Gaza media office marks ‘six months of aggression’
Gaza’s media office says it released updated “key figures” to mark 180 days since Israel launched its deadly assault on the besieged enclave.
Here are some of the most notable figures, according to the office:
- At least 32,975 Palestinians have been killed, including 14,500 children.
- Thousands more remain missing or trapped under the rubble.
- At least 484 medical staff members have been killed.
- More than 75,500 Palestinians have sustained injuries.
- Around 17,000 children have lost either one or both parents.
- More than one million people have been affected by infectious diseases due to repeated displacement.
- More than 300 medical staff members and 12 journalists have been arrested by Israeli forces.
- At least two million Palestinians are now internally displaced in Gaza.
- 70,000 housing units have been completely destroyed.
Israel’s use of Lavender system is ‘an AI-assisted genocide’: Expert
In a recent report published by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language media outlet Local Call, it was revealed that the Israeli army identified tens of thousands of Gaza Palestinians as potential targets using an AI targeting system called, “Lavender”.
Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor in Middle East Studies and digital humanities at Hamid bin Khalifa University, spoke to Al Jazeera about the report:
“It is becoming increasingly clear that Israel is deploying untested AI systems that have not gone through transparent evaluation to help make decisions about the life and death of civilians,” he said in an interview.
“The fact that the operators can tweak the algorithms based on pressure from senior officers to find more targets suggests they are actually devolving accountability and selection to AI and using a computer system to avoid moral accountability.”
“The operators themselves have pointed to how the AI is simply an efficient killing machine,” he said, “and it is explicitly not used to reduce civilian casualties but to find more targets”.
“This helps explain how over 32,000 people have been killed. Let’s be clear: This is an AI-assisted genocide, and going forward, there needs to be a call for a moratorium on the use of AI in the war.
He added, “It’s unlikely, without pressure from Israel’s allies, that there will be an end to [AI’s] use.”
Israel’s use of the ‘Lavender’ system violates the principle of distinction: Expert
Professor Toby Walsh, an AI expert at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, spoke to Al Jazeera about Israel’s AI Lavender system used to target tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.
He said the system “helps explain the terrible rate of collateral death” in the enclave, in part due to the fact that it is not 100 percent accurate and also because Israeli military leadership is “prepared to kill 20 innocent people for every combatant [and even up to 100 for a senior figure in Hamas]”.
Legal scholars will likely argue that this violates international humanitarian law, Walsh said.
“The principle of distinction requires you not to target civilians”, he said, adding that in using the system, the Israeli forces were aware that it was intentionally using a system that they knew violated this.
“And the principle of proportionality requires that collateral casualties are proportional to the threat. Twenty [civilian] deaths for one Hamas fighter is not proportional”, he explained.
“From a technical perspective, this latest news shows how hard it is to keep a human in the loop, providing meaningful oversight to AI systems that scale warfare terribly and tragically,” he said.
Israel could be committing war crimes of ‘disproportionate attacks’ with AI system: UN expert
Ben Saul, the UN special rapporteur for human rights and counterterrorism, has said that reports the Israeli army decided it was permissible to kill 15 or 20 Palestinians for every junior Hamas operative could constitute war crimes.
“If true, many Israeli strikes in Gaza would constitute the war crimes of launching disproportionate attacks,” said Saul in a post on social media.
Saul was responding to a report in +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language media outlet Local Call, which revealed the Israeli army has identified tens of thousands of Gaza Palestinians as potential targets using an AI targeting system called “Lavender”.
