(October 29, 2024)
Delays in the Palestine investigation trace back to 2015 when former ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda initiated a preliminary examination. Although the investigation met the necessary criteria in 2019, it was postponed due to jurisdiction debates over Palestinian territories. The formal investigation began in March 2021, yet no meaningful progress has been made, further delaying requests against Netanyahu and Gallant.
(May 28, 2024)
Thanks to their comprehensive access to Palestinian telecoms infrastructure, the sources said, intelligence operatives could capture the calls without installing spyware on the ICC official’s devices.
“If Fatou Bensouda spoke to any person in the West Bank or Gaza, then that phone call would enter [intercept] systems,” one source said. Another said there was no hesitation internally over spying on the prosecutor, adding: “With Bensouda, she’s black and African, so who cares?”
The surveillance system did not capture calls between ICC officials and anyone outside Palestine. However, multiple sources said the system required the active selection of the overseas phone numbers of ICC officials whose calls Israeli intelligence agencies decided to listen to.
According to one Israeli source, a large whiteboard in an Israeli intelligence department contained the names of about 60 people under surveillance – half of them Palestinians and half from other countries, including UN officials and ICC personnel.
In The Hague, Bensouda and her senior staff were alerted by security advisers and via diplomatic channels that Israel was monitoring their work.
(November 30, 2023)
The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.
(…)
Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear.
“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.
Giora Eiland, a retired Israeli major general, serves on the board of directors of Corsight …. He wrote: ‘The entire population of #Gaza will either move to #Egypt or move to the Gulf.’
The retired general also recommended targeting civilian vehicles in Gaza.” #writingcommunity
(12. November 2016)
Aus Interviews mit AussteigerInnen der mutmaßlich eng mit den Mitgliedern und Mitgliedern der “Technischen Aufklärung” des Bundesnachrichtendienstes eingebetteten israelischen Einheit 8200, veröffentlicht im “Guardian” im September 2014:
“Ich nahm eine Funktion an, in der Leute ´Ziele´ genannt wurden, und diese Leute die uns wirklich interessieren sind in keinem Sinne Terroristen, sondern eher generell normale Menschen – die uns interessieren wegen ihrer Funktionen, so dass wir mehr Geheimdienstinformationen über sie bekommen können und mehr Zugang erzielen. Wir nutzen unsere Möglichkeiten über diese Menschen zu unserem Vorteil, um es uns leicht zu machen. Wir nutzen die Einwirkung / die Wucht (“impact) die wir auf deren Leben haben. Manchmal beinhaltet dies das Leben, oder die Seele einer Person wirklich zu verletzen. Ich meine Erpressung, bei Dingen die sie vor Leuten um sich herum verbergen müssen. Ich kann Menschen wirklich das Leben zerstören. Es gab mir das Gefühl omnipotent zu sein.
Als ich diesen Job begann, war ich überrascht von dem Ausmaß meiner Verantwortung. Ich hatte das Gefühl über wichtige Dinge ein Mitspracherecht zu haben. Ich konnte Dinge in Gang setzen, die das Leben (Anm.: es folgt die Bezeichnung der ausspionierten Ortsansässigen) betrafen – ich konnte meine Einheit dazu bringen alle möglichen Maßnahmen zu ergreifen. Die Einstellung war ´Warum nicht? Wir können, also lasst es uns tun.´ Ich dachte, dass das, was ich tun konnte verrückt war. Wir waren die Chefs.”
Ein ex-Spion von 8200 berichtet, wie Soldaten unter seiner Ausbildung systematisch moralisch korrumpiert wurden, um sie zu “vergiften” und die Skrupellosigkeit im Apparat weiter auf Standard zu halten. Bei Razzien “beschlagnahmte” persönliche Gegenstände von Individuen – “Photos von Kindern, Uhren, Familienfotos, Fussballtrophäen, Bücher”, bis hin zu Juwelen – wurden nicht nur zur Mitnahme angeboten, sondern in den Ausbildungsräumen zur Schau gestellt.
“Die Idee war die Auszubildenden (“students”) zu vergiften.“
(…)
“Die einzige Schlussfolgerung die gezogen wurde, dass es in dieser Einheit so etwas wie einen illegalen Befehl nicht gibt. Es sind nicht wir, die entscheiden was moralisch ist und was nicht. Heute erkenne ich, dass dies das ist, was auch der Bomberpilot sagt: `Es ist nicht an mir zu sagen was moralisch ist und was nicht.` Jeder reicht die Verantwortung an Andere weiter.”
(Sep 12, 2014)
(March 27, 2024)
The expansive and experimental effort is being used to conduct mass surveillance there, collecting and cataloging the faces of Palestinians without their knowledge or consent, according to Israeli intelligence officers, military officials and soldiers.
The technology was initially used in Gaza to search for Israelis who were taken hostage by Hamas during the Oct. 7 cross-border raids, the intelligence officials said.
(28.03.2024)
There is little complaint from western politicians. Corsight’s complicity isn’t seen as an urgent matter.
Nor, for that matter, do most of these politicians give sufficient attention to Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza.
Unmentioned by the Times is that Giora Eiland, a retired Israeli major general, serves on the board of directors of Corsight.
When Eiland joined the board in January 2021, Igal Raichelgauz, chairman and founder of the Cortica Group, stated, “We are excited to add Giora to the company board, we believe that due to his extensive experience in the national security field, Corsight will continue growing into new markets and territories and lead the face recognition market in Israel and in the world.” Corsight is a subsidiary of Cortica, a firm focused on artificial intelligence.
Eiland is a proponent of the ethnic cleansing of the occupied territory of Gaza.
The UK government will continue to suspend funding to Palestinian relief works agency UNRWA, the Minister for Development and Africa Andrew Mitchell has said, despite famine gripping Gaza and crippling food shortages.
The US, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Finland, Australia and the Netherlands will also continue their freeze to critical life saving aid to the UN aid agency for Palestinians until an interim report about Israel allegations that UNRWA aid workers were involved in Hamas‘s 7 October attacks is released, the minister said.
anada suspended funding to UNRWA in January after Israel alleged 12 employees of the aid agency were involved in some capacity in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
CBC News first reported on Tuesday that the government intended to resume funding after receiving an interim report from the United Nations investigation of Israel‘s allegations.
It ruled on several provisional measures, including that Israel must abstain from genocidal acts, bring accountability for the normalised genocidal rhetoric from state level to civil society, and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
But just hours after the verdict, not only did Israel resume its indiscriminate attacks, it took it even further by going after UNRWA, the UN agency that serves as a lifeline for millions of people in Gaza.
The intelligence report‘s findings are in stark contrast to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken‘s remarks in January, in which he said that the accusations against UNRWA were “highly, highly credible”.
The Journal also reported that Israel has not “shared the raw intelligence behind its assessments with the US” despite the strong security relationship between the two countries.
Israel has shared a dossier of sorts outlining its accusations, alongside details of where their evidence stems from, with the US and several western news organisations.
Major UNRWA donors, incl the US, have frozen vital funds bcz of Israel‘s allegations.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini says „the UN has never, never, ever received any written dossier, despite our repeated call.“
(15.01.2024)
(30.11.2023)
The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.
(…)
Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear.
“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.
But Israel refuses to share either its evidence or the intelligence dossier – a summary of which was seen by FRANCE 24 – with UNRWA, posing a challenge for the UN agency to complete its inquiry.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the main aid agency in Gaza, is set to lose $65 million by the end of February as donors’ funding cuts begin to kick in, according to internal accounting documents reviewed by The New York Times.
„The dossier said that Israeli intelligence officers had established the movements of six of the men inside Israel on Oct. 7 based on their phones; others had been monitored while making phone calls inside Gaza during which, the Israelis say, they discussed their involvement in the Hamas attack,“ the NYT report says, referring to a dossier reportedly handed to US officials in recent days.
(…)
The NYT report on Sunday, based on the dossier seen by its reports, made no mention of confessions.
But recent intelligence has shown the extent to which Hamas has been able to build many of its rockets and anti-tank weaponry out of the thousands of munitions that failed to detonate when Israel lobbed them into Gaza, according to weapons experts and Israeli and Western intelligence officials. Hamas is also arming its fighters with weapons stolen from Israeli military bases.
Intelligence gathered during months of fighting revealed that, just as the Israeli authorities misjudged Hamas’s intentions before Oct. 7, they also underestimated its ability to obtain arms.
– USA
– Canada
– UK
– Finland
– Australia
– Italy
Driving the news: A senior Israeli official said the Shin Bet and Israeli military intelligence provided information that pointed to the active participation of UNRWA staffers and the use of the agency‘s vehicles and facilities during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
„This was strong and corroborated intelligence,“ the official said. „A lot of the intelligence is a result of interrogations of militants who were arrested during the Oct. 7 attack.“
(20.10.2023)
Yahalom Unit: a specialized Israeli Defense Forces combat engineering corps commando unit trained to find, clear and destroy tunnels. The unit is one of the largest in the world focused on underground warfare.
The Yahalom carries a toolkit of specialized gear for such operations, including ground and aerial sensors, ground-penetrating radar, drilling equipment, radios and navigation equipment designed for use underground, thermal equipment and a suite of flying and ground robots for mapping tunnels. Once discovered, the unit has ground-penetrating munitions such as the GBU-28, which can penetrate 100 feet of soil or 20 feet of concrete.
(12. November 2016)
Aus Interviews mit AussteigerInnen der mutmaßlich eng mit den Mitgliedern und Mitgliedern der “Technischen Aufklärung” des Bundesnachrichtendienstes eingebetteten israelischen Einheit 8200, veröffentlicht im “Guardian” im September 2014:
“Ich nahm eine Funktion an, in der Leute ´Ziele´ genannt wurden, und diese Leute die uns wirklich interessieren sind in keinem Sinne Terroristen, sondern eher generell normale Menschen – die uns interessieren wegen ihrer Funktionen, so dass wir mehr Geheimdienstinformationen über sie bekommen können und mehr Zugang erzielen. Wir nutzen unsere Möglichkeiten über diese Menschen zu unserem Vorteil, um es uns leicht zu machen. Wir nutzen die Einwirkung / die Wucht (“impact) die wir auf deren Leben haben. Manchmal beinhaltet dies das Leben, oder die Seele einer Person wirklich zu verletzen. Ich meine Erpressung, bei Dingen die sie vor Leuten um sich herum verbergen müssen. Ich kann Menschen wirklich das Leben zerstören. Es gab mir das Gefühl omnipotent zu sein.
Als ich diesen Job begann, war ich überrascht von dem Ausmaß meiner Verantwortung. Ich hatte das Gefühl über wichtige Dinge ein Mitspracherecht zu haben. Ich konnte Dinge in Gang setzen, die das Leben (Anm.: es folgt die Bezeichnung der ausspionierten Ortsansässigen) betrafen – ich konnte meine Einheit dazu bringen alle möglichen Maßnahmen zu ergreifen. Die Einstellung war ´Warum nicht? Wir können, also lasst es uns tun.´ Ich dachte, dass das, was ich tun konnte verrückt war. Wir waren die Chefs.”
Ein ex-Spion von 8200 berichtet, wie Soldaten unter seiner Ausbildung systematisch moralisch korrumpiert wurden, um sie zu “vergiften” und die Skrupellosigkeit im Apparat weiter auf Standard zu halten. Bei Razzien “beschlagnahmte” persönliche Gegenstände von Individuen – “Photos von Kindern, Uhren, Familienfotos, Fussballtrophäen, Bücher”, bis hin zu Juwelen – wurden nicht nur zur Mitnahme angeboten, sondern in den Ausbildungsräumen zur Schau gestellt.
“Die Idee war die Auszubildenden (“students”) zu vergiften.“
(…)
“Die einzige Schlussfolgerung die gezogen wurde, dass es in dieser Einheit so etwas wie einen illegalen Befehl nicht gibt. Es sind nicht wir, die entscheiden was moralisch ist und was nicht. Heute erkenne ich, dass dies das ist, was auch der Bomberpilot sagt: `Es ist nicht an mir zu sagen was moralisch ist und was nicht.` Jeder reicht die Verantwortung an Andere weiter.”
(Sep 12, 2014)
(November 30, 2023)
“Nothing happens by accident,” said another source. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”
Israel‘s War Cabinet gathered overnight on Friday to discuss the future of the Gaza Strip after the nation‘s war against Hamas ends. The meeting was reportedly cut off after lawmakers clashed with the defense establishment over the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) investigation of the mistakes leading to the October 7 tragedy that had previously been promised to start after the Israel-Hamas war.
Miri Regev, Minister of Transport and Road Safety, pointed out that the decision over the probe had been made without lawmakers‘ knowledge and argued that the army should be fully focused on the combat in the moment.
(05.01.2024)
(30.11.2023)
The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.
(…)
Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear.
“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.
(November 30, 2023)
“Nothing happens by accident,” said another source. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”
(30.11.2023)
Their investigation is „based on conversations with seven current and former members of Israel’s intelligence community — including military intelligence and air force personnel who were involved in Israeli operations in the besieged Strip — in addition to Palestinian testimonies, data, and documentation from the Gaza Strip, and official statements by the IDF Spokesperson and other Israeli state institutions.“
The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.
(…)
Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear.
“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.
(01.12.2023 16:29 Uhr)
Laut New York Times war der Bericht weiten Kreisen der israelischen Sicherheitskräfte zugänglich – neben den Angriffsplänen habe er auch geheime Informationen über die israelische Armee und deren Kommunikation enthalten. Wie die Hamas an solch sicherheitsrelevante Informationen kommen konnte, sei unklar.
2. In 2011, the Israeli gov‘t shared a YouTube video by a man who claimed to be an Israeli gay rights activist who said he was discriminated against by Gaza flotilla organizers. The video was exposed as a hoax and @jonronson set out to find the actor in
3. 3. The actor refused to say who made the video but as I reported at the time it was boosted by @DavidSaranga an Israeli diplomat who taught students to promote Israel online with guerrilla marketing. Saranga is now director of digital diplomacy @IsraelMFA.
4. As @marcowenjones reports, the anti-Hamas video supposedly recorded in a Gaza hospital this week was shared by an official Israeli government account for communicating with Arabic speakers — before being deleted amid widespread suspicion that it was fake.