Tag: ethnic cleansing

How Israel Used AI to Relentlessly Murder Palestinian Journalists and Their Families in Their Homes

It’s worse than we thought. In research that I have undertaken over the last few weeks based on information compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) about Palestinian journalists killed by Israel since October 2023, I’ve discovered that, of the 68 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in the first three months of their genocidal campaign, the majority were targeted and killed while at home with their families. My research provides startling confirmation, never unearthed before, of the widespread use of Israel’s AI program, dubbed “Where’s Daddy?”, specifically for journalists, relentlessly targeting them when they were at home, with a complete disregard both for their required protection as civilians under international humanitarian law, and for the often extensive “collateral damage” inflicted on their families.

There is no doubt that Israel’s sustained genocidal assault on the largely civilian population of the Gaza Strip, now in its fourth year, has been the deadliest military conflict for journalists in human history.

As the journalist Nick Turse reported for Brown University’s “Costs of War” project in April 2025, “The war in Gaza has, since October 7, 2023, killed more journalists than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined.”

Under international humanitarian law, as most noticeably enshrined in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977, “Civilian journalists engaged in professional missions in areas of armed conflict must be respected and protected as long as they are not taking a direct part in hostilities.” (emphasis added).

The State of Israel, however, has nothing but contempt for international humanitarian law. As far as they are concerned, everyone who works for a media outlet that is, in any way, aligned with the military wing of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or any other militant faction in Gaza, is a terrorist, and can be targeted and killed, and anyone who works as a journalist but has previously had any suspected involvement with any of these military factions in any kind of capacity can also be targeted and killed.

Israel doesn’t recognize that, by the same application of its lawless logic, almost every journalist in Israel could be regarded similarly by the Palestinians, because military service is mandatory in Israel. Most crucially, however, it fails to recognize that, if an individual has, in the past, been a part of a Palestinian military faction in any way, that doesn’t apply endlessly as a justification for their targeted killing. If they don a press vest and begin reporting, international humanitarian law makes it clear, as noted above, that they cannot be regarded as a legitimate military target unless they are specifically “taking a direct part in hostilities.”

In a cynical, devious and sustained effort to erase these distinctions, Israel has targeted and killed journalists for what it regards as “suspicious activity” — using drones to secure footage or photos, for example, or using vantage points on buildings, both for the overview they provide, but also, often, to secure transmission signals in an environment in which internet and mobile phone signals are often notoriously unreliable.

It has also, increasingly, resorted to black propaganda, alleging, almost entirely without providing evidence, that the journalists it has killed were not journalists at all, but were military operatives masquerading as journalists, and it has sometimes targeted these journalists directly, texting or calling them to tell them to stop their work or threatening them that, if they don’t stop, they or their families will be targeted and killed.

One reason why Israel feels empowered to so comprehensively erase the distinctions between combatants and civilians is because, since the 1990s, western governments (including the US in 1997, the EU in 2003, and the UK in 2021) have obligingly designed the whole of Hamas as a terrorist organization — not just its military wing, but also the whole of the civilian administrative government in Gaza.

Since October 7, 2023, this has allowed to Israel to claim that, for example, doctors and medical staff can — if a devious enough excuse can be invented — be regarded as terrorists because they work for the Ministry of Health. This is a western-approved betrayal of the absolute prohibition on targeting doctors or hospitals, which Israel has thoroughly embraced, making risible and never-proven claims that the hospitals were Hamas control and command centres, and that the doctors, like the journalists, were not actually doctors at all, but were military operatives pretending to be doctors.

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Benjamin Netanyahu Signals Massive West Bank Operation After Hebron Attack — Days Before Election

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Friday that Israel is preparing a massive military operation in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank, on a scale not seen since the 1967 Six-Day War, after Palestinian terrorists killed two Israeli soldiers near Hebron, just four days before Israel’s national election.

Speaking after a security assessment, Netanyahu said the planned operation would be unprecedented in scope.

“The defense minister and I have overseen the planning of a very extensive IDF operation in Judea and Samaria — on a scale not seen since the Six-Day War,” he said.

“The IDF is ready to carry it out, and we will determine the timing, but it is coming.”

The announcement followed a deadly shooting at a temporary military checkpoint near Yehuda Junction outside Hebron, where two Palestinian terrorists opened fire on Israeli soldiers Friday morning.

The attack killed Staff Sgt. Ron Yonatan Roytman, 23, of Ashkelon, and Sgt. Yuval Shai Svilem, 20, of Hod Hasharon, both members of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) 775th Ari Battalion. Three additional soldiers were wounded.

Israeli forces killed both attackers following a firefight lasting more than 20 minutes.

The IDF’s preliminary investigation found that the terrorists apparently intended to attack Israeli civilians along a nearby highway but instead opened fire on soldiers after encountering the checkpoint.

The military said the attackers were carrying substantial quantities of ammunition, suggesting they had planned a larger assault.

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Shadow at the Door: Death and Dying in Palestine

The recent death in my family underscored for me the devastating impact of personal grief, illuminating the deep loss and constant state of mortality that Palestinian families endure every day.

To be Palestinian is to carry an inherited archive of loss. After nearly a century of forced displacement, military occupation and relentless aggression at the hands of a brutal colonizer, death in Palestine has not been a quiet end at the close of life. It is an ever-present shadow weaved into the tapestry of daily existence.

Across generations, grief has been more than individual sorrow, an occasional isolated tragedy, it is an ongoing shared reality written into the collective memory of an entire people.  For Palestinians, Israeli colonization has stolen more than land; it has robbed them of their sovereignty over mourning, honoring and burying their loved ones in peace.

For most of the world, dying young is an unbearable disruption of the natural life cycle; for Palestinians, living under systemic hardship, surviving into old age is a rare exception rather than the norm.

From the traumatic dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Nakba (the Catastrophe) in 1948, to the ongoing genocide and ecocide of Gaza, and military occupation of the West Bank, every Palestinian family has experienced violent loss.

Forcibly displaced from ancestral villages in their youth, grandparents passed down keys to homes that were either stolen or destroyed, along with memories of family members lost to Israeli aggression.  Their children in the West Bank continue to endure innumerable hardships and indignities under Israeli apartheid occupation.  And in Gaza, their descendants, surrounded by death and destruction and the ever-present threat of another Israeli attack, are struggling to survive.

Long before entering a classroom, the children of Palestine absorb the vocabulary of military attacks, martyrdom and survival.  The ceaseless threat of loss forces families to adapt to living with constant vigilance that is passed down from parent to child.

To truly grasp the nature of Palestinian grief, is to see that profound anguish and resentment exists alongside an extraordinary reverence for life and human dignity.

A century of national suffering has made agony a constant in daily life. In Palestine, this collective sorrow has taken on uniquely powerful, visible traditions of survival and shared resistance.

When burials are possible, entire communities come together to bare witness, offer support and share the weight of collective trauma. Oral histories, street art, literature and music carefully document the names, faces, and stories of the dead.  Where physical spaces and lives are continually erased, memory becomes the ultimate sanctuary for preservation.

Writing, thinking, or speaking about death in Palestine means facing a reality where grief is both an individual sorrow and a shared national identity. In the face of continuous, devastating loss, the simple act of remembering those who have died becomes a powerful affirmation of their humanity.

The Palestinian ethos of Sumud (steadfastness) embodies this dynamic:  a collective determination to remain on the land and to defy every Israeli effort to erase their existence – to live is to resist.

Grief in Palestine is non-linear.  It has had no end.  It does not move from denial to anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.  It does not follow an inevitable straight path, because the iniquitous conditions that produce it remain unaddressed.

From the graves of forced exile to the countless deaths in Palestine today, the international community has consistently failed to take decisive action. Watching Palestine die is more than witnessing a genocide; it is an indictment of the global conscience.  The perpetuation of statelessness and oppressive occupation ensures that each new generation will be born into a world where untimely death remains a shadow at the door.

The abiding refusal of the Palestinian people to be subjugated or forgotten is a testament to their inspiring steadfastness. It serves as a powerful example that the pursuit of true freedom is a sacred generational responsibility, worth defending at all costs.

Palestinian endurance is far from passive survival; it is an active, daily reclamation that refuses to let their history be rewritten or justice silenced. Across generations, through the relentless wear of exile, displacement and loss, the Palestinian spirit remains anchored to the land and in an unyielding insistence on dignity and self-determination.  In every quiet act of preservation and every resounding cry for liberation, they demonstrate that while Israeli brute force and unbridled cruelties inflicts profound suffering, it can never erase a people whose identity, hope and humanity burns so undauntedly bright.

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Two Israeli Soldiers Killed In Hebron Checkpoint Shooting As Netanyahu Orders West Bank Closure And Vows More Settlements

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and three others were wounded by Friday morning fire from two Palestinian gunmen at a checkpoint near Hebron in the occupied West Bank, just four days prior to the October 27 Israel election.

Staff Sgt. Ron Yonatan Roytman, 23, from Ashkelon and a squad commander, and Sgt. Yuval Shai Svilem, 20, from Hod Hasharon, were killed in the attack, the Israeli military said. The three Home Front soldiers wounded in the attack, who are part of the same battalion as the two killed, suffer from light to moderate injuries. The three are from the 775th “Ari” Battalion of the Search and Rescue Brigade of the Home Front Command.

The two Palestinian gunmen who opened fire at a checkpoint near Hebron in the West Bank this morning arrived at the Judea Junction on Route 35 in a car with Israeli license plates, armed with an M16 rifle and a pistol, Israel Today reported. The gunfight with the Israeli soldiers who responded to the attack was prolonged and lasted over 20 minutes during which both attackers were killed by the soldiers. A large amount of ammunition was found in the car the two gunmen arrived in, IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said. Netanyahu said it appeared Hamas terrorists were planning “a major attack aimed at murdering innocent civilians.” Both gunmen were members of Hamas, Israeli media reported, according to Israel Today.

The Israeli Prime Minister said he had instructed the military to “impose a cordon on the city of Hebron and to prepare for a full closure of the entire West Bank starting today,” DW reported. In the Hebron neighborhood where the two shooters came from, the IDF would apply the same model used in the refugee camps in the West Bank. “We will evacuate the residents, go from house to house, remove the weapons there, and address and demolish all terrorist infrastructure,” Netanyahu said. He added that Israel is placing a siege on the city of Hebron and its neighboring city of Halhul, and would consider applying the same model in other cities as well.

Netanyahu added that an even bigger operation is going to be carried out by the IDF in Judea and Samaria. “The Defense Minister and I have seen an IDF operation in Judea and Samaria on a very broad scale, unlike anything carried out since the Six-Day War. The IDF is ready to carry it out, and we will determine the timing, but it is coming.” He gave no date.

To the settlers in the area, Netanyahu declared, “You are an example to the people of Israel. You are an example to the State of Israel. We are going to destroy the terrorist infrastructure, and we are going to build the settlement infrastructure.” He continued that the government was advancing plans to build and legalize over 100 new communities and over 100 farms.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for a large-scale military campaign in the West Bank. He said he wanted a campaign “exactly like in Gaza and Lebanon,” DW reported. Immediately he ordered the demolition of a row of what he called illegal Arab structures next to the spot where the attack took place.

The attack occurred at the end of the campaign, when the voting is due to take place in four days’ time, on October 27. According to DW, the vote is widely seen as a referendum on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The polls have predicted a very tight race between the pro-Netanyahu camp and its opponents. Netanyahu connected the attack to threats that the election-season expects from his enemies. “We warned several weeks ago about attempts by our enemies to harm us, our civilians and our soldiers ahead of the elections. That is what they tried to do here,” he said.

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Decoding Pro-Israel Buzzwords in a Time of Genocide

Nearly two years ago, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International released in-depth reports documenting that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Months later, Israeli human rights groups did likewise. Support for Israel has declined steeply among Americans, but its defenders continue to maintain a siege of buzzwords against Palestinian rights.

As historian Rashid Khalidi emphasized in his book Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East, “language matters.” Standard terms and tropes “are the essential building blocks of a lofty and solid edifice of denial of an entire narrative, of the existence of an entire people, which is basic to the affirmation of a formidable counter-reality.”

Prominent groups, notably the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, AIPAC and Christians United for Israel – along with allies in Congress, the Executive Branch and the punditocracy – rely on the same buzzwords to defame critics of Israel and deny its systematic crimes against Palestinian people. For instance:

** “antisemitic”
At the top in the rhetorical toolbox, a blunt instrument for smearing Israel’s critics no matter how true their accusations – and no matter the absence of evidence of bigotry against Jewish people.

** “blood libel”
A high-dudgeon epithet for equating valid condemnations of Israel with 900-year-old antisemitic craziness.

** “held to a higher standard”
A catchphrase to evade realities of Israel’s ongoing large-scale crimes against humanity and the fact that Israel uses enormous U.S. military aid to impose apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide as matters of policy.

** “homeland for the Jewish people”
In other words: Palestinians will not replace us.

** “indigenous”
So, even Jewish Americans who recently moved to Israel are indigenous, unlike Palestinians whose ancestors have been living in Palestine for the last hundreds of years.

** “Jewish and democratic state”
It can’t be oxymoronic just because it’s an oxymoron.

** “peace process”
The process of Israeli expansion that has brought war and more war, with the U.S. government functioning as “Israel’s lawyer” while arming Israel with massive quantities of weapons and continuing to make Israel (in the words of a recent Congressional Research Service report) “the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II.”

** “self-defense”
A term reserved for Israelis but certainly not Palestinians.

** “terrorism”
When Palestinians kill Israeli civilians but not when Israelis kill Palestinian civilians in vastly greater numbers.

** “renounce violence”
A demand routinely made of Palestinian organizations but not of the Israeli government.

** “Israel’s right to exist”
The standard gotcha question “Do you believe Israel has a right to exist?” can be answered with clear questions: “Do you think apartheid South Africa had a right to exist?” . . . “Do you think ethnic cleansing has a right to exist?” . . . “Do you think genocide has a right to exist?” . . . “Do you think the tens of thousands of Palestinian children killed by the Israeli military had a right to exist?”

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The Normality of Evil: Reflections on the “NAZA” Documentary

Hannah Arendt’s characterization of Eichmann as representing “The Banality of Evil,” the subtitle of her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, shocked many people. It was later criticized in the wake of the discovery of her protagonist’s antisemitic pronouncements, unknown during his trial. The new film NAZA, documenting the inner mechanisms of the Gaza genocide brings the concept of the banality of evil front stage again. Except that this time we have the testimonies of two dozen perpetrators who, unlike Eichmann, do not face a tribunal but share their experience mostly in a casual and relaxed manner, some with pride in their accomplishment, others with remorse. They sound like normal middle-class men and women conscientiously doing their challenging hi-tech job. These Israelis embody something different from the Nazis who tried to hide their crimes from their own people, whom they feared would not support them. The new film is about the normality of evil in a society that has largely accepted the genocide taking place less than forty miles south of Tel Aviv.

The twenty-four perpetrators interviewed in the film belong to elite intelligence units that harness the power of AI and total surveillance to destroy Gaza. They are not “Arab haters,” remarks one of the interviewees. Yet he believes he killed more women and children than the fiercest Arab hater. However abhorrent the ongoing West Bank pogroms against Palestinians by Zionist squatter-settler vigilantes taking place under the sympathetic gaze and occasional assistance of the IDF—the magnitude of mass murder of civilians in Gaza is incomparably greater.

The perpetrators come from privileged classes of upscale, glittering Tel Aviv, the visual background of the entire film. Among the leitmotifs of the testimonies are the readiness to obey orders and the delight of overcoming difficult technical challenges (technodélice, as the late Jean-Jacques Salomon defined it). “It was fun (kef),” admitted one of the perpetrators.

NAZA is a Hebrew acronym for collateral damage. The association with “Nazi” is not fortuitous; one of the perpetrators compares his experience with that of Nazis engaged in industrialized, albeit less sophisticated, mass murder in the early 1940s. When, like many young Israelis (and Jews from elsewhere), he was taken to visit Nazi extermination camps, he wondered how these Nazis could switch to normal life after killing thousands of people a day. Now, he admits, he knows. He would meet friends after a day of killing mostly women and children and enjoy his night out.

Initially, neither the Nazis nor the Zionists intended to commit genocide. In their exclusivist nationalist fantasies, German National Socialists wanted to expel the undesirables, to make the “purified,” expanded Germany great again and, in the case of the socialist Zionists in power in 1948 and 1967, when massive expulsions took place, to turn Palestine into a “Jewish state.” Both had land lust: the Nazis wanted fertile land in Eastern Europe ‘cleansed’ of most Slavs and all the Jews—while critics and political figures alike have described Israel’s territorial strategy as a pursuit of ‘a maximum of territory with a minimum of Arabs.’

From the turn of the 20th century, Zionist pioneers laid strong emphasis on breeding the intrepid and valiant New Hebrew Man who had broken with the victimhood of the past. In his eulogy for Theodor Herzl in 1904, Vladimir Jabotinsky, who established and shaped the now dominant stream of Zionism, defined the new creature thus:

It was only later, faced with resistance kindled by the settler movement, that Israelis assumed the role of innocent victims, forced to defend themselves. Visits to the Nazi extermination camps are essential components of the didactic tools used to forge hard-nosed fighters. No wonder most of them called the attack on southern Israel in October 2023 “the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.” Totally lost was the difference between powerless Jewish civilians targeted by the Nazis and the powerful Jewish state that had expelled and confined Palestinians in an open-air concentration camp in Gaza. Referring to the violence they unleash, the Israelis often use the expression ein brera (“there is no choice”), which preserves their self-image and justifies excesses. This is how the genocide has metastasized from Europe to West Asia.

The film’s protagonists explain how they use sophisticated technology to survey every telephone communication of the Palestinians. One of the phrases AI extracts from millions of conversations is “When does daddy come home?” This is how the decision is made to destroy the suspect’s home along with his wife and children. Behind their computer screens, those who determine such targets can later hear the cries of those wounded children who were waiting for their fathers a few minutes earlier.

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Far-Left, Mamdani-Backed Democrat Brad Lander Detained by Israeli Forces in West Bank While Participating in Pro-Palestinian Activist Mission — Israel Accuses Him of “Harvesting Headlines”

Democratic congressional nominee Brad Lander, the far-left former New York City Comptroller and close ally of radical Mayor Zohran Mamdani, was detained again by Israeli authorities on Wednesday.

Lander, the Democratic nominee for New York’s 10th Congressional District, was detained on October 21 alongside dozens of international activists and rabbis while participating in an olive-harvesting mission with Palestinian farmers near the village of Nahalin, south of Bethlehem, NY Times reported.

The former New York City comptroller, who previously made headlines after being detained by federal immigration agents during a confrontation at a Manhattan immigration courthouse, was released several hours later with a warning.

Lander posted a selfie from a bus filled with others, writing: “I’ve been detained by the IDF, along with a group of rabbis & volunteers. We were simply harvesting olives in a grove near Nehalim in the West Bank. The occupation is a crime under international law. Harvesting olives isn’t a crime under any law I know.”

He later claimed he was released “with a ‘warning,’ apparently because of my public profile (I told them I wasn’t even a congressmember yet, just a nominee).”

He added that others remained in custody and should be freed immediately, framing the action as part of “state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.”

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China urges Israel to rethink its policies

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has urged Israel to halt and reverse the establishment of settlements in the occupied West Bank, describing the Palestinian issue as the “greatest historical injustice of this century,” according to a ⁠statement released by Beijing following his meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

The two officials met on Thursday on the sidelines of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Wang said achieving peace and reconciliation in the Middle East remained a cornerstone of Chinese foreign policy, stressing that a two-state solution was the only viable path toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Israeli settlers attack European delegation convoy in West Bank, beat French mayor

Israeli settlers on Saturday attacked a convoy of European diplomats and beat up a visiting French mayor, in a new escalation of violence during the Palestinian olive harvest, witnesses and diplomats said.

The 78-year-old mayor said masked settlers yelled defamatory comments about France, kicked him and hit him with iron bars as he joined Palestinian olive farmers in the West Bank alongside the top French and Belgian representatives in Jerusalem and Polish diplomats.

“I think that if settlers are behaving like this, there is a tolerance on the part of the Israeli government,” Bernard Baudoux, mayor of the northern French town of Aulnoye-Aymeries, told AFP after he was attacked.

“The whole world needs to know what’s happening,” he said. “For me, I’ll go back to my country and everything will be fine. Those who continue to suffer the most are those who are here.”

Baudoux, who was wearing a sash with the French tricolour, was seen collapsed on the side of the car after the attack but did not need hospital care.

The attack came just one day after settlers beat an American photographer for The Washington Post, who was in moderate condition with broken vertebrae on Saturday.

In a post on X, France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, describing the attack as “appalling”.

“The Israeli authorities must arrest those responsable for these appalling acts and take them to justice. They must urgently halt this criminal violence and guarantee the safety of civilian populations, as they are compelled to do under international law.”

Israel’s foreign ministry also condemned the incident and Israeli police promised to open an investigation.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, days away from an election in which he is seeking to shore up support from the far-right, instead alleged a “smear” campaign against settlers.

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‘I’m Going To Die’: Video Shows Israeli Settlers Brutally Attacking WaPo Journalist, Beating Her With Clubs

Masked Israeli settlers attacked an American Washington Post journalist Friday in the West Bank, kicking her and beating her with clubs, video shows.

Heidi Levine, a 64-year-old WaPo photographer, was caught in the middle of an Israeli settler attack on Palestinian villagers who were harvesting olives, according to the outlet. Video posted on X by independent journalist Jasper Nathaniel shows the settlers repeatedly kicking Levine and beating her with clubs. They also stole her equipment.

“This morning, a Washington Post photographer, Heidi Levine, was attacked by Israeli settlers while reporting in the West Bank,” Matt Murray, WaPo’s executive editor, said in a statement Friday. “She was wearing visible markings clearly identifying her as a journalist. While we are relieved that Heidi has received medical care and is safe, we are outraged by this unwarranted attack on a journalist doing her job and urge a thorough investigation and follow-through from authorities.”

Witnesses told Reuter that approximately 80 Israeli settlers engaged in a coordinated attack, burning cars and throwing rocks at settlers in the village of Abu Falah, near Ramallah. Reuters also reported that Israeli soldiers fired tear gas in the direction of Palestinians, and that the attack continued even after they had arrived. One Israeli soldier reportedly shot a Palestinian man in the leg.

“They do nothing to stop the settlers, and they speed into town and start firing their guns and tear-gassing, and they shoot a Palestinian man in the leg,” Nathaniel said of the IDF. “They’re pointing their guns at the paramedics who are helping him, shoving journalists, including myself.”

Levine said Palestinian colleagues intervened, helping get her to an ambulance.

“I was attacked, pushed to the ground,” Levine said from her hospital bed after the incident. “Luckily I had my flak jacket and helmet, otherwise I probably wouldn’t even be here, because they just kept kicking me and kicking me.”

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