The War on Gaza and the Global Cyberspace
In this, the fourth blog post in our Palestine series, Ahmad H. Sa’di shares his contribution to the Surveillance Studies Network 2024 Conference plenary ‘Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine’, also honouring the influence of Elia Zureik (1939–2023). Other contributions in this series come from fellow speakers on the panel: David Lyon, Neve Gordon and Muna Haddad, and Mais Qandeel.
The war on Gaza, which began on October 7th, has unleashed several undercurrents and highlighted others. In this post, I shall not refer to the calamity that has been unfolding in front of our eyes and challenges our sense of humanity, but rather it shall be modest, focusing on two specific phenomena. The first is the role of modern surveillance systems in controlling large populations, while the second relates to the emergence of alliances and solidarity between different populations that ostensibly have very little in common. For example, what connects the gay community with the largely religious Palestinians in Gaza, and what is common to Ivy League university students and staff and Starbucks workers?
The war on Gaza represents a shocking test not only for the reliability of systems of mass surveillance that have become since the closing year of the last century the main tool of population management and control globally but also for those who rely on them. The ease by which Hamas fighters overran the sophisticated Israeli barrier that separated Israeli settlements from Gaza sent a sobering message to those who rely on such systems (like South Korea which erected similar system on its border with the North), particularly since Israel has epitomized for decades the neoliberal securitizing paradigm.
The “smart fence,” dubbed the Iron Wall, took three and a half years to complete and featured 6 meters (20 feet) high barrier empowered by sophisticated sensors, radars, command and control rooms, watch towers, remote-controlled weapon systems, detection equipment, an underground wall, and maritime barriers. 140,000 tons of steel and iron were used in its construction. Upon the completion of the project in December 2021, Benny Gantz, then Israel’s minister of defence stated “The barrier, which is an innovative and technologically advanced project, deprives Hamas of one of the capabilities it tried to develop [namely the building of tunnels to attack Israel].” And “[it] places an ‘iron wall,’ sensors and concrete between the terror organizations and the residents of Israel’s south.”
This fence seemed to mark Israel’s complete triumph over the Palestinians. The subservient Palestinian authority runs the densely populated areas of the West Bank on behalf of Israel and the West; the Palestinian citizens of Israel have been effectively contained through various laws and surveillance practices, including their incorporation into the margins of the Israeli polity, while the 2.23 million residents of Gaza have been neutralized. They are circled in the most densely populated area on earth, with Israel having sovereign power over their lives; it can decide the content of their diet, their intake of calories, the vaccinations used, their communication within Gaza and with the outside world, etc. This control is bolstered by constant surveillance through drones, satellites, CCTVs, sensors implanted in Gaza and spy programs implanted in their communication systems. This surveillance and control system was supposed to run efficiently and economically. Young, mostly female recruits monitor the Palestinians as they manage their daily lives on large screens placed in airconditioned rooms deep inside Israel: taking their children to school, shopping in the market, visiting their friends and neighbours, or burying their loved ones. This apparent visibility gave Israeli commanders the illusion that they knew Gazans intimately by deciphering their habitus. They seem to have assumed the “philosopher king” role, as their sovereign power is bolstered by superior knowledge.
Thus, it seemed that Zionism’s triumph had become fait accompli. Hamas, the last major Palestinian resistance group, would not be able to attack Israel either by using tunnels or by sea or ground. Moreover, its unsophisticated missiles would be most likely shot down by the “Iron Dome.” Two acts have symbolized this sense of triumphalism. The first is the use of the “iron wall” metaphor, which was first articulated by the Zionist revisionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky in 1923 and whose construction was viewed as a prelude to the final submission of the indigenous people of Palestine. The second is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN General Assembly on September 22, 2023, two weeks before Hamas’s attack, in which he discounted the Palestinians as a political factor and their national aspirations.
Such overreliance on surveillance technology and data encompasses two shortcomings. First, the inattentiveness to what the novelist Graham Greene called the “Human Factor,” referring to the unpredictability of human motivations and ingenuity. Thus, for example, in “The Dancing Men,” the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes explains to the villain Abe Slaney his decipherment of the coded script that the criminal gang used, saying, “What one man invents another can discover.” In this regard, I think Foucault’s assertion — made in Discipline and Punish — regarding the unidirectionality of power, where the prison’s inmates internalize the disciplining guard’s gaze, is mistaken. While the power is undeniably concentrated in the room on the top of the tower, this does not mean that the inmates remain passive. Rather, they might endeavour to decipher the guard’s work pattern, times of activity/inactivity and biases and use them to their advantage.
Thus, while Israeli military chiefs were exploring Palestinians’ habitus, the Palestinian military groups were doing the same. Indeed, Hamas used snipers to disable the CCTVs, hang gliders to fly over the fence, and this was followed by using pickup cars to move fighters to occupy the command-and-control base. Hamas’s attack involves another factor, on which I shall not elaborate, that relates to the nature of technological development. Technologies do not always develop evolutionarily and according to the same principles, thus creating inconsistencies between old and new technologies. This variability in the principles used in technological development opens the door to examining loopholes and weaknesses in the new technologies and the possibility of beating new technologies with old ones.
The second danger of overreliance on data is that objective data could be interpreted in different, even contradictory ways. For example, during the Vietnam War, relying on data about Vietnamese losses, American strategists believed for several years that victory was around the corner; however, it was never achieved.
Despite the shortcomings of overreliance on surveillance technologies and data gathering, which are known to scholars, Israel was willing to run the risk. This, I think, has to do with two factors. First, Israel’s self-identity as a settler society, which distinguishes itself from the natives by being modern and technologically advanced. Indeed, the notion of constituting an outpost for civilization against the barbarians has been constitutive of Israeli identity as well as the West’s conception.
Second, although surveillance, as a form of power, exists in all settings, it constitutes a matter of life and death for settlers and colonists. Given their foreignness to the surrounding and demographic inferiority, surveillance has become a key tool for Israel to secure its dominance, particularly since 1967 when came to control a large Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. While surveilling such a large subordinate population might be considered a burden, it opened new opportunities for Israel. First, it came to be widely viewed by neo-liberal elites and by the surveillance-industrial complex as a successful model for population management and surveillance. Consequently, it became a laboratory for experimenting with new technologies and methods, thus creating a community of identity between Israel and these entities. Second, Israel has been well-integrated into the globalized surveillance industry, and it is often dubbed as a start-up nation. Besides substantial profits garnered by the Ashkenazi elite, the selling of surveillance equipment has helped Israel to shore up its international standing, principally by selling surveillance programs to oppressive regimes.
The failure of the Israeli system of surveillance during the Gaza War seems to constitute not only a blow to the state-of-the-art surveillance systems but also highlights the apprehension among neoliberal elites and those in charge of the surveillance-industrial complex regarding the sustainability of the existing surveillance paradigm. This, I think, partly explains their ferocity in defending Israel’s carnage.
At this critical junction of the current surveillance and control paradigm, Israel has pushed ahead by incorporating AI tools into its war machine. Although such incorporation is widely debated among politicians, experts, and military commanders, Israel has employed tools it has been experimenting with for some time, thus fulfilling its role as a laboratory for new technologies of surveillance and suppression. In this regard, Israel has refrained from signing the US-backed treaty, which aims to promote the responsible use of AI in war.
So far, Israel has used three main tools. These are Gospel, Where’s Daddy? and Lavender. Each works on a specific aspect of targets’ generation. The first gathers data on buildings presumably used by persons affiliated with Hamas or the Islamic Jihad; the second alerts about an approaching target to a certain building, while the third uses data from various sources (social media, photos, data retrieved from cell phone etc.) to determine the statistical likelihood that a certain individual is a Hamas operative. These systems have changed the meaning of war. Instead of killing Hamas fighters on the battlefield, they are bombed in their houses along with their families and probably other civilians, who are considered collateral damage. According to the regulations, it is permissible to kill up to 20 civilians along with each junior Hamas operative and around 100 civilians with each commander. Moreover, the use of cheap “dumb” bombs instead of smart ones to save resources in assassinating junior operatives increases the likelihood of “collateral damage.”
Such AI tools have several characteristics. They generate huge amounts of targets by prioritising quantity over quality; they process data and generate targets at an unprecedented speed, thus shortening the “kill chain”; and they are cost-effective. According to the former IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi “in the past there were times in Gaza when we would create 50 targets per year. And here the machine produced 100 targets in one day.”
Not only did AI increase the war’s brutality by blurring the line between civilians and combatants, but it has also shifted the balance in the human-machine interface by conceding more authority to the machine and bringing us closer to a dystopian world governed by machines.
For example, one soldier entrusted with verifying the targets generated by the AI tools testified that he spent no more than 20 seconds verifying the machine-produced target. The only variable he checks is the target’s gender, adding, “I had zero added value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval.” Another said, “It really is like a factory. We work quickly and there is no time to delve deep into the target. The view is that we are judged according to how many targets we manage to generate.”
More dangerous could be the impact of technology on the consciousness and the world view of politicians and military commanders who manage the war. Elke Schwarz, for example, claims that “AI system can lead to moral complacency, prompt users toward action over non-action, and nudge people to prioritize speed over deliberative ethical reasoning.” (Vox, May, 8, 2024). Meanwhile, the philosopher Shannon Vallor (in various articles) argues that the introduction of automation and AI leads to employees’ technical and moral de-skilling.
Israel’s introduction of AI tools into its weaponry has been possible due to its collaboration with the two giant tech companies Google and Amazon within the Nimbus project. According to an agreement with Google, Israel’s Ministry of Defense will be given its own “landing zone” into Google Cloud- a secure entry point, which would allow IDF and other security agencies to store and process data and access Google’s AI services. Moreover, Google and Amazon would provide Israel with consultancy services.
My second point refers to the alliances which emerged because of the War. I think that the commonalities among the supporters of the Palestinians and those supporting Israel are different from past bases of solidarity. These do not reflect affiliation to civilization, religion, official ideology (institutional left such as the British Labour Party vs ight) or even geography (global south vs global north). Rather they are based on the relation to the modes of surveillance and control, and the regime of truth, which supports the exciting paradigm. Therefore, it is not surprising that the supporters of the Palestinians are countries which suffered from settler- colonialism South Africa, Algeria, and Ireland; in addition to Spain and Norway, which lived under fascist regimes (Spain was under Franco regime’s rule for 39 years, and Norway was under the collaborationist regime of Vidkun Quisling between 1942 and 1945). Counterpoising them stand the elites (from left and right) of the ex-colonialist and neo-imperialist powers, which have a long history of genocide and practicing oppression, the UK, France, Germany, and the US.
Within Western countries, the struggle is between those who oppose the neoliberal surveillance and control paradigm — employees, students, and professors — and those who manage its systems — companies’ and universities’ management and politicians. While existing discontent reflects moral rage regarding the ongoing genocidal war in Gaza, this rage is associated with the rapid erosion of liberties under neoliberal capitalism. Indeed, since Snowden’s revelations, there has been a growing awareness of the digital platforms’ tasks of not only collecting the personal data of all citizens but also datafying and manipulating their consciousness and subconsciousness, thus increasingly rendering them objects of value extraction. The connection between the war on Gaza and the increasing objectification of citizens worldwide has been articulated by various groups and individuals. For example, in a communique that the Canadian Federation of Students which represents over half a million students, stated:
… from coast to coast, students continue to call for an immediate stop to the bombing of Gaza, an immediate end to the siege, and a free and liberated Palestine…
We are seeing the further development of a narrative that seeks to minimize the reality of Palestinians, protect Israel’s war crimes, and villainize supporters of justice. This narrative is not new; corporations, institutions, and governments who historically and continue to exercise and benefit from settler colonialism in so-called Canada continue to actively build and uphold it due to their complicity and investment in Israel’s settler colonial destruction and dispossession of Palestinians. We see through mainstream reporting on this issue, and through intentional language choices used to describe the brutal apartheid and occupation as merely a conflict, serves to obfuscate the ongoing atrocities inflicted on Palestinians for 75 years. Let it be clear, genocide is not a conflict.
Similarly, a joint statement of Oxford Action of Palestine and Cambridge for Palestine called upon their universities to stop supporting Israel morally and financially, maintaining that “Oxbridge’s profits cannot continue to climb at the expense of Palestinians lives, and their reputation must no longer be built on the white-washing of Israeli crimes.” A wider connection between neoliberal governmentality and the war on Gaza was articulated by a Washington Post reader in the opinion column:
Gaza is for the moment their [students’] imperative, but looking more broadly there is wider scope for students to feel frustrated and angry. They have grown up with social and political issues that adversely affected their lives and future. They know the dire evidence about climate change but see paltry action to mitigate it. They have experienced lockdown drills at their schools or have hidden from active shooters while watching those in authority turn a blind eye to gun control. Their schools’ curriculums and libraries may have been purged of influential ideas. For many young women, their right to control their own bodies has been stripped away. And now, the digital commons that many have chosen to inhabit, TikTok, might be banned. The adults in control seem feckless and uncaring.
Besides students, employees have supported the Palestinians. Two groups have stood out for different reasons: Starbucks workers, and Google’s engineers. Despite their position at the bottom of the employment scale in terms of work conditions, Starbucks workers found the time and courage to issue a statement supporting the Palestinians. The management’s overreaction not only highlighted the company’s unfair practices and raised questions regarding its relation to Israel’s occupation but also led to a wide boycott of its products by large populations including in many Muslim-majority countries. The resultant pressure forced the company to allow the unionization of the workers and to accept a collective bargaining procedure.
Meanwhile, Google and Amazon employees protested their companies’ use of their work and talent for morally questionable ends. Expressing their ethical predicament, 390 employees, signed a letter condemning not only their companies’ participation in the Nimbus project but also their enduring collaboration with various militarized and profiling institutions, including US Department of Defense, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and state and local police departments. Regarding the Palestinians, they stated that:
We cannot look the other way, as the products we build are used to deny Palestinians their basic rights, force Palestinians out of their homes and attack Palestinians in the Gaza Strip — actions that have prompted war crime investigations by the international criminal court.
The Nimbus project highlights the ostensibly contradictory directions, which many tech giants have taken. They provide users with means to connect and manage their affairs efficiently, but at the same time supply the tools for their surveillance and profiling and in some cases, as in Gaza, to their destitution and death. Beyond appearances, however, these companies’ commitment to uphold the hegemonic order and its manifestations is unwavering. In this regard, Palestinian content has been censured. A third-party body appointed by Meta (Facebook) to investigate claims regarding its violation of Palestinian human rights by censuring their content during the 2021 Israel’s war on Gaza, not only approved these accusations categorically, but also pointed to a more eerie practice. Instagram’s automated translation added the word “terrorist” to Palestinian profiles and WhatsApp, created auto-generated illustrations of gun-wielding children when prompted with the word “Palestine.
As to Google workers who endeavoured to pull the company for the side of ordinary citizens and ethical causes, they were punished. Fifty of the workers who organized under the banner of “No Tech For Apartheid” were dismissed without due process. Google also called the police to disperse workers’ sit-in protests carried out at its offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. Moreover, it confined the message board workers used to exchange ideas, including criticizing their superiors and discussing job cuts.
To sum up, I argue that the war on Gaza has highlighted the deep and increasingly ungovernable contradiction that exists in the current world order and brought to the surface the discontent that large swathes of populations worldwide feel regarding the neoliberal formation, its underlying principles and tools of surveillance, objectification, and management. But still, it is heart-rendering to see live so much suffering, particularly among children, the elderly, women and the sick.
