Palestine and Israel – From Herzl
to Lavender AI Technological Apartheid
Tracy Turner
Part 1: 1850s to 1940s – Early Zionism, Colonialism, and the Holocaust
The Official Story
In the late 19th century, modern Zionism started as being framed by "returning to the land" following almost 2,000 years of exile. The early Zionist movement, led by figures such as Theodor Herzl, viewed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine as a necessity for Jewish self-determination and a moral imperative due to the growing rise of antisemitism in Europe. Zionism was a progressive movement for peace, cohabitation, and prosperity in the Middle East.
The Shoah of World War II is regularly used to legitimatize the State of Israel. This narrative necessarily focuses on the plight of European Jews, portraying the creation of the State of Israel as a direct and necessary response to this genocide, a haven for Jews from persecution.
Actual Events
The history of Zionism from the late 19th century is hugely more complex. Herzl and early Zionist leaders negotiated with imperial powers, mainly the British, to secure control over Palestine. These early efforts at colonization were not just about providing a refuge for Jews but establishing a settler-colonial state.
Zionist organizations, such as the Jewish National Fund, World Zionist Organization, Bank Leumi, Jewish Colonial Trust (JNF) and the Jewish Agency, were integral to the purchase of Palestinian land from absentee landlords, displacing Palestinian farmers in the process. These early settler efforts often included coercion, legal manipulation, and even violence to ensure Jewish dominance in the region.
The "Boat People" of the Holocaust era were not just Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe but a significant part of a greater European colonial project that populated Palestine with Jews, often at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population. In the 1930s, this started to change with the rise of active Arab resistance against Jewish immigration, especially after the British Mandate began placing limits on Jewish immigration in light of Arab uprisings between 1936 and 1939.
The Holocaust certainly devastated European Jewry, it can even be related to the use of that trauma by Zionism in general as a strategy to elicit international sympathy and political support for the creation of Israel, often in the most brutal manner against the native Palestinian population. In 2024, the Holocaust has become Israel’s well-beaten dead horse.
Jewish “Resistance” Groups: Irgun, Stern Gang, and Lehi
During the period of the British Mandate, Jewish terrorist groups such as the Irgun (which was led by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang (which was led by Avraham Stern) performed acts of terror against the British and the Palestinian Arab population. This group carried out various bombing activities, assassinations, and attacks on British soldiers and Palestinian civilians alike. Begin, later to be Israel's Prime Minister, was one of the leaders of Irgun, referred to in Israeli history as freedom fighters, but in reality, no more than a terrorist group according to widespread British and Palestinian opinion.
Avraham Stern, the founder of the Stern Gang (Lehi), even collaborated briefly with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany during WWII with hopes of joining forces in the struggle against the British, further exemplifying the far-right ideological underpinnings of some segments of early Zionist terrorism.
Part 2: 1947-1970s – The Creation of Israel and the Nakba
Official Narrative
The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan is seen as a legitimate international effort to divide Palestine into two states—one Jewish and one Arab. The founding of Israel in 1948, following a declaration of independence by David Ben-Gurion, is portrayed as the birth of the Jewish state, a fulfillment of the Zionist dream, and a necessary refuge for Jews worldwide. The War of Independence (or the Nakba, in Palestinian terms, an event to mourn) is depicted as a struggle for survival, with Israel fighting against surrounding Arab states that opposed the establishment of a Jewish homeland.
Actual Events
By contrast, the Nakba is an Arabic word for "catastrophe." It describes the systematic expulsion of approximately 750,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes and villages during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Israeli forces, under Ben-Gurion's command, engaged in the forced removal of Palestinians through massacres, such as that of Deir Yassin, intimidation, and destruction of villages. It is at the core of the continued Apartheid conflict and a key point of dispute for Israelis and Palestinians today.
The partition plan, envisaging a dual-state solution, was never accepted by the Arab states or the Palestinian leadership; it then led to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Although many Western powers recognized the creation of Israel, the establishment of the “Jewish state” involved territorial expansion beyond the UN-designated borders and a deliberate policy of exclusion and displacement of Palestinians.
The Role of Zionist Military Leaders
David Ben-Gurion was the first Prime Minister of Israel, serving a critical role in the implementation of the Zionist policy of territorial conquest. He supported the so-called "Plan Dalet," which was the military plan to ensure Jewish control over the maximum land area and to remove as many Palestinian indigenous persons as possible. Other prominent figures, such as Moshe Dayan and Yigal Allon, also played leading roles in this military action, characterized by the expulsion and suppression of Palestinian resistance.
Part 3: 1980-2000 Settler Expansion and Oslo Process
Official Narrative
From the 1980s on, Israel's narrative became increasingly focused on security concerns and the right to self-defense (wholesale slaughter of Palestinians). The Oslo Accords in 1993 are often portrayed as a historic attempt to broker peace with the Palestinians, leading to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority and the promise of a two-state solution. Israel's leaders, including Yitzhak Rabin (assassinated in 1995) and Shimon Peres, were hailed as peacemakers, while Palestinian leaders like Yasser Arafat were seen as negotiating partners for peace.
Actual Events
While the Oslo Accords promised peace, they avoided the core issues of Palestinian rights: the right of return of refugees, sovereignty over Jerusalem, and the building of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. During the Oslo process, the Israel settlements continued to expand, and the construction of the apartheid wall-or so-called "security barrier"-started to isolate the Palestinian communities and further fragment Palestinian land.
The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 by a right-wing extremist put an end to any serious peace efforts, with Benjamin Netanyahu and other hardliners increasingly taking control of Israeli politics. Israel's heavy military response to the Second Intifada, which erupted in 2000, spurred on the cycle of violence further.
Part 4: 2010s-2024 – The Shift to Hardline Politics and AI Warfare
Official Narrative
Today the official narrative persists to principally depict Israel's right to exist and defend itself from Palestinian terrorism in general, and most specifically from Hamas, along with its support for Jewish settlement on the West Bank. The actions of the Israeli military are framed, particularly in the case of Gaza, as a form of self-defense against an existential threat from Hamas and other militant groups.
Events in Reality
An increasing body of evidence exists to suggest that sophisticated technologies featuring surveillance, AI, and even cyberwarfare are involved in tracking and targeting Palestinians. The recent revelations regarding Unit 8200, Israel's elite intelligence unit, and its use of AI in monitoring and suppressing Palestinian dissent-dubbed "Lavender AI"-have raised alarms. Reports from various sources, including The Guardian and Independent Press, have insinuated that these technologies have been utilized in mass surveillance and targeted killings of Palestinian civilians, applying an algorithmic method of genocide. Thus, Lavender AI would identify and eliminate any potential threats to Israeli security, moving beyond traditional military approaches by integrating AI into the very process of warfare and hence introducing a completely new level of technological dominance and control.
The case of the assassination of Rabbi Zvi Kogan in the UAE in 2024, claimed by Israel as an "antisemitic terror incident," suggests a rise in global tensions regarding the State of Israel's treatment of Palestinians and its capacity for projecting power through influence over foreign governments and technologies.
This shows that the Zionist narrative has really evolved as a justification of the actions behind technology, surveillance, and military might-all while numbing the Palestinian suffering and rights as an unfortunate collateral damage in search of "security."
This history reveals an entrenched set of contradictions between Israel's official narrative of victimhood and the reality of its state practices, which are no different from those of colonial empires like Britain, Spain, and South Africa, involving land theft, systematic violence, and the marginalization of an indigenous population. The "return to the land" narrative is deeply entangled with a history of dispossession, militarism, and control over Palestinian lives and resources. Netanyahu is to Palestine as Cortez was to Mexico. In this context, Netanyahu's part in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remarkably resembles the conquest of Mexico by Cortés, as both cases involve colonization and the dispossession of an indigenous people, legitimized through an order of things, both ideological and military. Just as Cortés used church, violence and alliances to control the Aztecs, Netanyahu employs military force, surveillance, and technological control to dominate Palestinians and suppress their resistance.
Part 5: 2024 and the Evolution of Technological Warfare: The Role of Unit 8200 and AI within an Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Official Narrative in 2024
Into 2024, Israel continued framing itself as a bastion of democracy and security in a volatile region. The State of Israel, speaking through Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other high-ranking political and military leaders, insisted that the State of Israel was under constant threat from hostile actors-ranging from Hamas to Hezbollah onto Iran-and that military operations conducted by Israel are defensive actions necessary for the survival of the state.
Israel's public relations narrative doubles down that its military actions in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, are targeted strikes against terrorists or terrorist infrastructure. The State of Israel's armed forces-the IDF-are described as sophisticated and highly ethical, committed to the minimal casualties of civilians in action, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The Israeli government repeatedly stresses that it is exercising self-defense against "terrorists" and not carrying out some colonizing or genocidal process against the Palestinian people.
In the same vein, the continued growth in West Bank settlements is once more legitimized through the narrative of "Jews returning to their ancestral homeland." But simultaneously, policies put forward by Israel's critics are defamed as "anti-Israel" or "anti-Semitic" with the sole intent of silencing any form of dissent, whether in Israel or internationally.
Real News: The Lavender AI and the Role of Unit 8200 in Modern Warfare
The use of technology, more so AI-driven systems, is fast becoming the most salient aspect of Israeli warfare in 2024. The most prominent and broadly used of these technologies emanates from Unit 8200, its elite intelligence unit, which, if compared fairly, could only be rivalled by the NSA, CIA or Nazi SS or East German Stasi for their scope and reach. Unit 8200 played a key role in the development and installation of the surveillance systems, cyber warfare methods, and usage of Artificial Intelligence for selecting genocidal targets to be killed and for suppressing dissent.
The "Lavender AI" program simply marked a new phase in Israel's military and surveillance capability. Lavender AI is not just about tracking individuals or monitoring communications; it is a full-spectrum tool of control that integrates data from multiple sources—including social media, phone data, and even biometric information—to predict and identify individuals deemed to be “a threat to Israel's security.” This level of AI precision targeting allows Israeli intelligence to carry out drone strikes, cyberattacks, and covert operations against Palestinians with surgical efficiency.
Critics have derided Lavender AI and other technologies developed by Unit 8200 as a technological apartheid-an algorithmic way to continue the dispossessions and repression of Palestinians, taking away the need for traditional military ground operations in most cases. Without the use of actual physical violence, these AI systems assault individuals and groups through electronic surveillance; this presents a remote operation of war, a development path that seems increasingly impossible to trace and even harder to fight.
Zvi Kogan’s Murder and the Global Political Fallout
In 2024, the death of Rabbi Zvi Kogan, an Israeli religious figure found dead under suspicious circumstances in the UAE, exacerbated tensions between Israel and the broader Middle East. At first, the Israeli Foreign Ministry hastened to characterize the incident as an "antisemitic terror incident," but gave very little to no information to validate this assertion. The UAE government, which has grown ever closer to Israel since the normalization of relations under the 2020 Abraham Accords, is very circumspect in its confrontation of Israeli claims.
However, this single incident has served to instill a growing feeling of unease among Jews living in the UAE and elsewhere in the Gulf. The same Israeli officials who claim that there may be broader threats to Jewish citizens across the region warn Jews to be on high alert. The attack is also employed to continue reinforcing the narrative of Israel as a target of global antisemitism, which in turn serves to justify Israel's unpopular policies at home and abroad as measures of self-defense. Israel and Jews, circa 2024, are a case study in cognitive dissonance.
But critics also argue that the lack of evidence for the "antisemitic terror" claim and the flagrantly excessive Israeli rhetoric over the murder may be part of a bigger effort to consolidate political power internally in Israel, where Netanyahu and his far-right allies are facing greater opposition in Israel. By raising the image of Jews as victims of global terror, Israel can continue to assert its policies of military aggression, occupation, and surveillance and AI Genocide, all while curtailing any international push for accountability.
It exposes how Israel seizes every opportunity afforded by world events, including the killing of its citizens, to drive home its security narrative and elicit sympathy from the international community-all this while diverting attention from its policies in Gaza and the West Bank. It also raises disturbing questions about Israel's foreign policy and intelligence operations as part of a larger narrative-control strategy in service of its settler-colonialist aims. Israel and the Zionist Mainstream Media are an International PsyOps.
The Role of AI and Surveillance in Israeli Colonialism
Lavender AI solidifies the idea of AI in Israeli military operation, especially through Unit 8200. It is an indication that the issue regarding Israel's treatment of Palestinians is not solely a political issue or a military one but also a technological one. The Unit 8200-introduced AI-driven mechanisms of surveillance, targeting, and control are just a part of the extended Zionist project which has engaged in physical or psychical war against Palestinians for more than 100 years.
Israel's AI-driven war program, featuring the use of drones and cyber-attacks, is rather reminiscent of colonialist experiences that became an instrument of control, exploitation, and repression through technology and industrialization. Though the tactics have evolved, what remains consistent is the consolidation of Jewish control over Palestinian land with the ultimate goal of erasing Palestinian identity and claims to the land.
This technological imperialism is reminiscent of European colonial powers like Britain, Spain, and France, who employed technological innovations in the 19th and 20th centuries to dominate their colonies. Just as colonialists used the telegraph, railroads, and later, airplanes to solidify control, Israel's use of AI and surveillance tools creates an invisible yet pervasive form of colonialism that continues to crush Palestinian resistance. Lavender AI Genocide is the 21st Century equivalent to Hernando Cortez’s swords and pistols in Mexico, under the guise of Catholicism. Both are societal controls, psychological war and genocide.
Where the tools of surveillance, cyber-warfare, and AI targeting meet, Israel consolidates its grip on the occupied territories in forms increasingly independent of conventional military force, instead grounded in technology-driven control.
Large volumes of data from the Israeli intelligence apparatus therefore inform preemptive strikes on persons identified as threats well in advance of any mobilization to resist. The use of AI for "pre-crime" targeting, in which individuals are eliminated based on algorithms predicting their likelihood to engage in violence or resistance, is essentially an extension of colonial control over every aspect of Palestinian life. The message to Palestinians is clear: your every movement is watched, and even your thoughts are under surveillance. The Israelis lead the world in pre-crime assassination.
Technological Warfare and Genocide
The growing reliance on AI genocide programs, like Lavender AI, represents an evolution in the policy of ethnic cleansing and colonial violence carried out by Israel. These systems do not merely target military or militant figures; they can be and have been used to target any Palestinian suspected of resistance, regardless of their political affiliation or level of involvement in violence.
As these technologies become more sophisticated, there is growing fear that even the very nature of Palestinian existence may be criminalized. The targeting by AI doesn't stop at those actively fighting Israel; it covers anyone perceived to be a threat through predictive algorithms. Critics argue this is a new form of genocide-a quiet, high-tech, and invisible campaign to eliminate Palestinian resistance, and perhaps even Palestinians as a people, from the land.
The use of Lavender AI by Israel for mass surveillance and targeting, in addition to its ongoing military operations in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, raises some fundamental questions about the ethical implications of modern warfare. In the 21st century, where global powers like Israel can resort to AI-assisted drones, cyber warfare, and surveillance to dominate populations, the thin line separating military occupation from technological apartheid has become even more blurred.
The Legacy of Zionism and the Future of the Palestinian Struggle
The generations of Zionism-from Herzl's early dreams of a Jewish homeland in Palestine to today's high-tech warfare of Unit 8200-have been written into a movement that seeks, at every turn, not the establishment of a Jewish state, but the dominance, control, and erasure of the native Palestinian population.
Today, in the year 2024, this official narrative of Israel being a besieged and victimized nation is being used to rationalize not only continued occupation and expanded settlements but also the use of sophisticated technological tools to sustain that control. The advent of AI-driven warfare is merely the latest chapter in a colonial project that has continuously rewritten and reconsidered its methods to fit with evolving realities of the modern world. Through land theft, military occupation, or AI-assisted surveillance and killings, the end is always the same: solidify a Jewish majority and systematically deny Palestinians their rights to land, freedom, and dignity.
The struggle for survival and self-determination of Palestinians entered a new phase where their fight is not against military occupation but also against this omnipresent surveillance and algorithmic targeting. As Israel's technological superiority grows, so does the global awareness that the conflict in Palestine is not just a regional issue but one that's increasingly defined by technological colonialism-a 21st-century form of conquest that threatens to erase the Palestinian people and their right to a future.
Today, the international community has the difficult task of coming to terms with this new reality, with a view to addressing the Technological Apartheid now taking hold in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The events of 2024 and the Lavender AI Technological Apartheid are more land-grab and more genocide, masquerading as Israel’s “right.” In Israel, the ICC issued an arrest warrant in 2023 for Israeli military official Major General Yehuda Farkash, accusing him of war crimes related to the 2014 Gaza conflict. The warrant has been controversial and raised tensions, as Israel does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. ICC issues warrants against Netanyahu, Gallant, November 21, 2024.
Sources:
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2. Segev, Tom. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate. Metropolitan Books, 2000.
3. Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. Yale University Press, 2008.
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12."Zvi Kogan’s Murder and the Global Political Fallout." Middle East Eye, 2024.