Digital Rights Weekly Update: 9 - 15 January

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

News Coop

In 2021, a book titled “The Human-Machine Team: How to Create Synergy Between Human and Artificial Intelligence That Will Revolutionize Our World” was released in English under the pen name “Brigadier General Y.S.” In it, the author — a man who we confirmed to be the current commander of the elite Israeli intelligence unit 8200 — makes the case for designing a special machine that could rapidly process massive amounts of data to generate thousands of potential “targets” for military strikes in the heat of a war. Such technology, he writes, would resolve what he described as a “human bottleneck for both locating the new targets and decision-making to approve the targets.”

The Pillars of Repression Solidarity under Siege series: Part III

TNI

Since 7 October 2023, Germany has witnessed a staggering wave of cultural, academic, and financial repression targeting individuals and institutions that have expressed solidarity with Palestinians or criticised the Israeli state. Within just a few weeks, artists, scholars, students, and entire organisations faced censorship, cancelled events, funding cuts, and professional retaliation – often for minor actions such as signing a petition years ago or posting contextual analysis on social media. This is taking place in a country where the cultural sector is deeply dependent on public funding, and where state ministries, political foundations, and city governments play a decisive role in determining which voices are amplified and which are silenced.

Sunrise... The Digital Feudalism Project in the Gaza Strip

The New Arab

In September 2025, US President Donald Trump announced his peace plan to end the war in the Gaza Strip and to rebuild and reorganize it politically. The plan comprised 20 points divided into phases, and the agreement between Israel and Hamas on the first phase brought the ceasefire into effect, at least theoretically halting the war. This plan came after more than two years of systematic genocide perpetrated against the Strip, encompassing human, cultural, urban, and environmental destruction. The Gaza Strip, where the most powerful and advanced weapons were used on its land and in its skies, is now almost completely devastated. Its territory has become a testing ground not only for highly sophisticated weapons and a market for their destructive capabilities, but also a laboratory for political theories and new forms of colonialism.

How does the occupation employ artificial intelligence to stifle Jerusalem?

Aqsa 144

Reports issued by Amnesty International have revealed that the occupation authorities employ advanced surveillance technologies and artificial intelligence as part of a broader campaign targeting Palestinians in general, and particularly in East Jerusalem and the occupied city of Hebron. According to the organization, the occupation authorities seek, through this surveillance system, to create a hostile and coercive environment for Palestinians with the aim of reducing the Palestinian presence in Palestinian areas—especially strategic ones that are subject to attempts to impose “Israeli” control. This surveillance is accompanied by the imposition of severe restrictions on freedom of movement, expression, and other rights. Since the year 2000, the use of surveillance cameras by the occupation police has escalated under a monitoring system launched at the time known as “Mabat 2000.” According to Palestinian sources, the number of surveillance cameras reached approximately 400 by 2014, equipped with facial recognition technologies, and concentrated mainly in and around the Old City, as well as in the Damascus Gate area and the neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan.