University teachers suspended, employees sacked: in #israelPalestine, the authorities punish the slightest expression of support for Palestine on social media. In the course of a week, at least 170 people have been arrested for their online activities. https://www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-war-political-persecution/
"A vicious campaign by Israeli academia, police, and media to silence the professor shows Palestinians they have no safe place in Zionist institutions."
The social norm is constructed: not naturally occurring but created by the society in which it is found.
Hence there are no actions which in themselves are inherently #abnormal or universally condemned by all societies at all times. Deviance is thus situational and contextual.
Rough contact and impact peak around the age of seven. This is gradually replaced by peer monitoring in the years that follow.
Isabelle Clair: "Adolescence is a very normative age. At middle school, "there's a very tough relationship to what's the right thing to do".
Margot Déage: "Physical violence is much more prevalent in elementary/primary school, then decreases in middle school, and progressively through high school."
Margot Déage: "A girl who does not belong to a boy or a man can fall into the category of whore at any time, whatever her clothes or sexual practices."
Margot Déage: "Being in a position to say who’s a whore and who’s a good girl is a power in itself within the girls’ group, a power that is strongly mobilised by certain girls. The ones who can fall, in general, are the hardest on the matter."
"It’s difficult to talk about #manliness in absolute terms. What is considered virile depends on social background and age. In my survey, being #manly meant asserting one’s body and physical strength, and accepting sexist insults. Younger people in particular anchor manliness in their bodies in this way. For older men, manliness can be achieved through professional integration. In the end, what is defined as manly is always defined in opposition to #feminine; so being manly is the obligation not to #feminise oneself."
"Dominance over girls is expressed in many ways. In adolescence, it manifests itself in the direct control of their sexuality (or any outward sign of sexuality, such as dress, geographical mobility and any form of communication with boys). As a result, they are the focus of #reputations that place them in two radically opposed categories: "good girls" and "whores"."
Isabelle Clair, "Les jeunes et l’amour dans les cités" (2008)
"If a young woman does not follow the social injunction to have feelings in a sexual relationship, she knows that she risks being called to order, being punished. Or to feel shame or guilt. This burden of the social norm is primarily internalised."
"There is, in all circles, the threatening 'spectre of the faggot'. The determination to appear as 'a man, a real man' and secure one's masculinity, while escaping suspicion of homosexuality, which is considered demeaning and dangerous. Some gay boys from privileged backgrounds have told me that they were in a relationship with a girl at school to give the impression, to cover their tracks."
"If a young woman does not follow the social injunction to have feelings in a sexual relationship, she knows that she risks being called to order, being punished. Or to feel shame or guilt. This burden of the social norm is primarily internalised."
"There is, in all circles, the threatening 'spectre of the faggot'. The determination to appear as 'a man, a real man' and secure one's masculinity, while escaping suspicion of homosexuality, which is considered demeaning and dangerous. Some gay boys from privileged backgrounds have told me that they were in a relationship with a girl at school to give the impression, to cover their tracks."
The terrible human toll in Gaza has many causes.
A chilling investigation by +972 highlights efficiency:
An engineer: “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed.”
An AI outputs "100 targets a day". Like a factory with murder delivery:
"According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”"
"The third is “power targets,” which includes high-rises and residential towers in the heart of cities, and public buildings such as universities, banks, and government offices."
Here is a follow-up of
Yuval Abraham's investigation:
"The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties" https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
It was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses.
“We were not interested in killing operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity. On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
The current commander of the Israeli intelligence #Unit8200 wrote a book released in English in 2021. In it, he describes human personnel as a “bottleneck” that limits the army’s capacity during a military operation; the commander laments: “We [humans] cannot process so much information. It doesn’t matter how many people you have tasked to produce targets during the war — you still cannot produce enough targets per day.”
So people invented the #Lavender machine to mark persons using AI. Then the army decided to designate all operatives of Hamas’ military wing as human targets, regardless of their rank or military importance.
Senior officer B.: “They wanted to allow us to attack [the junior operatives] automatically. That’s the Holy Grail. Once you go automatic, target generation goes crazy.”
The sources said that the approval to automatically adopt #Lavender’s kill lists, which had previously been used only as an auxiliary tool, was granted about two weeks into the war, after intelligence personnel “manually” checked the accuracy of a random sample of several hundred targets selected by the #AI system. When that sample found that Lavender’s results had reached 90 percent accuracy in identifying an individual’s affiliation with Hamas, the army authorized the sweeping use of the system. From that moment, if Lavender decided an individual was a militant in Hamas, the sources were essentially asked to treat that as an order.
“Still, I found them more ethical than the targets that we bombed just for ‘deterrence’ — highrises that are evacuated and toppled just to cause destruction.”
The sources said that the approval to automatically adopt #Lavender’s kill lists, which had previously been used only as an auxiliary tool, was granted about two weeks into the war, after intelligence personnel “manually” checked the accuracy of a random sample of several hundred targets selected by the #AI system. When that sample found that Lavender’s results had reached 90 percent accuracy in identifying an individual’s affiliation with Hamas, the army authorized the sweeping use of the system. From that moment, if Lavender decided an individual was a militant in Hamas, the sources were essentially asked to treat that as an order.
“Still, I found them more ethical than the targets that we bombed just for ‘deterrence’ — highrises that are evacuated and toppled just to cause destruction.”
“The #protocol was that even if you don’t know for sure that the machine is right, you know that statistically it’s fine. So you go for it,” said a source who used #Lavender.
“It has proven itself,” said B., the senior officer. “There’s something about the statistical approach that sets you to a certain norm and standard. There has been an illogical amount of [bombings] in this operation. This is unparalleled, in my memory. And I have much more trust in a statistical mechanism than a soldier who lost a friend two days ago. Everyone there, including me, lost people on October 7. The machine did it coldly. And that made it easier.”
Another intelligence source said: “In war, there is no time to incriminate every target. So you’re willing to take the margin of error of using artificial intelligence, risking collateral damage and civilians dying, and risking attacking by mistake, and to live with it.”
B., the senior officer, claimed that in the current war, “I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time.”
According to B., a common error occurred “if the [Hamas] target gave [his phone] to his son, his older brother, or just a random man. That person will be bombed in his house with his family. This happened often. These were most of the mistakes caused by Lavender,” B. said.
It is infuriating and certainly not funny.
Some citizens say that the army has to go periodically "mow the lawn". It reflects an awful colonial mentality.
Now the society has increased another step and decided of #ethnicCleansing.
A cynical Frenchman chose an eradication image: #Lavender.
If you show the value of a victim, you feel empathy. This increases the desire for equality but you feel bad: it endangers your health.
On the contrary, iIf you stress the mistake of a victim, you protect yourself: you feel like it should not happen to you. Society supports such detachment if the perpetrator is a white man or a police(wo)man.
Blaming the victim justifies inequality, discriminations, violence by the strongest. It normalizes (adult, white, male or cis) privileges. Therefore it normalizes patriarchy and white supremacy.