Anatomy of a Genocide

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Written by Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese

Published: 29 April 2024 29 April 2024

Anatomy of a Genocide – Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 to Human Rights Council – Advance unedited version (A/HRC/55/73)
March 24, 2024

After five months of military operations, Israel has destroyed Gaza. Over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13,000 children. Over 12,000 are presumed dead and 71,000 injured, many with life-changing mutilations. Seventy percent of residential areas have been destroyed. Eighty percent of the whole population has been forcibly displaced. Thousands of families have lost loved ones or have been wiped out. Many could not bury and mourn their relatives, forced instead to leave their bodies decomposing in homes, in the street or under the rubble. Thousands have been detained and systematically subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. The incalculable collective trauma will be experienced for generations to come.

By analysing the patterns of violence and Israel’s policies in its onslaught on Gaza, this report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met. One of the key findings is that Israel’s executive and military leadership and soldiers have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.

Read the full report here.

As Surgeons, We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza

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Written by FEROZE SIDHWA and MARK PERLMUTTER FEROZE SIDHWA and MARK PERLMUTTER

Published: 12 April 2024 12 April 2024

We urge anyone who reads this to publicly oppose sending weapons to Israel as long as this onslaught continues.

"As humanitarian trauma surgeons we have both seen incredible suffering. Collectively, we were present at Ground Zero on 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti on the first day of these disasters. We have worked in the deprivation of southern Zimbabwe and the horrors of the war in Ukraine. Together we have worked on more than 40 surgical missions in developing countries on three continents in our combined 57 years of volunteering. This long experience taught us that there was no greater pain as a humanitarian surgeon than being unable to provide needed care to a patient.

But that was before coming to Gaza. Now we know the pain of being unable to treat a child who will slowly die, but also alone, because she is the only surviving member of an entire extended family. We have not had the heart to tell these children how their families died: burned until they resembled blistered hotdogs more than human beings, shredded to pieces such that they can only be buried in mass graves, or simply entombed in their former apartment buildings to die slowly of asphyxia and sepsis."

Read more at Common Dreams

After six months of war, I fear we may lose Palestine completely | Raja Shehadeh

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Written by Raja Shehadeh Raja Shehadeh

Published: 09 April 2024 09 April 2024

By now several things have become clear. The first is the re-emergence in Israel of the Jewish ultra right; settlers and Jewish supremacists with their uncompromising expansionist agenda. It was as though this recalcitrant group was waiting for the opportunity to accelerate the pursuit of its colonial objectives. Already, not only is the Gaza Strip transformed but so is the West Bank, fragmented as it is by roadblocks and locked iron gates restricting access to villages, and settlers continuing to expel Palestinians from their land. As for Gaza, plans are already being prepared for settling the north by Israeli Jews.

‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza

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Written by Peter Miller Peter Miller

Published: 05 April 2024 05 April 2024

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.

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.