Gaza's Toll Weighs Heavy On Israel and Palestinians

But above all the upon conscience of the West

• Each night some Gazans check into Twitter spaces to share…

• the buzz of drones directing bombs that’s hard to stand, though they endure

• Holding tech in hand, we sit at one end; they at the other of its illogic
  

• Economically Israel may have bitten off more than it can chew

• Workforce, investment, trade flows crippled by conflict

• Israel is not the only architect of this misfortune - legs there are many

• WWI was the first war waged by mass production: from factory to front

• Gaza is the next industrial revolution: war waged by artificial intelligence

• Like all wars; drones and tech come home, to subdue the domestic population

• We see parallels with Covid disruption, albeit on a different scale

• Unprecedented censorship of the exchange of ideas

• This is not about blame or support for Israel. A bigger crime syndicate is afoot

For the trajectory of events in Gaza and Israel, see these articles:
Israel-Gaza Clash Is More Than Bad Neighbours - Security failure points to bigger agenda (Oct 8, 2023)

Gaza, An Open And Closed Case (Oct 10, 2023)

'Beheaded Babies' Is A Century-Old Trope (Oct 12, 2023)

Gaza's Fate Holds A Warning (Oct 16, 2023)

Hospital Bombings, Denial And Blood Sacrifice (Oct 18, 2023)

The Bottomless Pit - Israel Digs In (Oct 23, 2023)

Gaza Is A Micro-War Testing Ground (Oct 24, 2023)

Gaza Ground Invasion Begins (Oct 28, 2023)

Gaza Depopulation Plan Revealed By Intel Leak (Oct 30, 2023)

Globalists Plan Ban On Any Critique Of Zionism (Nov 6, 2023)

How -Isms Make War (Nov 10, 2023)

Politicians In A Zionist Death March (Nov 14, 2023)

Bin Laden Cameo Role In Gaza Mind War (Nov 16, 2023)

From New Zealand To Gaza; The Coof Shot And Genocide (Dec 4, 2023)

Gaza's Toll Weighs Heavy On Israel and Palestinians (Dec 10, 2023)

Victory Is An Illusion In Israel's War (Dec 23, 2023)

Israel To Counter Charge Of Genocide In Gaza - A finding in World Court would be blow to moral standing (Jan 11, 2024)

Timeless Voice Bids Us 'Come And See' - A film with lessons from Byelorussia to Gaza (Jan 14, 2024)

Casting Rocks At Regimes Built On Lies - While third-rate puppets panic (Feb 08, 2024)

Troubling Lessons Of Israel’s AI Kill Targets - Efficiency or unearthing darker impulses? (Apr 05, 2024)

The Paths Of Diplomacy And Bomb Throwing - Israel’s pause; Zaporizhzhia, Burisma and Crocus; BRICS and CBDC for the masses (Apr 10, 2024)

(2,500 words or about 12 minutes of your company)

Dec 13, 2023

When Elon Musk visited Israel three weeks ago, one of his less publicised meetings was with CHEQ, a cyber company that identifies and neutralises fake accounts and bots.

Now he’s signed a deal with the company, under which it will monitor Twitter’s servers for bots. [1]

It is an example of a sector that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called Israel's not-so-secret weapon.

“Artificial Intelligence is giving us powers and prowess we’ve never had before. Cyber is a real domain of power.” — Netanyahu, speaking at Adelson School of Entrepreneurship.

Now the spear of 5^th generation warfare — primarily non-kinetic military action, like manipulating behaviour through misinformation, cyberattacks, artificial intelligence and automation — is itself falling victim to conflict in Gaza.

The tech sector accounts for about half of Israel’s exports and 20 per cent of GDP, while the tech workforce (10 per cent of the total) is disproportionately young men who are being drafted into the army reserves.

The sector had already suffered a blow in Nov 2021 when Washington sanctioned two Israeli companies, NSO Group and Candiru, mostly over the former's hacking of phones on behalf of governments around the world eager to eavesdrop on activists and dissidents.

Israel has put its eggs in one basket, according to Dan Ben-David, a professor of Socioeconomic Research at Tel Aviv University, speaking to Deutsche Welle. [2]

It uses the military (in particular Unit 8200) to train cyber specialists who then go on to work in Big Tech in Israel, the U.S. and other countries.

According to a report in Haaretz in Dec 2022, Israelis suspect the U.S. may be using sanctions to cramp Israel's style, while restoring America's edge in cyber defence. [3]

Regardless of U.S. intentions, many Israelis in the high tech sector lean liberal and were prominent in the protests over what they saw as Netanyahu's attempt to capture the judiciary. If they decide to relocate abroad Israel, which has long attracted some of America and Europe's sharpest minds, could see a brain drain.

Much of the R&D is in Israel but manufacturing and fulfilment is increasingly abroad, though Intel does have a fabrication plant in Israel. There was already a trend to relocate abroad even before the Gaza conflict. Most Israeli tech start ups are now launched overseas.

Trust is another factor: is Israeli Intel Corp going to outsource fab to Taiwan's TSM? Probably not, given the tensions in that region.

Labour shortage

Israel's previous wars have not lasted long enough to have much economic impact.

Superficially and painting by numbers, Israel entered the war in good shape, even though annual GDP growth had slowed from an average of 3.9 per cent so far this century, to sub 3 per cent.

It is the regional technology hub, spending more of GDP on civilian research and development than any other country.

However the integrity of its institutions was shaken by Netanyahu's proposed judicial reforms, limiting the ability of the Supreme Court to review political decisions. This in turn threatened foreign investment leading Moody's to lower its rating outlook in April 2023 from positive to stable.

The response to Oct 7th in the economy recalled Covid: schools and non-essential businesses were closed. The workforce is another problem.

It has dented the available domestic workforce by calling up 360,000 members of the Israel Defence Forces Reserve.

About 70 per cent of Israel agriculture comes from around Gaza Strip. Netanyahu has tried to persuade Israeli settlers to return to their farms but they have been reluctant after the Oct 7th attacks. U.S. charities are mobilising to prop up the agricultural sector.

Israel has barred over 120,000 Palestinians, even those with work permits, from their jobs outside Gaza and the West bank. The Knesset is to vote on readmitting them despite the perceived security risk, but that vote has been delayed.

Construction depends on Palestinian and foreign labour for about a third of the workforce. Many foreign workers such as Thais have left the country since Oct 7th after some were held hostage by Hamas.

Tourism has cratered. According to Reuters it accounts for less than you might think: 2.8 per cent of GDP and about 3.5 of total employment. [4]

Ships cannot reach Israel through the Red Sea. Eilat port has few expected arrivals after the announcement by Yemen’s Houthi Ansar Allah last week they would target all ships trying to enter the Bab Al-Mandab strait, regardless of their nationality.

Israel deployed four Israeli Sa’ar 6-class corvettes for the first time to the Red Sea “tasked with protecting gas field and shipping lanes.” Haaretz reports that a show of force is necessary to prevent all-out war in the Red Sea.

Netanyahu has reportedly asked Washington to take action: if not, Israel will. Bloomberg also wrote that the White House is negotiating with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to attack the Houthis again.

So although Israel entered the war with about $200 billion in foreign exchange reserves, enough to buy a year’s worth of imports, it faces a sharp contraction in the economy in coming months. The military is costing an estimated $260 million (Є238 million) per day, Bloomberg reported. In October alone, Israel's budget deficit soared sevenfold.

At the end of Oct, JPMorgan Chase forecast that Israel’s economy might contract by 11 per cent over the final quarter of the year.

Prof Robert Looney of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, writes: "The implications are clear. For the first time, Israel needs the considerable economic benefits a two-state solution offers in the form of greater access to the labour that will be critical for its own economic recovery. The alternative is a forever war that Israel cannot afford to fight." [5]

Military testing ground

Historians say the First World War was so bloody because it was the first waged by mass production: railway lines carried munitions from factories direct to the front.

Without being callous, Gaza is the next industrial revolution: war waged by artificial intelligence.

Is Israel using Gaza as a military testing ground for big data in warfare, on behalf of Western governments?

The claims from U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that he is asking Israel to minimise civilian casualties ring hollow, because the military is using technology in Gaza that calculates casualties in advance; making the killing of women and children intentional.

This is revealed by the journalist Yuval Abraham of journal 972, whose report has been approved by Israeli military censors. Military sources tell Abraham they are maximising damage, not accuracy - going for "quantity of targets, not quality."

Military intel told 972 magazine's Abraham that they were seeking to shock the population, and that military was judged by quantity of targets, not quality. "Power targets" are intended to generate civilian pressure on Hamas. [6]

He details a three-level artificial intelligence system that informs military leaders in advance of targets and casualties. Known as "The Gospel" — although that is only one of the systems — it generates targets much faster than could be achieved by human intelligence gathering and analysis.

The bombing of Gaza was said to be retribution for Hamas' killings on Oct 7. That's contradicted by multiple reports from military sources that Israel knew of the attack up to a year in advance; that IDF spotters reported Hamas activity along the fence and were silenced; and that on the day, many if not most of the civilians were killed, deliberately, by Israeli troops under the Hannibal Doctrine which does not spare hostages.

By the end of Nov AI had generated 12,000 targets, twice as many as in the 2014 war that lasted 51 days. Three AI systems work in concert:

• Alchemist collects information

• Fire Factory analyses

• The Gospel produces possible military targets

• Those targets are then assessed by intel officers and lawyers, including the number of likely civilian casualties.

The 2021 bombing campaign in Gaza was, Israel said, the world's first AI war.

Déjà vu

Set aside any judgement of Israel, however counter intuitive that may seem. This story, as journalists say, has legs — and more than two.

When we combine multiple aspects of what is happening in Gaza, we get the feeling we have seen it somewhere before, albeit on a different scale. We can separate the topics into:

• psychological manipulation and behavioural modification

• social distancing on the one hand; quarantine camps on the other

• surveillance down to individual ID; track and trace

• SMART: surveillance (or self-) monitoring, analysis reporting technologies

• QR codes: permissioning and tracking of individuals

• Kill Doctrine authorizing governments to eliminate any civilian for the "greater good."

Breaking these down, these techniques overlap with what we witnessed over the past four years.