Rights and Accountability 13 December 2023
NATO’s Rob Bauer (left) visited representatives of the Gaza division in Israel’s military shortly before the current war was declared. (Via Twitter)
A few people are profiting handsomely from the genocidal war against Gaza.
Elbit Systems, a leading Israeli weapons maker, has reported a “considerable increased demand” for its products since the war was declared.
About 15 percent of Elbit’s workforce in Israel has been called up by the military.
Even with reduced staff, the firm is ready to exploit the opportunities afforded by mass slaughter. Not only is it anticipating fresh orders from Israel’s defense ministry, it is endeavoring to keep international clients satisfied.
Within the past three weeks, Elbit has announced new deals with Canada and Romania.
Both of those countries belong to NATO.
Israel, on the other hand, is nominally outside the alliance. Yet Israel’s cooperation with NATO is flourishing.
Back in January, Elbit clinched a contract with the NATO Support and Procurement Agency. Under it, Elbit supplies warplane equipment and runs a “service center” at the agency’s headquarters in Luxembourg.
Through a 2018 deal, the agency acts as a conduit through which Israel can sell weapons to NATO members. The arrangement has proven beneficial for Israel, Haim Regev, the state’s ambassador to the European Union and NATO indicated earlier this year.
Regev accompanied Mircea Geoana, NATO’s deputy secretary general, on a trip to Israel in September.
During it, Geoana stated that Israel and NATO were planning to launch imminently a “new partnership” focused on innovation. The partnership would take relations to the “next level,” though Geoana did not spell out in public comments what that “level” would involve.Sinister
The launch appears to have been postponed amid the Gaza genocide.
I contacted NATO, asking whether the launch would take place once the situation was regarded as calmer. The alliance’s spokesperson did not answer my question.
Rob Bauer, the Dutch admiral chairing NATO’s military committee, also visited Israel in September.
Bauer declared himself “impressed” by the capabilities of the Gaza division in Israel’s army. He expressed particular interest in how artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics were being applied in monitoring what he called “border crossings.”
The message was troubling at that time. The “border” to which he was referring should really be seen as the wall of the world’s largest open-air prison – for that is what Gaza has been since at least 2007.A NATO representative was, in effect, praising Israel for blockading a civilian population with the aid of advanced technology.
Read a few months later, the message looks even more sinister.
The website +972 Magazine has revealed that Israel is using AI to choose targets in its current war against Gaza.
It is improbable that the AI system serving that deadly purpose is entirely separate from the one that impressed Bauer in the recent past. Not surprisingly, NATO would not answer a question I asked about whether Israel is keeping it updated on the use of AI in the current war.
While meeting Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, during September, NATO’s Mircea Geoana stressed a “strong interest in building upon the exceptional technological sophistication of your great nation.”
Israel is now carrying out a genocide with the aid of its “exceptional” technology. We can expect that it will be congratulated for doing so by NATO’s ever-so-sophisticated elite.
