Has The Israeli Goverment BecomeThe Monster?

Ellie

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By Mike Casey, US lead political reporting officer on internal politics and security issues in the Gaza Strip and on Palestinian reconciliation issues.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/18/state-department-employee-resigns-israel-gaza
“The more informed you become on this issue, you can’t avoid realizing how bad it is,” Casey told the Guardian.

Casey reflected on how, as one of only two people in the entire US government explicitly focused on Gaza, he became an unwilling chronicler of a humanitarian catastrophe.

“I got so tired of writing about dead kids,” he said. “Just constantly having to prove to Washington that these children actually died and then watching nothing happen.”

“I remember two children killed in a ramming attack at a bus stop in Jerusalem who were the same age as my kids,” Casey said. “You see the effect the conflict has on people in Israel as well. Israelis deserve better, not just Palestinians.”

“We don’t have a policy on Palestine. We just do what the Israelis want us to do.”

“I was too embarrassed to continue being an American diplomat,” he said. “I knew I couldn’t go to another assignment and function.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/18/state-department-employee-resigns-israel-gaza
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/18/state-department-employee-resigns-israel-gaza
 

Bartholomew Gallacher

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Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly will not go next year to the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, because he's concerned about potential arrest. Poland is committed to honor the ICC and its arrest warrant for Netanyahu over alleged war crimes.

 
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Ellie

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Ellie

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This feature length investigation by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit exposes Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip through the medium of photos and videos posted online by Israeli soldiers themselves during the year long conflict.

“The west cannot hide, they cannot claim ignorance. Nobody can say they didn’t know,” says Palestinian writer, Susan Abulhawa.This is “the first livestream genocide in history … If people are ignorant they are willfully ignorant,” she says.
 

Bartholomew Gallacher

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Old and busted: Al Jazeera ban in Israel.
New hotness: Al Jazeera ban in the West Bank issued by the Palestinian Authority! Why? Because: PA accuses network of broadcasting ‘inciting material’ and ‘stirring strife’ in the country.

 
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Bartholomew Gallacher

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Poland has confirmed that they will not arrest Benyamin Netanyahu in case he wants to visit Auschwitz for the 80th liberation anniversary, so on in other words they will not fulfill the ICC arrest warrant.

 
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Ellie

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Innula Zenovka

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With a little over 7 million Palestinians in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, they could top the Holocaust by a cool million.
According to this site, the Palestinian population of Gaza, Israel and the West Bank is about 5.5 million.

It appears to have been rising steadily over the years, which is not something I'd normally associate with cases of genocide.

 
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Kamilah Hauptmann

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According to this site, the Palestinian population of Gaza, Israel and the West Bank is about 5.5 million.

It appears to have been rising steadily over the years, which is not something I'd normally associate with cases of genocide.

If the sidebar population thing in Wikipedia is accurate it appears there's ~5.5 million in Gaza and West Bank, and another 2 million in Israel. On your link there's no mention of Israel. The Israel page on Worldometer doesn't have an ethnic breakdown and has a sizeable difference between the population described in Wikipedia. On Wikipedia's page on Israel it describes a population of 10 million, 21% of which are Arabs, which seems to line up with that.

Whether 5.5 or 7, my point is we're looking at Holocaust level atrocity potential.

I also omitted "Take that, Germany!" from my initial post.
 

Innula Zenovka

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If the sidebar population thing in Wikipedia is accurate it appears there's ~5.5 million in Gaza and West Bank, and another 2 million in Israel. On your link there's no mention of Israel. The Israel page on Worldometer doesn't have an ethnic breakdown and has a sizeable difference between the population described in Wikipedia. On Wikipedia's page on Israel it describes a population of 10 million, 21% of which are Arabs, which seems to line up with that.

Whether 5.5 or 7, my point is we're looking at Holocaust level atrocity potential.

I also omitted "Take that, Germany!" from my initial post.
I think I see. If we assume Israeli Arab and Palestinian are synonymous, then the figures make sense.

Though I see from the Wikipedia page on the demographics of Israel that the birth-rate for Israeli Arabs has been consistently higher than that of Israeli Jews, though the two are now converging. Again, that's not what I would expect to see during a genocide.
 
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Innula Zenovka

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That is, or would certainly be, a war crime (Article 41 of the Fourth Geneva Convention) and is one over which the ICC has jurisdiction ( Article 7 (1) (d)). But it's not the same crime as genocide. It's important to charge people with the right crime.

The idea is pretty much a non-starter

 
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Bartholomew Gallacher

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Somebody in Israel created a Pro-Israel AI social media bot, which should help convince the world how peaceful Israel is. Instead it went all Pro Palestine and against its creators.

The AI-powered bot on X named FactFinderAI criticized the same social media accounts it was meant to promote, even going so far as to deny the murder of an Israeli family on October 7 and blame Israel for the U.S. plan to ban TikTok

An automated social media profile developed to harness the powers of artificial intelligence to promote Israel's cause online is also pushing out blatantly false information, including anti-Israel misinformation, in an ironic yet concerning example of the risks of using the new generative technologies for political ends.

Among other things, the alleged pro-Israel bot denied that an entire Israeli family was murdered on October 7, blamed Israel for U.S. plans to ban TikTok, falsely claimed that Israeli hostages weren't released despite blatant evidence to the contrary and even encouraged followers to "show solidarity" with Gazans, referring them to a charity that raises money for Palestinians. In some cases, the bot criticzed pro-Israel accounts, including the official government account on X – the same accounts it was meant to promote.



The bot, an Haaretz examination found, is just one of a number of so-called "hasbara" technologies developed since the start of the war. Many of these technologically-focused public diplomacy initiatives utilized AI, though not always for content creation. Some of them also received support from Israel, which scrambled to back different tech and civilian initiatives since early 2024, and has since poured millions into supporting different projects focused on monitoring and countering anti-Israeli and antisemitism on social media.

It is unclear if the bot, called FactFinderAI and active on X, is linked to any officially funded project or if it was just developed independently by tech savvy pro-Israel activists. However, research by the Israeli disinformation watchdog FakeReporter has found that the bot, which was built to push out a pro-Israel narrative, actually did the opposite: Due to its use of AI, at times the content it generated undermined Israeli talking points, even pushing out October 7 denialism, amplifying pro-Palestinian accounts and, more recently, false information regarding hostages.

At other times, it actually trolled pro-Israel users, repeatedly badgering and even scolding Israel's official X account, underscoring how generative AIs, like the popular ChatGPT, are prone to errors that can take a dark turn once presented as fact and pushed online, especially in a political context.



 
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Innula Zenovka

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In case the Haaretz article about the bot gone wild is paywalled, here's an Evernote Link (I'd come here to post the same story).
 
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Kamilah Hauptmann

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