The Chatbot Did It: Postscript

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Rushing the wounded to Al-Shifa hospital, October 11, 2023. Photo by Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills, via +972.

In the previous post I referred to Habsora or “The Gospel”, Israel Defense Forces’ artificial intelligence program for the automated selection of bombing targets, revealed last November by Yuval Abraham for the newsmagazine +972, which was what enabled such extraordinary numbers in the wanton killing and destruction of Gaza in the first weeks and months of the war there, because it was literally indiscriminate—unable to distinguish, unlike the human deciders it was replacing, between a “legitimate” target and an unlawful one.

The very same day, as it happens, a new piece by Abraham showed up at +972, reporting on another AI program, known as Lavender. Whereas “The Gospel” identifies buildings as targets, Lavender uses the same kind of procedure to pick out people:

One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.

Then, with the aid of surveillance programs, they follow the subject through his daily routine until he gets home at night, when they send the missile to kill him, with the knowledge that it will probably kill his family, especially in those first weeks:

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“We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,” A., an intelligence officer, told +972 and Local Call. “On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.” …

In addition, according to the sources, when it came to targeting alleged junior militants marked by Lavender, the army preferred to only use unguided missiles, commonly known as “dumb” bombs (in contrast to “smart” precision bombs), which can destroy entire buildings on top of their occupants and cause significant casualties. “You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs],” said C., one of the intelligence officers. Another source said that they had personally authorized the bombing of “hundreds” of private homes of alleged junior operatives marked by Lavender, with many of these attacks killing civilians and entire families as “collateral damage.”

They even worked with a formal hierarchy of collateral damage according to the importance of the targets: for a junior Hamas operative, it was acceptable to kill 15 or 20 civilians, for a battalion or brigade commander, you could go up to 100. This kind of bureaucratic meticulousness in the midst of insane violence reminds me of things one reads about the Waffen-SS. Very different from the savagery of the October 7 berserkers. I won’t participate in any further debates about which of the two is more morally reprehensible.

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Things are now changing really rapidly, since Biden’s call to Netanyahu in which he

emphasized that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable. He made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers. He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps. He underscored that an immediate ceasefire is essential to stabilize and improve the humanitarian situation and protect innocent civilians, and he urged the Prime Minister to empower his negotiators to conclude a deal without delay to bring the hostages home.

My bold, for the bit that goes all the way, in my opinion, to conditioning US aid to Israel on its behavior in Gaza over the next couple of weeks.

It’s not clear which of these things, if any, the Israeli government will actually do, but it is clear that some kind of talks will now be resuming, in Cairo, among Israel, US, Egypt, and Qatar (which can transmit messages back and forth with Hamas), with the US team led for the moment by CIA director William Burns, and also that Israel has withdrawn a very large number of troops from Gaza, more or less overnight—they claim all but one brigade monitoring the “the corridor through which NGOs deliver aid to the north of the Palestinian enclave”, which may or may not suggest the flow of aid will improve.

They also claim, as you’d expect, that these moves have nothing to do with pressure from the US, but are simply another “phase” in the war effort. But as Ben-Sasson-Gordis above (he’s an Israeli PhD candidate and lecturer at the Harvard School of Government) intimates, they are painted at this point into a bit of a corner by their own political errors. The big operation in Rafah is not going to be possible, because the IDF cannot bring it into compliance with Biden’s, and Macron’s and King Abdullah’s demands, for the safety of the refugees huddled there, and Biden has now drawn the red line he avoided drawing for so long.

In that sense there isn’t much left for the war to do, or pretend to be doing. If there’s no final assault on Rafah, and no attempt to put the country under occupation, it’s pretty much over. IDF can assure the safety of the Israelis on the other side of the fence by fixing the fence and keeping it under close watch the way they should have been doing on October 7, as I keep saying. It’s time for it to really be over; to really prepare for the next day, the return of the hostages and release of prisoners and preparation of a new political settlement for Gaza and the West Bank, and the next general election in Israel. Maybe it’s going to happen!

It’s horrible to think the war might be ending only because of the sacrifice of the World Central Kitchen staffers, both because they shouldn’t have died, and because all the other deaths should have done it, and I’m not going to think that. There have been too many other things going on. Inside Israel, where the hostage families and their supporters have now linked up with last year’s anti-Netanyahu protest group and are doing enormous demonstrations on a daily basis, and beginning to suggest an end to the war—

"Bringing them back as soon as possible will be the only image of victory from this damned war," one woman yelled into a megaphone. Others chanted: "Deal, now!"

—and rage against the ultra-Orthodox men rejecting the court-ordered submission to military service, and Benny Gantz (presumably with his own private instructions from the Biden administration) has called for elections in September. Outside, Israel’s Arab friends are having a harder and harder time justifying their own neglect of Palestinian problems. European countries, many with their own large Muslim and/or Arab populations, are starting to get upset. And in the US, where there’s a big change of attitudes toward Israel ongoing, in a Democratic party that is becoming less addicted to AIPAC funding and a wider public. Everybody loves Chef Andrés, and that’s part of it, but it’s not the whole story either. Putting up with the depredations of the IDF in Gaza while we denounce Russia’s behavior in Ukraine (which is dreadful in its own right, but mild compared to Gaza, less murderous and less materially destructive) is looking more and more hypocritical.

If things are looking actually hopeful right now, it’s not just because the kind of horror that was likely to occur did occur, but also because we are somewhat prepared for it by the balancing act Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been playing.