TEHRAN-Since October 7 and the onset of the Gaza genocide, much news has been reported about the systematic censorship of pro-Palestinian content and users by Meta's subsidiaries, Facebook and Instagram. The company has also explicitly removed any anti-Zionist content.

But Meta's support for the Zionist regime does not end here; the company also involves its WhatsApp application in this battlefield.

Various sources have revealed that Israel is using artificial intelligence in the killings in the Gaza Strip. Among these sources are the Zionist publications "+972" Magazine and the Hebrew-language publication "Local Call".

They revealed the use of AI programs such as “Lavender” and "Where’s Daddy? " and "The Gospel," all of which were used to identify tens of thousands of Gazans as targets and to track and strike individuals specifically in their homes.

Details contained in the April 3 "+972" report on "Lavender" and "Where's Daddy? " revealed that they were obtaining their information through WhatsApp, the communication behemoth owned by the tech giant Meta.

It is noteworthy to highlight that in 2021, a book titled "The Human-Machine Team: How to Create Synergy Between Human and Artificial Intelligence That Will Revolutionize Our World" was published by Yossi Sariel, the current commander of the elite Israeli intelligence unit 8200. In the book, he outlines the design of a special machine that can rapidly process massive amounts of data to generate thousands of potential 'targets' for military strikes.

Sariel writes, such technology would resolve what he describes as a “human bottleneck for both locating the new targets and decision-making to approve the targets.”

As we can see, the machine that the chief of Israel’s Unit 8200 was discussing has now come into existence, and Meta is the supplier of its data.

The Tehran Times conducted an interview with Paul Biggar, an Irish software engineer, innovator, and founder of "Tech For Palestine", a coalition of technology experts working to benefit Palestinians, about the various forms of support provided by Meta to the Zionist regime. Below is the text of the exclusive interview with Paul Biggar:

What is the role of AI Lavender and Meta Company in the Gaza genocide?

Lavender is an AI system created by Israel to massively speed up the bombing, especially in the first few weeks after October 7, by processing targets with AI instead of relying on human intelligence operators.  This allowed the IDF to drop far more bombs and cause many more casualties.

The AI component of this, however, seems to be especially flawed. They claim to use data about Hamas commanders from before the invasion to train the system, which they then claimed could be used to identify Hamas militants. This is very flawed logic, and combined with other whistleblower claims -- in particular that Israel lowered Lavender's thresholds on days when they did not have enough targets -- implies that Lavender is simply a talking point to allow bombing.

It's about plausible deniability. Consider the various claims that Israel used and continues to use to prevent food aid from coming into Gaza -- there are protesters, the gate was bombed, it is not safe, it will be stolen -- it is important for Israel to have fake reasons to commit the genocide it is aggressively pursuing, in order to satisfy the West.

Similarly, Lavender is plausible deniability for bombing civilians. By having a non-human system choosing targets, they can claim that "the AI did it", and put an opaque layer in front of the bombing decisions that defies the ability to investigate or even explain how they chose the targets.

I consider the role of Lavender to be similar to the train lines, gas chambers, or data storage systems used during the Holocaust - automation allowing the scale of the genocide to increase massively.

How does WhatsApp, a Meta app, help Israel to kill Palestinians? Is it legal for a so-called 'private' messenger like WhatsApp, which is used internationally, to provide such data to Israel for massacre? Is it clear how much information Lavender provides to Israel?

It is claimed that one of the considerations about whether someone should be killed -along with up to 20 civilians per bombing- was whether they were in the same WhatsApp group as alleged Hamas militants. As such, there are questions about how this data was revealed to Israel.

Meta has refused to provide any information about this. They made a short statement back in April, in which they denied that WhatsApp had any "backdoors" -- any deliberate flaws to enable government snooping -- or that governments received WhatsApp data in bulk from Meta. These answers are extremely unsatisfactory. If an allegation exists that users of your product are being killed for being users of your product, especially during what had already been internationally condemned as a genocide, then a company should move heaven and earth to discover how this happened. Instead, Meta gave a short statement.

This short statement was also shown almost immediately to be misdirection. The Intercept revealed that flaws in WhatsApp could allow WhatsApp group membership to be learned if the attacker was in control of the internet service, as is the case in Gaza. It also revealed that Meta was aware of the issue and had discussed it internally months earlier. "Flaws" and "backdoors" are technically different, which is why I believe that Meta deliberately used "backdoors" to mislead the public in their statement.

In the "Meta and Lavender" report, you mentioned that Meta employees are connected to the Israeli army and Unit 8200. To what extent does this connection exist, and did Meta have a specific plan for it?

 Israel has for many years created a pipeline from Unit 8200 into tech, to the point that former Unit-8200 soldiers are greatly over-represented in the tech industry. In particular, they are well-represented as startup founders, as venture capitalists (VC), as software engineers and product managers, and also in the Trust&Safety function -- the part of the industry that supervises content on social media. 

At Meta, Guy Rosen is the CISO - the most senior person making decisions around what content is allowed on Meta, and supposedly the architect of their "anti-anti-Zionism" policy which equates anti-Zionism (opposition to a racist political ideology) with antisemitism (opposition to a religion). Guy Rosen is Israeli, lives in Tel Aviv, and was in Unit 8200 in the IDF (the Israeli equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency).

Meta has been very active in spreading lies about sexual violence related to the October 7 attack, and in this sense, it has been quite supportive of Israel. What is the relationship between Meta leaders such as Mark Zuckerberg and Guy Rosen and Israel? It is noteworthy that Sheryl Sandberg, one of the key figures in the formation of Facebook, created a promotional documentary for Israel focusing on sexual violence against Israeli women during the October 7 attacks.

 Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated $125,000 to Zaka, the Israeli organization that is the source of most of the disinformation that was used to dehumanize Palestinians and allow the genocide in Gaza. These false claims - beheaded babies, mass rape - were repeated by Israeli and the U.S. politicians, as well as news media around the world, to promote a narrative of savagery that was exploited by Israel.

Israel has continually recycled and reproduced the same discredited claims in different formats, with Sandberg's "Screams Before Silence" being just the latest time that they have done this. Sandberg claims that she is speaking up for women and victims of sexual violence, but does not speak up against the systematic rape of Palestinians by the IDF.

AH/SAB