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…

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More from @jvplive

10 Nov
Let's review the revelations of the past few days. A dossier was leaked showing that Israel's Shin Bet has no evidence to support its charges of terrorism against six Palestinian human rights organizations.

972mag.com/shin-bet-dossi…
That report was followed by two breaking stories on Israeli surveillance technologies. Firstly, that the Israeli government is spying on Palestinians using a software called "Blue Wolf" which tracks people's movements via facial recognition software.

washingtonpost.com/world/middle_e…
The same day it was revealed that Palestinian activists had had their phones hacked by Israeli spyware Pegasus. A number of those activists worked or were associated with the six Palestinian human rights orgs that were slapped with terrorist designation. apnews.com/article/techno…
Read 4 tweets
9 Nov
Yesterday in 2000, Israeli forces shot Faris Odeh in the neck while he threw stones in Gaza during the Second Intifada. He was 15.

This image of him has become an iconic representation of the asymmetry of power and resources between the Israeli military and Palestinians. Image
The famous image juxtaposes Faris — a young Palestinian boy standing alone in everyday clothes holding a single stone — with several Israeli soldiers in military outfits and gear, standing behind a sophisticated tank several times Faris’ size. Image
This power asymmetry between the Israeli military and Palestinians persists to this day, and is the reason that analyses of Israeli violence in Palestine as a “conflict” between equal parties, or a “both-sides issue,” are fundamentally flawed.
Read 4 tweets
5 Nov
Six brave Palestinian prisoners are on hunger strike protesting their illegal detention without charge or trial.

Kayed Fasfous, 114 days
Meqdad Qawasmeh, 107 days
Alaa Al Araj, 89 days
Hisham Abu Hawash, 80 days
Ayyad Hraimi, 44 days
Loay Al-Ashqar, 26 days

#FreeThemAll
Many of these prisoners are in critical condition. The Israeli military continues to violently neglect their health and renew their baseless detention orders, as it did with Meqdad Qawasmeh on his 105th day of hunger strike 2 days ago.
These prisoners join many thousands of unjustly detained Palestinians over decades for whom hunger strikes have been the only available form of resistance. Their strike is testimony to Israel’s failure to break Palestinians’ will and suppress their struggle for freedom.
Read 5 tweets
1 Nov
So grateful and proud that anti-Zionist Jewish Googlers are demanding their company cut its contract with the Israeli military.

Alongside 1,000+ other Google and Amazon employees, Jewish Googlers want their labor to promote good, not power violence against Palestinians.
Through Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon give the Israeli military cloud services it uses to surveil Palestinians and expand illegal settlements.

Jewish Googlers Ariel Koren and Gabriel Schubiner feel an "intense moral responsibility" to end their complicity in this violence.
Feeling this moral responsibility, these Jewish Googlers helped devise the open letter to Google and Amazon that was published in the Guardian earlier this month.

So far, they and their co-organizers have garnered 1,000+ signatures from fellow Google and Amazon workers.
Read 6 tweets
28 Oct
The solidarity work we do to challenge Israeli apartheid relies on and builds off the research and advocacy of Palestinian human rights orgs.

We won’t be intimidated as the Israeli government labels these orgs “terrorists” to isolate them and evade accountability.
#StandWithThe6
@Addameer gives legal support to Palestinian political prisoners and exposes the human rights violations committed against them in Israeli and Palestinian jails. #StandWithThe6
@Alhaq_org works to protect the rule of law, documenting crimes and holding the Israeli government accountable when it violates international and humanitarian law. #StandWithThe6
Read 8 tweets
24 Oct
Mohammed al-Asdoudi used to work in marble installation. Like many others who participated in the Great March of Return in 2018, he was shot in the leg by Israeli forces and was forced to amputate.

Ever since, he has been out of work and has developed more health complications.
Al-Asdoudi has been struggling to make ends meet for his four children and being in and out of the hospital has been not only physically demanding but mentally exhausting.

His is one portrait of the ways Israeli violence have driven a mental health crisis in Palestine.
1/3 of Palestinians in Gaza suffer from PTSD. This number goes up among young people who have lived their entire lives fearing bombardment.

Israeli military violence leads to so much destruction. It attempts to break people down, mentally and emotionally.
Read 4 tweets

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