Thread by @jvplive

Palestinians should live in freedom and dignity.

Without their faces catalogued in a military database.
Without their every move surveilled.
Without their routine actions falsely criminalized.
Without their homes made so unsafe that they have no choice but to leave.

(thread)

As the article details, the Israeli military uses facial recognition throughout the West Bank — not just at checkpoints, but also to surveil public areas and private homes.

“We no longer feel comfortable socializing because cameras are always filming us,” said a Hebron resident.

And the Blue Wolf app — which tells Israeli soldiers if a Palestinian is to be detained, arrested, or "left alone" — entailed soldiers competing to collect the most photographs of Palestinians against their will.

Reminder: the US sends this military $3.8 billion per year.

The Israeli military's 24/7 monitoring of Palestinians' daily lives has predictably (and likely intentionally) led to false criminalization of mundane actions.

To whom does a fallen teaspoon resemble a thrown stone, other than soldiers trained to dehumanize and vilify?

Israeli surveillance has also led many Palestinians to leave their homes.

This is all too convenient for the Israeli government and settlers, whose project of displacing Palestinians and Judaizing the West Bank is often met with the kind of resistance we see in Sheikh Jarrah.

The alignment of goals between the Israeli military and settlers is also one of tactics: White Wolf, another facial recognition app, allows settlers to scan Palestinians' IDs.

This elevates settlers to a quasi-official status and represents unabashed settler-state collusion.

This pervasive surveillance is a clear violation of privacy. It is recognized as such in Israel's '48 borders (as well as in 12 US cities and, hopefully soon, European Parliament.)

But Israel is an apartheid state with different rules for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

While we fight the use of facial recognition technology in the US, we also must fight it in Palestine.

These struggles are not just similar, but connected: the Israeli military exports its technologies of occupation around the world after field-testing them on Palestinians.

Our movement has had prior success campaigning against surveillance in Palestine. @lizzadwoskin's article states Microsoft divested from Israeli facial recognition company AnyVision this May; actually, it did so in early 2020 after pressure from @MPower_Change, @SumOfUs, and JVP.

Thank you to the brave and honorable testifiers at @BtSIsrael who shared their knowledge and experiences for this disturbing and revelatory article. Read more: washingtonpost.com/world/middle_e…