Joe website. “I think the government should be pausing all sales of weapons to Israel. I think we should be holding to account the Israeli government.” He added: It’s got to stop.”
As he tries to unify a fractious party over the issue, Labour leader Keir Starmer has not gone beyond calling for the legal advice mentioned in the leaked audio to be made public.
Britain exported £42 million of weapons to Israel in 2023. Figures since Oct. 7 last year have not yet been released. A British break with Israel on Gaza would be politically more significant than the size of the arms transfers.
Tories Imploding Too
Rebellion is breaking out in the ruling Conservative Party as well. Churchill’s grandson has been joined by Lord Hugo Swire and three Tory MPs – Paul Bristow, Flick Drummond and David Jones – in demands that arms shipments be halted.
Sir Alan Duncan, a figure reviled by Julian Assange supporters for gleefully organizing his arrest from the Ecuador Embassy in April 2019, is being investigated by the Conservative Party for potentially “anti-semitic” remarks after he criticized pro-Israel Tory “extremists.”
“The time has come to flush out those extremists in our own parliamentary politics, and around it, some of whom are at the very top of government, or have been,” he told a radio interviewer on Thursday. “They have never been called to account by journalists to say: Do you agree with your own party’s policy? Do you condemn illegal settlements?’”
Duncan, a former minister in Conservative Theresa May’s government, added: “Conservative Friends of Israel has been doing the bidding of [Benjamin] Netanyahu, bypassing all proper processes of government, to exercise undue influence at the top of government.”
David Cameron, the former prime minister, current foreign secretary and prospective Tory leader once again, is reportedly under pressure from these party “extremists” because he doesn’t share their fanatical devotion to Israel. This is a man who as prime minister once called Gaza an “open-air prison.” He is far more restrained in his criticism now. But he’s feeling the heat in party backrooms……………………………. more https://consortiumnews.com/2024/04/04/british-rebellion-grows-against-arming-israel/
Israel Keeps Getting More Murderous
In the span of just a few hours we learned that Israel committed a horrific massacre at al-Shifa hospital, struck an Iranian consulate in Syria killing multiple Iranian military officers, and killed a vehicle full of international aid workers in an airstrike. This murderous regime is out of control.
Israel is so dedicated to protecting civilian life that it’s deliberately gunning down unarmed Palestinians whenever they walk within firing range and then adding them to its “Hamas terrorists killed” tally. Haaretz reports that the IDF has set up “kill zones” in Gaza where they just shoot anything that moves, with an IDF reserve officer saying the number of Hamas members Israel claims to have killed is massively inflated because “In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate.” Haaretz notes that the three escaped Israeli hostages the IDF gunned down in December had wandered into one of these kill zones.
A Doctors Without Borders physician went on Sky News to talk about Israel’s deliberate destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, and the Murdoch shill anchor who was interviewing her asked her if Hamas was active in al-Shifa hospital fighting Israelis. The doctor, Tanya Haj-Hassan, told him “I am just shocked that we’re still having this conversation” and went on to describe how Israel’s assault on Gazan healthcare workers is so methodical that Gazan hospital staff have been changing out of their scrubs before leaving work because Israeli troops are picking off anyone in scrubs.
At the beginning of the year I tweeted, “Gaza is a live laboratory for the military industrial complex. Data is with absolute certainty being collected on all the newer weapons being field-tested on human bodies in Gaza (just like has been happening in Ukraine) to be used to benefit the war machine and arms industry.” Since then we’ve learned that the IDF has been experimenting with new military robots in its Gaza assault, and that Israeli startups are now looking to start exporting new AI-powered war machinery marketed as having been “battle-tested” in Gaza………………………………………. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-keeps-getting-more-murderous?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143187375&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
‘Obscene’: Biden Quietly OKs More 2,000-Pound Bombs, Warplanes for Israel
U.S. support for Israel—which already included nearly $4 billion in annual military aid—has continued unabated, with the Biden administration seeking an additional $14.3 million in armed assistance and repeatedly bypassing Congress to fast-track emergency weapons shipments.
“Arming a war criminal makes you a war criminal,” one critic admonished the U.S. president.
BRETT WILKINS, Mar 29, 2024, https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-military-aid-to-israel-2667634511
Despite growing worldwide calls for an arms embargo, the Biden administration in recent days has approved the transfer of billions of dollars worth of new weapons shipments to Israel, including warplanes and 2,000-pound bombs that have been dropped on densely populated areas of Gaza with devastating results.
The Washington Postreported Friday that the administration has “quietly” authorized arms shipments including more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, as well as 25 F-35A fighter jets and engines worth approximately $2.5 billion. The transfers are the latest of more than 100 arms shipments authorized by the Biden administration since the October 7 attacks on Israel.
“‘Quietly,'” Palestinian American writer and political analyst Yousef Munayyer scoffed in response to the report. “This is cowardly from the administration. If you are going to be full backers of genocide, own it. We see you and history sees you as well.”
“It is scary to think of the world U.S. support for Israel is creating. A world with no rules, no limits in war, where norms don’t exist, and where genocide is supportable,” he added. “Good luck getting anyone to listen to you about international law after this.”
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, said in a statement: “We strongly condemn the Biden administration’s unbelievable and unconscionable decision to secretly send hundreds of new 2,000-pound bombs and other weapons to support Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide. Arming a war criminal makes you a war criminal.”
According to the Post:
The 2,000-pound bombs, capable of leveling city blocks and leaving craters in the earth 40 feet across and larger, are almost never used anymoreby Western militaries in densely populated locations due to the risk of civilian casualties.
Israel has used them extensively in Gaza, according to several reports, most notably in the bombing of Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp October 31. U.N. officials decried the strike, which killed more than 100 people, as a “disproportionate attack that could amount to war crimes.” Israel defended the bombing, saying it resulted in the death of a Hamas leader.
The Biden administration’s arms shipments to Israel continue despite urgent pleas from United Nations officials, international human rights groups, and some progressive U.S. lawmakers to stop arming Israel’s 175-day Gaza onslaught, during which Israeli bombs and bullets have killed more than 32,600 Palestinians—mostly women and children—while wounding over 75,000 others and damaging or destroying hundreds of thousands of homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, and other structures.
The International Court of Justice in January found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza and ordered the country to prevent genocidal acts. However, Israel has been accused of ignoring the ICJ order, and amid ongoing atrocities—including the forced starvation of Palestinians—the court on Thursday issued another order demanding that Israel allow desperately needed humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Last December, when the death toll in Gaza stood at approximately 18,000, President Joe Biden implored the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Palestinian civilians in the embattled enclave.
However, U.S. support for Israel—which already included nearly $4 billion in annual military aid—has continued unabated, with the Biden administration seeking an additional $14.3 million in armed assistance and repeatedly bypassing Congress to fast-track emergency weapons shipments.
“The U.S. cannot beg Netanyahu to stop bombing civilians one day and the next send him thousands more 2,000-pound bombs that can level entire city blocks,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on social media Friday. “This is obscene. We must end our complicity: No more bombs to Israel.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told the Post that “the Biden administration needs to use their leverage effectively and, in my view, they should receive these basic commitments before greenlighting more bombs for Gaza. We need to back up what we say with what we do.”
Biden administration officials have claimed they don’t have any leverage over Israel, drawing ridicule from observers who point to the indispensable military and diplomatic support the U.S. provides.
The staggering death and destruction wrought by Israel’s assault on Gaza has drawn criticism from even staunch supporters of the key U.S. ally.
Referring to the worsening famine in Gaza—which one U.S. State Department official acknowledged anonymously to Reuters on Friday—New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote on social media: “Really, POTUS? With Gaza facing starvation and Netanyahu defying you over Rafah, you ship billions of dollars in additional weapons to Israel, including 2,000-pound bombs, without end-use restrictions? Bibi is rolling you.”
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Killing Humanitarians: Israel’s War on Aid Workers in Gaza
April 3, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/killing-humanitarians-israels-war-on-aid-workers-in-gaza/
Eulogies should rarely be taken at face value. Plaster saints take the place of complex individuals; faults transmute into golden virtues. But there was little in the way of fault regarding Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom’s messianic purpose, whose tireless work for the charity, World Central Kitchen (WCK) in northern Gaza had not gone unnoticed. Sadly, the Australian national, along with six other members of WCK, were noticed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) around midnight of April 1 and 2 and targeted in a strike that killed all of them.
Other members of the slain crew included Polish citizen Damian Sobol, three British nationals whose names are yet to be released, a US-Canadian dual citizen, and the driver and translator Saif Abu Taha.
The charity workers had been unloading food supplies from Cyprus that had been sent via sea in a designated “deconflicted” area. All three vehicles, two armoured and one “soft skin”, sported the WCK logo. Even more galling for the charity was the fact that coordinating efforts between WCK and the IDF had taken place as it left the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the individuals had been responsible for uploading over 100 tonnes of humanitarian food aid.
On April 2, Haaretz reported that three missiles had been fired in rapid succession at the convoy by a Hermes 450 UAV on direction of a unit guarding the aid transport route. The troops in question claimed to have spotted what they thought was an armed figure riding a truck that had entered one of the aid storage areas with three WCK vehicles. The armed figure, presumed to be a Hamas militant, never left the warehouse in the company of the vehicles.
In a public relations war Israel is increasingly losing, various statements of variable quality and sincerity could only confirm that fact. IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari stated that he had spoken to WCK founder Chef José Andrés “and expressed the deepest condolences of the Israel Defense Forces to the families and the entire World Central Kitchen family.”
Hagari went on to add the IDF’s expression of “sincere sorrow to our allied nations who have been doing and continue to do so much to assist those in need.” This was a bit rich given the programmatic efforts of the IDF and Israeli officials to stifle and strangulate the provision of aid into the Gaza Strip, from the logistical side of keeping land crossings closed and delaying access to existing ones, to aggressive efforts to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
As for the operation itself, Hagari announced that “the highest levels” of military officialdom had been “reviewing the incident” to comprehend the circumstances that led to the deaths. “We will get to the bottom of this and we will share our findings transparently.” Again exalting the prowess of his organisation in investigating such matters, he promised that the army’s General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism – yet another independent body designed to give the impression of thoroughness and impartiality – would look into this “serious incident” to “reduce the risk of such an event from occurring again.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a better barometric reading of the mood, and it was certainly not one of grieving or feeling aggrieved. The killings had merely been “a tragic instance of our forces unintentionally harming innocent people in the Gaza Strip. It happens in war.” Israel would “investigate it” and had been “in contact with the governments and we will do everything we can so that it doesn’t happen again.”
This is mightily optimistic given the butcher’s toll of 173 aid workers from UNRWA alone, with 196 humanitarians said to have died as of March 20, 2024 since October 7 last year. Aid workers have been killed in IDF strikes despite the regular provision of coordinates on their locations. Be it through reckless indifference, conscious intent, or a lack of competence, the morgues continue to be filled with humanitarian workers.
A bristling CEO of WCK, Erin Gore, proved blunter about the implications of the strike. “This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organisations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war.”
Project HOPE’s Executive Vice President, Chris Skopec, drew attention to the obvious, yet repeatedly neglected fact in the Gaza conflict that aid workers are protected by international humanitarian law. Gaza had become “one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a humanitarian worker. This is unacceptable and demands accountability through the International Criminal Court.”
Responsibility for the killings is unlikely to translate into accountability, let alone any public outing of the individuals involved. This is not to say that such exercises are impossible, even with Israel not being a member of the International Criminal Court. The pageantry of guilt can still be pursued.
When Malaysian Airlines MH17 was downed over Ukraine in July 2014 by a Buk missile, killing all 298 on board, international efforts of terrier-like ferocity were initiated against those responsible for the deadly feat. The MH17 Joint Investigation Team (JIT), comprising the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, Belgium and Ukraine, identified the missile as having come from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the Russian armed forces from Kursk. Four suspects were identified. Of the four, one was acquitted, with the district Court of The Hague handing down three life sentences in November 2022 along with an order to pay over €16 million in compensation to the victims. The individuals remain at large, and the Kremlin largely unmoved, but the point was made.
In this case, any hope for seeking an external accounting for the event is likely to be kept in-house. Excuses of error and misidentification are already filling press releases and conferences. Doing so will enable the IDF to continue its program of quashing the Palestinian cause while pursuing an undisclosed war against those it considers, publicly or otherwise, to be its ameliorating collaborators. With an announcement by various humanitarian groups, including WCK, Anera and Project Hope, that their operations will be suspended following the killings, starvation, as a policy in Gaza, can receive its official blessing.
United Arab Emirates in talks to invest in European nuclear power infrastructure
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is exploring opportunities to invest in
nuclear power infrastructure across Europe, including in Britain, Reuters
has reported.
The state-owned Emirates Nuclear Energy Company (ENEC) is
considering becoming a minority investor in several nuclear power assets.
ENEC, which is owned by Abu Dhabi’s investment fund, the Abu Dhabi
Developmental Holding Company, has ambitions to expand its international
footprint by acquiring minority stakes in nuclear projects.
The company has
been in discussions to invest in the UK, specifically in the Sizewell C
nuclear project, which is currently seeking additional private investment
following the exit of a Chinese investor. Alongside Saudi Arabia, the UAE
is looking to diversify its economy beyond oil, while Britain is actively
seeking private investment to support its nuclear energy ambitions.
Power Technology 2nd April 2024
https://www.power-technology.com/news/uae-invest-european-nuclear-infrastructure
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