This is Eve. Western So-called Experts, especially China hardliners and Silicon Valley boosters, often portray China as a surveillance state. Thus, they argue, our reliance on Chinese technology opens all sorts of avenues for Chinese surveillance. This view is based on a strong assertion of the current extent of government surveillance of ordinary citizens. However, even Wikipedia largely denies one of the widely promoted horror stories surrounding China: China’s Social Credit SystemAnd as the article below shows, Israel’s surveillance of Palestinians goes far beyond any allegations I’ve seen about China spying on its own citizens.
The article highlights the sadly obvious fact that Israel is also finding an acceptable export market for surveillance equipment.
Written by Petra Molnár, a lawyer and anthropologist specializing in migration and human rights. Her latest book, “The Walls Have Eyes,” reflects six years of field work and tells the story of a world where borders are becoming more and more visible through technological experimentation. Open Democracy
We’re looking down the barrel of an automatic rifle held by a 19-year-old, one of three men who gave us our personal “guard” in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. My fellow journalist Florian Schmitz and I were guided by a group of former Israeli soldiers who founded “Breaking the Silence” in March 2004 to shed light on the countless atrocities committed by Israel in Palestine. They were kind enough to give us a private tour of Hebron so we could see the impact of surveillance firsthand.
“Hebron is both a laboratory for technology and a laboratory for violence,” says Ori Givati, a former Israeli soldier who served in Hebron and is now advocacy director for Breaking the Silence. The Israeli occupation of Palestine is a breeding ground for technologies like drones, facial recognition, and AI-controlled weapons that are exported and reused around the world. That’s why we had to go there, and why much of this story begins here.
We started from the settlement of Kiryat Arba, on the outskirts of Hebron, one of the areas claimed by Jewish settlers during the occupation. Israel is rapidly expanding its territory, dividing Palestinian territories from one another. Nowhere is this more evident than in Hebron, which is now divided into two territories: H1, under Palestinian control, and H2, under Israeli military control. What used to take Palestinians two minutes to walk to their grandmother’s house now takes an hour, as they have to avoid “unsanitary roads” that are forbidden to Palestinians. They sometimes have to ask permission just to cross the road to the cemetery to bury their dead.
As we make our way along the cobblestone road, a small car passes by and a female settler photographs our small group on her cell phone and waves to the soldiers in the familiar greeting. She follows us for a while, then speeds off. We climb a hill of crushed stone and meet Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist who runs his home as a community center. The center is a meeting spot right next to a military checkpoint. We can see soldiers keeping watch while we eat coffee and snacks in the shade of a huge olive tree. On the opposite wall is a red, white, black and green map of Palestine. Issa was brutally assaulted last week while walking at gunpoint with Israeli soldiers. The Washington Post The journalist, whose violence was captured on video and quickly went viral, wears a military uniform and a Che Guevara-style hat and carries himself with aplomb, but at times betrays an awareness that he may be Hebron’s most unwelcome man – and he is clearly not the only one being harassed and assaulted.
Settlers in Hebron regularly assault children, throw garbage at Palestinian homes, and make life unbearable for Palestinians on a daily basis. Indeed, when we were there in February 2023, an attack in Nablus killed at least 11 people, including teenagers and a grandmother. In another incident, an Israeli settler shot and killed a Palestinian man. As Issa says, “If you’re afraid to go out your front door and you know you’re going to be attacked, it’s better to leave.”
Israel’s continued oppression of Palestinians and occupation of their territory for more than half a century has been publicly called an apartheid system, not only by a 2021 report from leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, but also by subsequent international groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. One of the ways Israel is able to maintain these violent policies is through its surveillance technologies that permeate every aspect of Palestinian life. Oli, a former Israeli soldier, told me: “How do we control Palestinians? We make them feel that we are everywhere. We are not only invading your home, but also your private digital space.”
Indeed, privacy is virtually nonexistent in places like Hebron. There are cameras pointed at every bedroom, and long-range video and audio surveillance equipment in places like the courtyard where Issa and I were talking. We wave back as a courtesy. Issa provides video cameras to Palestinians so they can point their lenses at Israeli soldiers. He also installs many cameras in his home as a form of defense. But these cameras are no match for the vastness of Israel’s surveillance infrastructure. Israel controls Palestinian Wi-Fi and has installed cameras on almost every lamppost, some disguised as stones in farmers’ fields. It has also deployed a vast network of biometric surveillance, including facial recognition cameras, at checkpoints. Israeli settlers are now being outfitted with their own drones by Israeli companies calling themselves NGOs. Meanwhile, checkpoints are being outfitted with AI-controlled guns.
One evening, we were heading to Issa’s house from our hotel in H1; we seemed to be the only guests there. Florian drove us through Hebron’s labyrinthine streets while Issa directed us over a flawed video link: “Left, left, now right, watch out for goats.” As we parked as instructed, a young Palestinian surprised us by jumping into the back seat. He quickly explained that his name was Ahmad, that he was an activist, and that he was there to help us with the rest of the very complicated journey home. We would have to avoid the “sterile” roads that, as a Palestinian, he could not get on.
Back at Issa’s house, we sit by a fire in an old drum while Ahmad and the other men roast chicken and prepare coffee. AdhanThe call to prayer echoes across the hills, an aural reminder of Palestine in this divided city. For Ahmad, who has lived in Hebron all his life, surveillance is not uncommon. “They watch our eyes,” he says. “They stop us for an hour or three for no reason. 20055… My number is 20055 on the computer. We are numbers, not people.” One can’t help but think of Yad Vashem.
Israel is known as the “Harvard of counterterrorism,” but it is also home to much of the world’s surveillance technology that is standardized and tested on Palestinians. One of the leading companies in border surveillance and spyware is the Israeli company Elbit Systems. Headquartered in Haifa and founded in 1966, Elbit Systems began in weapons logistics and has grown into a surveillance powerhouse with approximately 18,000 employees worldwide and revenue of $5.28 billion in 2021.
The company also has a book publishing division, which published a revisionist history book in Bulgaria in 2021 that falsely claimed the Bulgarian state saved Jews during World War II. According to professors Raz Segal and Amos Goldberg, the revisionist book’s publication was driven by Elbit’s desire to gain a foothold in the Bulgarian arms market.
Elbit Systems’ flashy demonstrations are a frequent feature at various conferences such as the World Border Patrol Congress, but beneath the company’s bright yellow logo hides a business model that Israeli author Yossi Melman describes as “spy diplomacy,” which involves testing surveillance technology at both borders and conflict zones, often with an eye toward those trying to record what is going on on the ground.
Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest defense company, but much of its technology is also used in border security, from armed autonomous surveillance drones like the Hermes, first tested in Gaza and now patrolling the Mediterranean, to fixed AI surveillance towers that patrol the Arizona desert.
For those working in the field, names like Elbit send chills down the spine, but so does Israel’s NSO Group, perhaps the most successful cyber surveillance company in the world. Since its founding in 2010, NSO Group has cemented its global presence thanks to its superior surveillance capabilities, especially its flagship spy surveillance application, Pegasus, which is used by governments such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Greece. Pegasus can infiltrate mobile phones to extract data or activate cameras and microphones to spy on their owners.
The company says the technology was designed to fight crime and terrorism, but investigators have found it has been used against journalists, activists, dissidents and politicians around the world.
But this AI and surveillance technology is flowing in different directions. One notable example is Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract between Google, Amazon, and the Israeli government to provide the Israeli government with advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technology that could lead to increased digital surveillance in the occupied Palestinian territories. This comes as the West Bank is in the midst of the worst violence and apartheid oppression in decades. The contract drew the ire of Google employees, both Jewish and Palestinian, who spoke out publicly about the project. Some, like computer scientist Ariel Coren, were fired; others resigned; others were silenced.
