At least 37,658 Palestinians have been killed and 86,237 injured since the beginning of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas Movement on October 7, 2023! A large portion of them are children and women.

An Israeli daily and a news website recently claimed in an investigative report that an Artificial Intelligence (AI) programme was behind the indiscriminate killing of innocent Palestinian civilians! The Israeli Defence Forces call this programme Lavender. Citing six Israeli soldiers directly involved in the anti-Hamas campaign, the report stated that Lavender helped the Israeli Forces to find and list the names and addresses of suspected Hamas militants. While doing so, the AI-generated programme mistakenly included the names of countless common innocent Palestinians, including women and children, on that list!

The report further claimed that the Israeli Forces relied on the list prepared by the secret programme while carrying out their anti-Hamas campaign in the Gaza Strip in the first few weeks of the ongoing war. As per the report, the Israeli Army Officers were told to rely on the AI-generated list “as if a human being was making these decisions“. Hence, attacks on innocent Palestinians were carried out one after the other on the basis of AI-made decisions, instead of the actual intelligence reports.

The report mentioned that the Israeli Army used to take just 20 seconds to hit the target! In those 20 seconds, the Army officials tried to understand whether the target was a man! As a result, there was a possibility of the AI-generated programme making an error. This is why the Israeli Forces often eliminated not only a particular Hamas member, but his entire family!

Over 550,000 Israelis Flee Their Country
(TRT World) More than half a million Israelis left their country and did not return during the first six months of Israel’s Gaza War, the Times of Israel reported, citing the Population and Immigration Authority of the Jewish nation.

The authority’s data indicates that the number of Israelis who left the country since October 2023 is around 550,000, more than those who returned by Easter in April 2024. The Israeli news website reported that what initially might have been a temporary escape for Israelis during the war, or technical difficulties in returning, has now evolved into a permanent trend or permanent migration.

According to data published by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the population of Israel stood at 9.9 million, including more than two million Palestinians, 400,000 Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and 20,000 Syrians in the occupied Golan Heights, in April.

Millions of Israelis hold dual citizenship as they possess at least one other nationality alongside their Israeli citizenship, making overseas travel significantly more manageable.

With inputs from TRT World.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das