Of the “massive civilian casualties” and the use of “starvation as a weapon of war”. In a report published Thursday, November 14, the special UN committee responsible for investigating Israeli practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, affirms that the methods of war used by the Jewish State in Gaza, since the attack of October 7, present THE “characteristics of a genocide”.
The report further raises “serious concerns” as for “Israel’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) in battles that killed not only Hamas fighters but also civilians, including many women and children”note Al-Jazeera.
“The Israeli military’s use of AI-assisted targeting, with minimal human oversight, combined with heavy bombs, highlights Israel’s disregard for its obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants and to take adequate guarantees to avoid the death of civilians”writes the committee.
An investigation by the Qatari channel revealed in April that the Israeli army had relied heavily on the Lavender system, an artificial intelligence tool, to identify some 37,000 human targets. The Israeli left-wing magazine + 972 and the news site in Hebrew Local Call They claimed that the military had largely trusted the AI’s decisions, spending very little time verifying the identified targets before authorizing the bombings.
Accusations rejected by Washington
The British daily The Guardian specifies that the special UN committee, made up of Senegal, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, did not, however, “could not go to the areas examined” to write his report. “His requests to visit Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and Israel received no response”specifies the newspaper.
The daily notes that the Israeli government, which accuses the UN of being “obsessed” by the Hebrew State and “biased about it”did not immediately respond to the report’s accusations.
The United States, Israel’s most important ally, disapproved “unequivocally” the conclusions of the UN document. “We believe that this type of wording and these types of accusations are most certainly unfounded”State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel reacted Thursday.
This is not the first time that Israel has been the subject of such accusations since the war began more than a year ago. Last March, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, affirmed in a report that there was “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating that acts of genocide” were committed “against the Palestinians in Gaza has been achieved”.
On Thursday, Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary General, for his part accused the Israeli authorities of having blocked six times in recent days the passage of aid, transported by the Office for the Coordination of United Nations humanitarian affairs to northern Gaza, reports the Times of Israel. On Tuesday, Washington affirmed that the Jewish state was not violating American law regarding humanitarian aid entering the territory, while calling for additional progress.
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