Gaza. A testing ground for Israel’s deadly technologies
“Israel’s use of AI in Gaza is a terrifying model coming to a country near you.” Antony Loewenstein, Journalist
A few months before the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Israeli surveillance firm, NSO Group, made global headlines when an investigation revealed that it had been selling Pegasus, a powerful piece of phone spyware, to authoritarian governments around the world. At the time, Pegasus — capable of extracting messages, recording calls, and hijacking device cameras and microphones — had reportedly been used against over 1,000 individuals across 50 countries, including heads of state and 180 journalists. The investigation revealed the existence of a list of 50,000 phone numbers linked to rights activists, journalists, and lawyers in countries including Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
This is hardly surprising. As far back as 2007, an article published by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a UK defence and security think-tank, called attention to Israel’s increasingly important role in developing a “global homeland security business.” At the time, the author pointed out that Israel, “with its extensive experience in fighting terror” and burgeoning ecosystem of security equipment startups, was considered a key player in the emerging market for homeland security technology and services post 9/11. Not only was the US one of its largest markets for training and advanced security technologies, but the two countries also worked closely together to develop joint standards for homeland security products and services. Not to be left behind, the UK also committed US$25 million to establish “co-operative programmes between the UK and Israeli governments for the development of advanced technologies and prototype equipment for combating terrorism.”
The weaponization of surveillance
Now the NSO Group, along with other spyware companies such as Archimedes, Black Cube, Candiru, Carbyne, Cellebrite, Cyberbit, Elbit Systems, NSO Group, Psy-Group, Quadream, Toka, Verint, White Knight, Wikistrat — all of whom have been exporting surveillance technologies around the world for decades — are intimately linked to the Israeli military. According to the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, most of the founders and personnel of Israel’s cybersecurity companies are graduates of Unit 8200, an intelligence unit of the Military Intelligence Directorate of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), known as an incubator for Israeli surveillance-tech start-ups.
“These firms are knowingly involved in selling offensive military-grade cyber surveillance systems and weapons to non-democratic and oppressive regimes around the world for use against innocent citizens, critics, and activists. This intricate web of Israeli military-grade surveillance companies represents a worrying, growing trend of Israeli intelligence firms that are self-described as ‘private Mossads’ but are essentially connected to the Israeli military intelligence units and often intersect on many levels and work closely together.” The Full Story, Tamara Kharroub
Israel’s surveillance and cybertech industry has developed a spectrum of technologies to enable the Israeli state to monitor and control the Palestinian population and practice apartheid with impunity. Fundamental to this strategy has been the idea that “maximum security lies in the integration of [surveillance] technologies.” Dense CCTV networks across the Palestinian territories are integrated with sophisticated cyber-weapons, remote biometric technologies, spyware, and vast databases of detailed information on Palestinian citizens. This enables Israel to monitor Palestinians in real time across the West Bank as well as in cities such as Hebron and Jerusalem — and to target militants as well as doctors, journalists, writers, teachers, and aid workers, often in their homes.
A report by Amnesty International reveals shocking details:
“Automated Apartheid revealed the existence of a previously unreported Israeli military facial recognition system called Red Wolf, which is deployed at checkpoints in Hebron. There is strong evidence to suggest that Red Wolf is linked to two other military-run surveillance systems: Wolf Pack and Blue Wolf. Wolf Pack is a vast database containing all available information on Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including places of residence, family members, and whether they are wanted for questioning by the Israeli authorities. Blue Wolf is an app that Israeli forces can access via smartphones and tablets, and which can instantly pull up information stored in the Wolf Pack database.
When a Palestinian goes through a checkpoint at which Red Wolf is operating, their face is scanned without their knowledge or consent and compared with biometric entries in databases that exclusively contain information about Palestinians. Red Wolf uses this data to determine whether an individual can pass a checkpoint and automatically biometrically enrolls any new face it scans. If no entry exists for an individual, they will be denied passage. Red Wolf could also deny entry based on other information stored on Palestinian profiles; for example, if an individual is wanted for questioning or arrest.”
Some, if not all, of that data may have been used to train ‘Lavender’ – an artificial intelligence-enabled targeting system capable of “rapidly processing massive amounts of data to generate thousands of potential targets for military strikes in the heat of a war.” Also developed by Unit 8200, Lavender “resolves … the human bottleneck for both locating new targets and decision-making to approve the targets.” What this means is that the IDF relegated the fate of hundreds of thousands of trapped Gazans to the split-second whims of an algorithm with little or no human oversight.
The media (+972 Magazine and Local Call) first covered this in an investigative article in April 2024:
“Lavender has played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war when […] military operations […] essentially treated the outputs of the AI machine “as if it were a human decision.” Lavender 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. […] 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 days of the bombing in Gaza, these systems, including one known as “Where’s Daddy?” were used to “track thousands of individuals simultaneously, identify when they were at home, and send an automatic alert to the targeting officer, who then marked the house for bombing.”
“The Israeli army systematically attacked targets in their private homes, alongside their families — in part because it was easier from an intelligence standpoint to mark family houses using automated systems.
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. The proportion of entire families bombed in their houses in the current war is much higher than in the 2014 Israeli operation in Gaza (which was previously Israel’s deadliest war on the Strip), further suggesting the prominence of this policy.”
Today, the genocide in Gaza has laid bare the extent to which governments and businesses will go to support Israel in its aim of “maximum land with minimum Palestinians”.
Big Tech is complicit
US Big Tech — Google, Microsoft and Amazon in particular — has dramatically ramped up its support to the Israeli military in the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7th attacks. Without the support of the extensive AI-enhanced software and cloud services these companies provide, Israeli military intelligence units — as well as units in the naval, ground, and air forces — may not have been able to build the dense web of surveillance or use it to lethal effect with such breathtaking speed. Their support has the added advantage of protecting Israel from the jurisdiction of international courts:
“[Project Nimbus, a joint contract awarded to Google and Amazon], established data centers in Israel in 2022 and 2023, to “create an infrastructure” of advanced computer centers under Israeli jurisdiction which makes it easier for “security entities, even the more sensitive ones,” to store information in the cloud during the war without fear from overseas courts — which, presumably, might demand the information in the event of a lawsuit against Israel.”
In a neat reversal of values, Google has moved to match its principles to its practice with the recent announcement, on the same day that Trump announced his plans to get the job done in Gaza, that it had overhauled the principles governing its use of artificial intelligence and other advanced technology. The company has specifically removed language that committed it to avoiding “technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” “weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people,” “technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms,” and “technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.”
Meanwhile, leaked documents reveal that the Israeli military is one of Microsoft’s top customers for AI-enhanced cloud computing services and its Azure platform.
The guard rails that were meant to protect the world from artificial intelligence — or the good guys going rogue — are coming down. Tariq Kenney-Shawa, U.S. policy fellow at the Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, describes the role of American Big Tech in the genocide in Gaza bluntly:
“It’s more than complicity: it’s direct participation and collaboration with the Israeli military on the tools they’re using to kill Palestinians.”
Exporting repressiontech
Israel ranks as the world’s 9th largest exporter of arms. However, it is one of the most ‘prolific’ exporters of AI-powered surveillance and spyware, including drones, smart walls, and what journalist and author Antony Loewenstein calls “high-tech repression.” There is clear evidence Israel is extending its destructive footprint well beyond the Middle East to the United States, Western Europe, India and countries across the Asia-Pacific. Indeed, Israel uses these exports as political leverage and ‘works proactively to ensure deals for political favors.”
Incontrovertible proof of how Israel is exporting ‘repressiontech’ was detailed in an exposé by Antony Loewenstein in 2023. In his book, The Palestine Laboratory, Loewenstein showed how Israel was not only developing highly sophisticated tools and weapons, but also testing them on a captive Palestinian population to sell them as ‘battle-tested’ products to autocracies and monarchies all over the world. The tiny coastal strip, which was once home to two million Palestinians, became home to “the perfect laboratory for Israeli ingenuity in domination.”
Now, in a terrifying documentary based on his book, Loewenstein reveals how Israel is profiting from the weapons, software, and intrusive surveillance technology it has developed and built to repress Palestinians. The documentary also details how Israel spreads its “technology of occupation” — rigorously tested across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Yemen — to governments and organisations across Europe, the Middle East, India, Mexico, South Africa, and the USA.
If we don’t speak up for Palestine, for change, for an end to the repression and the surveillance, we will be next.
The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World,” is available (for free and complete global access) as a two-part documentary on Al-Jazeera’s website and Youtube.