📷 A bit earlier, an Israeli attack targeted Aitaroun.

Ambulances were dispatched.

🔴 Using WhatsApp helps the Israeli army pick targets in Gaza

In April 2024, +972 Magazine journalist Yuval Abraham revealed the existence of Lavender ⁠AI: a system that automatically picks bombing targets. Lavender collects information on most of the 2.3 million residents of Gaza through a system of mass surveillance, then assesses the likelihood that each particular person is active in Hamas or PIJ, giving almost every single person in Gaza a rating from 1 to 100.

The article said that the current commander of Unit 8200 wrote in a guide book for Lavender ⁠AI that the features being used to select targets include “being in a WhatsApp group with a known militant, changing cell phone every few months, and changing addresses frequently.”

“The sources told +972 and Local Call that, during the first weeks of the war, the army almost completely relied on Lavender.” Israel has deployed additional automated systems, e.g., ‘Where's ⁠Daddy’ signals when a target has entered his family home.

Last week, The Intercept wrote that many WhatsApp employees fear that Israel has been using a vulnerability based on traffic analysis. According to their assessment: “[Deep Packet] Inspection and analysis of network traffic is completely invisible to us, yet it reveals the connections between our users: who is in a group together, who is messaging who, and (hardest to hide) who is calling who”... [A typical threat is due to peer-to-peer calls between users, which can be disabled on Telegram since many years ago but on WhatsApp only since Nov ⁠8, 2023 ⁠!]

And worse ⬇

⋯ It is possible that WhatsApp's parent company is collaborating with Israel to help it fight ‘terrorism’.

In his blog, Paul Biggar, founder of Tech For Palestine, asks “whether [the Israeli forces] get this information from Meta”⁠ directly? “Why has Meta not released their transparency report for the 2nd half of 2023? [...] Will Meta immediately rescind access to any WhatsApp information from the Israeli government, army, and law enforcement?”

He recalls that Meta's “Chief Information Security Officer, Guy Rosen, is their most senior policy decision maker. He is Israeli, lives in Tel Aviv, and was in Unit 8200. Unit 8200 is the Israeli NSA and is the department that built and runs Lavender. Insiders tell me that Rosen is the person most associated with the anti-‘anti-zionism’ policies, and is also responsible for the suppression of Palestinian content.”

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO, has been a “significant supporter of Israel's propaganda”. For example, he donated $125k to ZAKA - one of the groups that created Oct ⁠7 false atrocity propaganda.

On a separate note, WhatsApp's servers store user metadata: social graphs and connection data, this could be tapped by U.S. intelligence under the FISA/PRISM programs, and part of it shared with Israel.

📹 The Israeli army released footage of their terrorist attack on Bint Jbeil hospital entrance.

The attack killed Ali Wazani, reportedly a civilian from Shaqra village.

This is the second time they release footage of a drone strike on civilian in the past 24 hours. Yesterday's attack killed two civilians in Aita al-Shaab.

📹 Hezbullah issued a statement announcing they fired tens of rocksts towards Israeli settlements in response to increased Israeli aggression on Lebanese villages.

They attacked:
🔻 Meron settlement
🔻 Safsofa settlement
🔻 Tsefon settlement

Additionally they attacked a house in Metulla.

📹 Some of the rockets from Lebanon impacted open areas, causing fires.

This is partly on purpose, due to the intentional fires created today by the Israeli army using drone-dropped incendiary material.

📹 There was extensive use of the Iron Dome.

In one of the videos, the location of a launcher is exposed, just behind an Israeli army base in Qiryat Shmona.

Soldiers still use the base.

🌹 In addition to the murder of the Lebanese civilian Ali Wazani, in the murderous Israeli attack on the entrance of the Bint Jbeil hospital, another was killed.

Ali was accompanied by his son who recently arrived from abroad. The son was injured alongside many civilians.

He was identified as Ali Ghassan Abbas, a guard who works there and has succumbed to his wounds from this attack.

He was not a combatant in Hezbullah on the frontline, however I suspect he might be officially mourned by the group, as guards are employed from the ranks usually.

🗣️ Hezbullah issued a statement announcing they attacked Qiryat Shmona (Qiryat kleb) with tens of Ketyusha and some Falaq rockets as a response to the Israeli aggression on Salah Ghandour hospital in Bint Jbeil

The Israeli attack killed one civilian and a guard, and injured many other civilians.

The rocket attack on Qiryat Shmona impacted inside the city, but also in open areas away from it.

📹 The rockets that missed the city were most likely the heavy Falaq rockets.

They impacted the mountain just above the settlement. Unfortunately.

🗣 Hezbullah issued a statement announcing they attacked new artillery units stationed in an area north of Nahariyah with suicide drones

📰 The Israeli army acknowledged the event, and says they were able to shoot down only one UAV. The other successfully impacted its target.

📝 What's unclear to me is why does Hezbullah claims casualties in an attack beyond the line of site, which they cannot see to assess the aftermath. Such claims with no basis creates, unintentionally, an inaccurate assumption.

📹 The Iraqi resistance released footage of their attack with suicide drones in Eilat this hour.

The Israeli army claims to have intercepted two drones.

Footage was taken an hour before sunset, remarkably a very long flight time for these drone.

This footage is interesting because it marks the first use of the Shahed long range suicide drones.

📹 Footage of the successful interception of one of the drones fired by the Iraqi resistance towards Eilat.

📷 The Israeli army carried a series of violent airstrikes targeting Mays al-Jabal, Aita al-Shaab, and Khiyam.

📷 Israel's unmanned vehicles, for patrol and VIEDs

The Israeli army's remote-controlled M113 "Zelda" was spotted on Zaruub Hill in Rafah. One like this was seen a few days ago already in Jabaliya, and once before that in February.

Some of them are rigged to explode on impact, used as suicide vehicles, without a man in the vehicle.

According to an IDF commander familiar with this type of weapon, the army has used them since the start of the war.

The vehicle is also used for logistics.

📝 By Gaza War tracker on X

📷 Two days ago, the Israeli army released footage from Gaza which mistakenly showed a destroyed Israeli army M113 vehicle.

The vehicle might have been destroyed by the resistance in Gaza, or detonated by the Israeli army as a method to clear a building or location.

📷 Large fires engulfing a neighbourhood in Mays al-Jabal village after being attacked by the Israeli army.

The local civil defense who stayed in the village are doing their best, with calls for vehicles from other locations to come and assist.

The former head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, allegedly threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation, the Guardian can reveal.

Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the years leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestinian territories.

That investigation, launched in 2021, culminated last week when Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, announced that he was seeking an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over the country’s conduct in its war in Gaza.

“You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.”

Full article on the Guardian

📹 For the last few hours, intense Israeli air activity is reported over south Lebanon.

Jets are on patrol, in preparation to attempt to intercept suicide drones or attack when asked directed to.

🗣️ So far today, Hezbullah took credit for two attacks, targeting

🔻 Ramiah base with rockets, artillery, and other weapons
🔻 Kafarshouba hills with artillery

📹 Footage from an earlier attack on Al-Rahib military base