Maxxe Albert-Deitch

Our guest today is Ori Givati. Welcome, Ori. 

 

Ori Givati

Hello, thank you.

 

Maxxe Albert-Deitch

Ori is the Advocacy Director for Breaking the Silence, which is an organization which we've had on webinars before. We've had conversations with you guys before, but an amazing organization which helps former IDF soldiers provide testimonies and firsthand accounts of their experiences as soldiers in occupied Palestinian territory. And of course, with us, we also have our President and CEO Hadar Susskind. Hadar, take it away.

 

Hadar Susskind

 Hello, everybody. Thank you, Maxxe, for your introduction there. And thank you, Ori, for being with us. And as Maxxe said, honestly, for all of the work that you and your colleagues do at Breaking the Silence. We got a chance to spend a little bit of time when I was in Israel with an APN group a few months ago with some of your colleagues, and it was as always powerful and important.  So, there's a lot going on. Obviously, there's been rockets and missiles this last week, so thankfully, there is a ceasefire now, which we hope will hold. You know, there's ongoing protests, there's ongoing decades and decades of occupation. There's a lot. There's a lot to talk about. But today, we are here to talk about actually a really specific issue, which is the issue of surveillance and how the Israeli military and Israeli government uses surveillance of Palestinians as one element of control. And particularly the story that's come out recently that you guys of course played an important role in around Red Wolf. So, for those folks who are with us who don't know what that is, can you just kind of kick us off from the beginning? What is Red Wolf? What are we talking about?

 

Ori Givati

Okay, so I might even start a little bit before it for the full context. First of all, hi, everyone, and thank you, Hadar and Maxxe, for this webinar, and for your work. It's really great to collaborate, and nice to meet everyone that's watching.  So we in Breaking the Silence, we collect testimonies from former soldiers about many different issues, as I'm sure everyone knows, for decades. Settler violence, home demolitions, protests, so forth, all different elements of the way we occupy the Palestinians. And recently, in the last, let's say, three years, okay, approximately three years, we started hearing about a new type of testimonies. And these testimonies and these testifiers, or these former soldiers, started talking about surveillance technology, something that we barely heard about in testimonies, prior to three years ago. So it started to emerge in testimonies, and we immediately identified that there is something new here that there is something special, because it started to come up in many testimonies, one after the other, from soldiers who served in different places, different units, in the occupied territories. We heard about two systems in the first place. One is Blue Wolf. Blue Wolf is a smartphone app that soldiers receive when they serve in the occupied territories. And in the app, basically, they are told the mission is to take photos of Palestinians that they meet in the different missions, mainly in patrols. The app recognizes their faces, according to facial recognition technology, and then tells them what to do with the Palestinian they took the photo of so it [the photo] can be erased, it can be released, it can be detained for some time. And more importantly, when the app doesn't recognize the Palestinian, then the soldiers can insert the new photo that they just took into the database, basically, extending and even creating, the database of Palestinian faces, just generally the Blue Wolf. And we can talk about it later. The second is Hebron Smart City, which is a network of sophisticated cameras that are spread around the city of Hebron. The cameras that can, you know, look into people's windows, very sophisticated and a very technologically advanced zoom, and so forth. And the third system is what we just published together with Amnesty about is the Red Wolf. It is basically a facial recognition system that is installed in checkpoints. We know about it mainly from Hebron. So we will speak about Hebron today. And basically what it does, a Palestinian walks into the checkpoint, he wants to cross from one part of Hebron to the other, and the checkpoint automatically, basically automatically recognizes who this Palestinian is, and immediately can give the notification to the soldier in the post, if you should open it or not. And it's really important to understand that the main difference here between what used to be to what we have now is that the Palestinian doesn't see...it's not like in the airport, when you come you stop, you stand in front of the camera, you know that someone took your photo, and you get a notification. It's not like that. The person just walks around and the checkpoint makes a decision. That is basically the system of the Red Wolf. And I'll just point out maybe the most important thing to understand about it. The Red Wolf System, the reason that it's so important to understand it, it's actually a step further, than the Blue Wolf. And the reason is what I just said. The reason is that we're talking about a system of facial recognition that can take pictures of Palestinians when they just walk around. We're using cameras that are installed on halls or something like rooftops, and stuff like that. That's the danger. And doesn't require the moment when the soldiers saw the Palestinian in the street and takes a photo. That is the main significant difference between this. Of course, you can dive deeper, but that's the general overview.

 

Hadar Susskind

Thank you Ori for, you know, the background there. I think this is an issue that, you know, that's complicated. I mean, I read The New York Times story, and for those of you didn't see it, Maxxe has posted I think both the Amnesty International report, and not the New York Times story, yet. But we'll put the New York Times story up, there goes the New York Times story into the chat. So you all can look at that later. You know, one of the big issues that we talk about here in the US around things like facial recognition is, you know, the civil rights of the individuals. Now, obviously, under occupation, those people are living, you know, Palestinians living under occupation under military law, they're not under Israeli law. What does Israeli law have to say about this kind of surveillance?

 

Ori Givati

So, look, I think what we really have to understand here is that right now, or in recent years in Israel, we have seen a lot of discussions, a lot of different parties talking about the use, and how will the Israeli police be allowed to use different systems of facial recognition? And there is no, I'm not an expert on all the specific law legislation that are trying to pass, there is a specific system, for example, that is operating already that can recognize license plates kind of all over. So they can know where wherever you are whenever they want, basically. This is something that's happening right now in Israel. And there is more discussion about for example, how and when will the police be allowed to use facial recognition to I don't know, find wanted people in general areas, you know, for discussions that are all over the world. I think what we have to understand here is that there is a discussion, and the discussion is between people who have the power to affect the results of the discussion. Yeah, so I'm an Israeli. I can vote for a party that is completely against facial recognition or whatever policy they have, the opposite even. But even more than that, I can go and I can protest. I can make, create an organization against facial recognition. I can also I know try to use different ways to refuse all of these different tools that exist right now in Israel within the discussion about facial recognition technologies, are completely absent when we're talking about facial recognition for Palestinians. So first of all, no, you cannot refuse. Yeah, it's not like you can walk in the checkpoint and tell them, 'No, I want to use the old system, and according to that system you tell me if I pass or not.' That, first of all, but also you will not refuse a group of four soldiers fully armed in the middle of the street that want to take your photo. Yeah, most people will not refuse. And we don't have any accounts of Palestinians who actually refuse. And more broadly, Palestinians can't vote for the military commander that decided that this will be the system that will be used. And they also cannot protest against it. They can't start an organization against it, they can't, basically can't, they, of course, they can't create, like a protest on the ground against it. So basically, we're using a system that is extremely questionable, even in the most functioning democracy against the most disenfranchised populations, one of the most egregious populations, in the world. And this is extremely dangerous for many different reasons. Go on.

 

Hadar Susskind

So let's talk about what some of those reasons are. I mean, there's the obvious lack of rights, right? They don't have the opportunity to, you know, to refuse this or to acquiesce to it. They just, it's happening to them. But beyond that, what are the dangers of this system? What are the things that you know, you and Breaking the Silence and Amnesty and everyone else who's speaking out against this are most concerned about? And just one second, while you're thinking about that, I just want to remind everybody, you know, Ori and I are chatting, but we want to get your questions in here also. So use that Q&A function at the bottom to type in your questions, and then we will do our best to answer them.

 

Ori Givati

Okay, so there are two different maybe I can say paths that are dangerous here. Okay. The first path is the issue of privacy rights. Yeah. And by the way, this is an issue that we are in Breaking the Silence, it's less our expertise. That's why we also work together with Amnesty about this, that is their expertise, and there are different dangers. For example, I am a soldier, I walk around in Hebron, I take a photo of a Palestinian, it tells me this guy is wanted for a violent attack in Tel Aviv. I arrest him, but wait, the system, the facial recognition system made a mistake. It's not even this guy, his brother, or completely not related to him and it just made a mistake? Yeah, that's the first very classic danger of these kinds of systems. The second is that we're creating a database of people's biometric information, which is the most private digital possession kind of that we can have on the Palestinians. Yeah, we get a huge database without almost any checks and balances of where this database is held. And the issue of databases of biometric information is one of the main issues in the discourse about this topic around the world. How can we make sure that the database is safe, that is not leaked, that different powers cannot use it for the wrong reasons, and so forth? Yeah. So we have this database, and no one even knows where it is. And Israel doesn't even need to tell anyone where it is. And no one is, you know, we don't know. Like, we really don't know right now. Where is this database? Who is protecting it? And forget about us, the Palestinians don't know, by the way, they don't even know about the existence of the system except living their day to day life. By select someone told him, Hey, from now on, we hold your biometric information,' you know, it's not there is no element like that. Okay. So we have the database, we have the we have the mistakes. And third is the invasion of privacy, right? The deterioration of this kind of system that is very safe to assume, unfortunately, that we will see. Yeah, is that, and I'm just saying it a bit reserved because we don't have testimonies about what I'm going to say, so I'm saying about a possible danger, but we don't have testimonies about yet. Yes. And I hope it will not. I hope I'm wrong. But it looks like this is the trajectory. Yeah, we can follow people, right. So I may, I don't know, I want to go somewhere. I'm a Palestinian, I want to go somewhere for the first time to meet my relative, and he lives next to someone who is wanted. I start out of the blue to visit this place. Once a month. Now, the systems can know that. They follow me. And Israel might think, Oh, this guy started visiting this, I don't know a place where they make bombs, even if I'm not related to that at all. Just an example. It can be also way worse than not, it can be, 'Oh, this guy, we are seeing him going to LGBTQ clubs,' that we know because we have intelligence that this house is a house for LGBTQ. So now we can use this information that we have on him in order to extract information from him, for example, there are so many different dangers to this level of invasion to privacy. And this last point is connecting me to the second path of how these systems can be used in our use, which is not the privacy issue, but the issue of control. In most elements of the occupation, there is also this element of control, and how does it come in effect in practice using the surveillance systems? As I also mentioned earlier, we have been controlling the Palestinians for decades using different, you know, missions, mechanisms, settler violence, home demolitions, a dispersion of protests, home invasions, patrol checkpoints, all these different things we have been talking about for decades, and still, of course, are the most prominent way we can call it Palestinians. That 24/7. But these are systems of surveillance add yet another layer of control. Yeah, now we're not only controlling Palestinians, physical space, we're also controlling their digital space now. So a Palestinian today, it is not only you know, when they go to sleep, they're not only concerned about whether a soldier will invade my home tonight. Or when I go to work, we get even, we get to work on time and so forth. Yeah. And of course, worse than that, yeah, I forgot to protest, we like come back alive. But also, when I walk in the street, and I see no soldiers, I'm still under track, I'm still under surveillance. When I go into checkpoints, I'm under surveillance. And more than that, Israel has on me not only my home that they can use whenever they want, but also my own private biometric information, which they can use against me whenever they want. So it adds a whole other layer of control. And basically, where we keep pushing the envelope around the individual. The individual I'm talking about, of course, it has effects for everything more than the individual, the group, the family, the people, everyone, but also around individuals. It's a way to, I think it's a way to expand our control from the, you know, from the physical space or even the public space sometimes to every specific individuals private space more than ever.

 

Maxxe Albert-Deitch

I think the thing that struck me maybe the most reading through the report is that this is really just one more layer on top of an already existing super restrictive system that's in place to control Palestinian movement. I kind of want to take this back a couple of steps and ask you to talk about the permit system that's already in place and some of the restrictions that were already there prior to this new system.

 

Ori Givati

Yeah. So we have to understand that it's all built on top of you know, what used to be. So we are building this, the pile right, the blocks pile, I forgot. Anyway, the permit system is part of the occupation for decades. It keeps growing and expanding into levels that we wouldn't imagine, you know, like, the right now we are limiting the amount of teachers from the international community that can then have a permit to enter into teaching Palestinian universities, and how many Palestinians will be allowed to study abroad. And like, you know, it gets everywhere, but it's also affecting all or most of the Palestinians' day to day life. Yeah, we're talking about permits to enter Israel for work, we're talking about permits to enter Israel. It can be for, you know, businessmen and so forth, which is probably the most kind of permissive permit. Yeah, businessmen who can enter with their vehicles and so forth. But when we talk about inside the Palestinian population, yeah, we're talking about a way, way more restrictive permit reading. What do I mean? I'll give two examples. We have the city of Hebron specifically. Yeah, which is divided the center of it by 23 checkpoints, that Palestinians, some of them, they can cross, some of them, they can't, depending on many different reasons. But basically, yeah, without diving too deep, we split a city, the most important city in the West Bank after is Jerusalem, what used to be the most important market, cultural center, and so forth. We split it, and basically, approximately 20% of the city is almost completely blocked for Palestinians. Yeah. Including roads that are called stay high roads that no one can enter. Yeah. And another completely different example of permits is what we call agricultural permits. Yeah. Something we did when we built the fence, the separation barrier, between the West Bank and Israel within the green line. A lot of the Palestinian private property, private agricultural lands, were left on the other side of the fence. Yeah, so basically, inside Israel the way Israel sees it, yeah. And in order to allow Palestinians to enter and work their own private lands, with the Israeli side, that should actually be inside Israel, we created this entire secondary kind of permit regime, that is called an agricultural permit. And Palestinians can exit and enter their private lands using a very, very specific permit that sometimes get to the specificity of, you can cross now with one shovel and one tractor with all your family members, for example, and so many different elements like that. And those gates where they can cross are open, usually from 6 to 7am. And then again, from 3 to 4pm. So for example, if you didn't come in the morning, or even worse, you didn't come back in the evening between three to four because the soldiers have other things to do, you can be locked inside Israel, which is a criminal offense, which might restrict you from your permit, and there are so many different other permits. Yeah. So the permit regime is one of the main tools of control over the Palestinian population way before surveillance. Yeah. And by the way, for anyone who's interested, we published recently a booklet about the Civil Administration, which is responsible, one of the bodies responsible for this permit regime, so can they have a look and Maxxe, maybe we can put the link. It's in our website, I can put it later also. And the surveillance issue, just extended this permit regime into a whole other level of restrictions. And not only of the restrictions, but also the way it's done, which is way more invasive, to Palestinian lives.

 

Hadar Susskind

I just... I'm stuck for a minute, because there's so much I mean, you're talking about all the levels there. I was just thinking as you're talking about the agricultural permits, wanted to remind everyone, what Ori's talking about is permits for Palestinians to visit, to visit -- to work, private lands that they own, right, that are fenced off from areas they can access themselves, where they then need to go through this whole process to get to their own private lands. And we've seen over and over again, obviously cases of settler violence keeping people from those lands keeping them from working on destroying crops, trees, others there. It is deep, it is a deeply rooted problem. So, one of the things that I was interested about and seeing actually the The New York Times story that we posted in the chat is the response to this. And in part, because there is already so much surveillance, there is already, you know, the permit and permit regime and so many other things. Can you tell us a little bit about what has the response been in Israel? Has there been international response? How have people, you know, how have people responded to this? And also, given that this is, as you were saying, you know, held by the military and not something that is clear exactly, who's in charge of what and how, how did? How did you even find out about all of this information?

 

Ori Givati

So I have to say that the response to these revelations started from The Washington Post piece a year and a half ago, continuing with this New York Times piece this month. Internationally, has been you know, since a year and a half ago, it's one of the things we deal with most. Yeah. Now, again, with more attention even than ever, because I think of two reasons. First, that this is a topic that's very much on the table internationally. Anyway, so people are interested, it's related to AI, it's related to, you know, different civil rights issues all around the world. So people are interested in the result of academic research that is starting, that is developing, so it's very much on the table, regardless of the occupation, so people are interested. And secondly, I think that it's something new, you know, when we talk about occupation, it's something new. And we've been talking about, you know, and many people who are living in this issue and are interested in this issue, or maybe working about, their are related to this issue, or political engagement decision, and so forth. They know about the occupation. They know about settler violence, they know about the different things that we can consider classic, you know, classic occupation, which, of course, not for a second think that they are less important, actually the opposite, they're still the most important elements of the occupation because they're the day to day life. But this brought a whole new understanding of the way we occupy. And also, I think it's a very clear example of how 56 almost years of occupation, erode slowly, every basic understanding of what is democracy, what is human rights, what are the things, what are the lies, we will not close? These systems are a huge red flag showing the deterioration that we are now in, we have been deteriorating for this from the second we started, but we are probably, you know, heading more downhill than ever. And these systems are one of the ways to show it. Within Israel, we're talking about a different situation, unfortunately, we're talking about... Actually, we're not talking about it. That's the  main argument. 

 

Hadar Susskind

Yeah, that's the difference.

 

Ori Givati

Yeah, not that we don't try, of course. Still, by the way, for anyone who doesn't know, most of our effort, more than our capacity in Breaking the Silence, is working within Israel with our society, this is what we believe is always what we should focus on. And unfortunately, the levels of a little bit denial, I can say, a little bit acceptance, depends on who you're talking about from within our society, is not really allowing the way we see this issue to actually become part of the discussion. Because anyway, there is a lot of acceptance to the different things that were already used. And it's hard to say, you know, for example, a system in checkpoint, that is a facial recognition system in a checkpoint, for someone who is not part of this and knows about this and so forth, and by the way, we also need a lot of learning to understand what's the problem, it feels like an airport like, 'Wow, okay, what's the problem?' You know, we go to go to an airport, there is facial recognition there. So why are you against the suddenly? And it's hard, it's hard to take the discussion to these directions. With that, I would say, we're definitely also here talking about it more and more and hearing about more and more, and I believe that it will become part of the discussion, the more this advances without any breaks.

 

Hadar Susskind

So I'm going to hand it to Maxxe in a second for a question, but just you know, while you're saying that, I just want to follow up that I mean, that's one of the reasons we're doing this webinar. Is that sometimes you read about something, you know, related to occupation, and, you know, treatment of the horrible treatment of the Palestinians, and you're looking and you go, 'Oh my God, this is unbelievably horrible. We have to do everything we can.' This you can look at. And like you said, we in the United States, obviously, every country in the world probably use facial recognition in airports and in other places. And, you know, it's not, it's not violent, you know, in the physical body. So it does take learning, and it does take understanding about, you know, how this deepens the level of occupation, and like you said, extends it to the digital realm. So again, that's one of the reasons that we are doing this webinar today so that we can learn more about it, and everyone who joined us can learn more about it. Maxxe, I know you had another question for Ori.

 

Maxxe Albert-Deitch

I do. Yeah. So one of the more consistent through lines between all of the articles, the report itself, various conversations I've had with friends and colleagues who also follow this stuff, is that it's not just that the surveillance systems make it more difficult for Palestinian daily life, though, of course, that's true. It's that it's not even difficult for Israeli soldiers to take the photos to make that happen. And it's not even that, it's that there are incentives attached. And I think that's something that has sort of been pushed to the side. And some of those conversations is that, you know, there are incentives that are sort of a gamification of it all happening. Would you mind talking a little bit about that? And sort of not just how it makes things more difficult, though of course it does, but the ways that it's made so easy to put in place?

 

Ori Givati

Yeah, definitely. First, maybe I'll explain a bit more about how it is gamified. Yeah, so we have testimonies about the two systems, about the Red Wolf and the Blue Wolf, about basically the competition. So in the Blue Wolf, there is, it's like a smartphone app. The by the way, there, there was a release of how it looks like by a website, ynet, that they got a video of how the app looks like. And there is a page in the app, the icon is a little trophy, and when you press the trophy, you see a list of the unit of the West Bank, you see a number. And this number is basically the photos, the amount of photos that these units took during the week of Palestinian faces. And the first, second, and third units every week, get a prize. So a nice dinner or going back home early and so forth. And we heard similar testimonies about the Red Wolf. The Red Wolf is not an app, so probably was done in a different way, but similar kind of maybe incentive for the soldiers. Now, this is done, I think, I think it shows us two things. First, it relates to what I just said. We are completely blind as a society, and also as an occupying power, to what we're actually doing. You know, like, when I sit, when I explain what I just explained, it sounds insane to me. Yeah. But when I think about it as a soldier, when I was a soldier, last time I served in the territories myself was seven years ago, okay. When I was a soldier, there, and I can imagine myself getting this mission and getting this app and feeling maybe in the best case scenario about myself, and say, 'Oh, this is weird, but I will definitely do it.' And definitely, as a young soldier, as an 18-20 year-old soldier, I will feel it even cool. Yeah. Why it's even cool? Because, as soldiers we are bored. The only thing you want is action, or something new. Yeah? What is a patrol? It's eight hours, you work in a Palestinian neighborhood where everyone hates you, with your weapon, and it's heavy, and you have a bag and so forth, and you just want it to end or you want something interesting to happen. So when you get these kinds of missions, you, take as many photos as you can, you might get a nice dinner if you're the best unit in the West Bank and so forth. It simply makes it interesting for you. Yeah, so I think from the soldiers' point of view, this is very prominent. And it contributes significantly to a parallel process that we have been also talking about in Breaking the Silence, which is the dehumanization of Palestinians. Yeah, because as a soldier now, not only are we allowed to invade their homes and invade their rooftops, and even shoot on at protests and, you know, open checkpoints whenever I want, and so forth, I'm also allowed to take pictures of whoever I want, for me to get the nice dinner. The levels of treating the Palestinians is not only gamifying the mission, it's actually gamifying the Palestinians themselves.

 

Hadar Susskind

Yeah, they're like, deeply dehumanizing.

 

Ori Givati

Exactly, they are pawns in our video game. And it's getting worse, you know, it's been like that before. And these kinds of systems, intervention, maybe makes the situation, way, way more -- kind of separating the what we do from who we do it on. We separate the human being, which is a Palestinian in front of us, to what we're actually doing to that person. You know, it's a very difficult process. And I have to tell you that we also saw it in the testimonies, I think this is really important to understand. I was a researcher before I was the advocacy director, I was a researcher, and I interviewed over 120 soldiers about their service before we started hearing about surveillance. Okay. So I remember very well, what a soldier in an interview sounds like. And what are the usual terms and words that are used so far. When I read the transcripts of the testimonies about surveillance, one of the things that struck me was that they look different, the actual words that soldiers use are different. Yeah. For example, I remember one of the testifiers, starts talking about the system with words like, 'I have to tell you something, I have to tell you something, do you know what is the rules?' You know, and in my experience, when I was a researcher, it was very rare that a soldier will talk to you like this, because as soldiers, we get used to things, so we don't describe them as like, 'We have to talk to you about something,' you know, it's not the way that soldiers speak to it, at least in interviews I conducted. No soldiers spoke to me this way. And that's why when I saw the surveillance testimonies, I immediately felt like, 'Okay, we have something new here, we have something big here. Something is changing the way the soldiers are talking about the situation.' 

 

Hadar Susskind

Interesting. So, I want to go to one of our audience questions. But before I do that, I'm going to remind everyone that if you'd like to ask questions, please use that Q&A function and type them in there. So this is really a two part question. And again, like you said, you know, this Blue Wolf, Red Wolf, it all connects to the broader surveillance. So there was a question about whether you can say something about the 8200 unit, whether you wanna talk about them and how that fits in? And then the follow up question that goes with that is, do you think that these new layers of control, the new surveillance, might it lead toward more people refusing to serve? Especially as that's connecting to, again, the the protests and the refusal to serve in the protest is a little bit different, right? Because that's primarily reserve duty, but talk about those things. Do you think they're connected? Do you think we'll see them connected?

 

Ori Givati

So 8200 (Unit) is the biggest, most important, basically, unit in the intelligence of the military. And, you know, not from testimonies, but the things that they do in different ways, maybe in different units names and so forth, but generally, listening into calls, by the way not only of Palestinians, also other enemies of Israel and so forth... You know, satellite image with them. So many different elements of intelligence, they're brought in the 8200 Unit. Okay, basically, that's a very general, okay. We don't collect from this unit. And we don't collect from intelligence, mainly because of censorship issues. It's not something we want to start meddling with, because it's very dangerous, by the way, not only for us, but mostly for people who, even if they will actually speak to us. So just generally for you. We told that intelligence is a crucial part of all of this. Because eventually, these kinds of systems can create intelligence that can be used against Palestinians, in many different ways, like I mentioned earlier, like, who is gay or something like that. Or, who doesn't meet, and maybe they're trying to set up a political opposition to occupation, things like that. But it's also fed by intelligence, because how does the system know when a soldier takes a photo? If the guy's wanted? Of course, it is intelligent. Like it doesn't decide on its own, the system recognizes the faces, but it's fed by some other system, that we can only assume related to Intel. So intelligence is a significant part of that. Now about refusing, I think that generally, the more we hear about these kinds of systems, the more we hear about the things that we allow ourselves to use against the Palestinians, and the more people know about them, it eventually, of course, also creates refusing. Yeah, like, of course, it's part of the game. Yeah, I don't think that we will see significantly more, because of that, see, significantly more refusal. And by the way, this is because of many reasons, because of people's own personal decision and social decisions. But mainly, because we are Israelis, and we grew up in a system that directs us to become combat soldiers, or soldiers generally. In any way it can, education, media, social circles, and so forth. So I don't personally expect that this specific thing will create a huge difference. I do want to connect it to Hadar what you said about the protests, it's very significant. And actually throw in a link, I just published a piece about this specific issue about the relationship between the surveillance and the protests, so I'll throw the link in the chat, but I think that the most important element to remember about the protests that are currently ongoing, is that the way they are a strain, you know, and by the way, we are a part of the protests. Yeah, we're a part of them. We support them, of course, the way they are framed by our friends, our society, is we are resisting dictatorship. When we talk about resisting dictatorship, hundreds of thousands of people in the center of Tel Aviv, and we don't talk about full on dictatorship mechanisms, that we're using half an hour from Tel Aviv, we have a problem. e have to understand that these issues are directly connected. And that we cannot, we will never ever really find justice within the green line. And real equality and so forth, which is what the protests are actually, you know, calling for, without talking about the dictatorship that we're enforcing on the other side of the grid. So I spoke about it  in this piece, I encourage everyone to have a read in The Daily Beast. So I see Maxxe just sent it. Thank you.

 

Hadar Susskind

I mean, ultimately, that comes down, you know, what you were just talking about, comes down to what I think has been the main slogan of the anti-occupation block in the protests, which is there's no democracy with occupation. And it's true. And there are many people in Israel who are, you know, fighting for Israel's democracy while ignoring that. But ultimately, that's a simple truth, and sooner or later is going to have to be recognized more broadly. I want to back up for a moment to the question about refusing army service. Because, you know, while for what it's worth, you know, personally, I agree with you, I don't think this issue and I don't think there are hundreds and thousands of Israeli 18 year-olds saying, 'Wait, Red Wolf, I'm not going to serve,' but I do, just anecdotally, from you know, my own my own friends and their kids who are going to their army service now, I'm hearing more people who I know who I wouldn't have expected, right? Not people who have been lifelong anti-occupation activists or things like that, and I'm talking about people doing their mandatory service now, you know, those 18 and 19 year-olds, not the reservists, who are either refusing, or a number of people I know, who are, you know, Kibbutz kids who were always, you know, the elite units, etc, who don't want to be combat soldiers who are doing other things, who are still doing their service. And it does feel, and again it's 100% anecdotally, but it does feel to me like, there is more of that happening. And I wonder if you think that's true, if you think it's not true? Do you have any actual numbers and facts behind those anecdotes? Is there changing in both the willingness to serve, or the willingness to serve in combat units, etc?

 

Ori Givati

Interesting. So first of all, it's really interesting to hear the real numbers, and I'm sure, some point this year, because every year, some numbers published by some poll or something like that, that we can learn from. I think we have, we are seeing something very interesting. It's not necessarily directly related to the occupation, but the protests and the refusing to serve are because of the judicial overhaul, which is very prominent. Basically pilots, combat soldiers, intelligence, so many different units and so forth, are saying if you're passing the judicial overhaul, we are done, it's reserves, okay, it's reserves. It very, very quickly legitimized refusing. Because until now, refusing was taboo. If you even mentioned that, you're outside of the conversation. Now, even though it's on another topic, it's legitimizing this. By the way, very important, very, you know, good way to non-violently protest, something you care about. Yeah. So I think it's very important. First of all, if you have this legitimization. Now, this legitimization, it cannot be separated from misusing the occupation. Because it's way more difficult now to say to people that are refusing,' No, this is not legitimate because it's because of the occupation. But if it's because of the judicial overhaul, it is legitimate.' These kinds of distinctions are very difficult to make, and I think they are wrong, and also it's not legitimate to criticize this way, because you can't choose for people what to protest about. You can tell them, I think that this way of protest is not a legitimate way. But once you did it, you can tell them why they should do this, or not do it. So I think this legitimization is very important. Now, another thing that is happening in parallel, and this is I think,very interesting, is that in some of the interviews, the statements of the different people who refuse, we didn't see things like, we serve their occupation. We didn't say anything. Now they want to change the judicial overhaul. It's enough. So it does show us that some people are starting to think differently. They're saying, I already served something that I disagree with. So why should I continue doing that when they keep going way further. And I think those are really, really just like small, small signs that the numbers are still very, very small. And by the way, I don't think that we will see a massive, refusing movement because of the occupation. But I do believe that if the judicial overhaul moves forward, it might have an indirect outcome. Which is might start to affect also the occupation itself and the way people see the occupation. But we're very, very far away from that point.

 

Hadar Susskind

I agree. I think we're still far away from that point, but it's been fascinating to me, both being there for a few weeks of protest and talking to people, and then just talking to folks about it from here, that there are a lot of people who I think are in that main part of the protest movement, not the anti-occupation block, they're not there to talk about occupation. They're there, you know, honestly, bluntly, to defend their rights as Jewish Israelis. Right. But I've heard over and over again, from people that it's making them think about, talk about, learn about, the occupation, that, you know, where where Netanyahu succeeded with the separation wall a long time ago now in sort of creating the bubbles and letting so many Israelis go about their lives without thinking about the occupation, the fact that the anti-occupation block is part of the protest movement, and the fact that they're discussing democracy like this, I think, is moving that conversation forward. And it's not enough. And it's not fast enough and everything else. But I do think it's actually very powerful, because it's showing that there is this population that can be motivated and mobilized and that this population, slower than we would like, but that this population is starting to engage more around this issue also.

 

Ori Givati

I agree. And I think generally, this moment, these few months are... I look at them in an optimistic lens. I would like to mention in this webinar, that one of the most important ways to connect our society inside Israel, to the occupation, to these protests, and how to connect all the different dots is the international community. Because when the international community are saying, and especially the Jewish Diaspora, but also general international beings are saying, resist the judicial overhaul and resist the occupation. They are not separate entities. Yeah, they're the same. They're part of the same processes. Yeah, who is promoting the judicial overhaul? The same people are promoting annexation and apartheid, right? If the international community does that, it has a lot of ripple effects within the Israeli society. And right now, in this moment and time, there is a lot of Israelis that are looking towards international community. So especially Jewish Diaspora, but also internationally. And it's really important that there we want to see these kinds of connections. So this is also something we work on a lot, internationally, and also in turn.

 

Maxxe Albert-Deitch

So on the topic of the international community and perception of what's going on there, I think I want to pull a question from the chat. Just what is your stance in your opinion from what you've seen on the surveillance state and the way that that's impacting people having an impact on the general public, both in Israel and outside? Everybody's views on perceptions of the conflict?

 

Ori Givati

I think the more we detach ourselves for things that are very easily explained by security, we are making it more difficult to explain the occupation, right? Because when you open a checkpoint, it's very easy for Israel to say this is for security reasons, right? By the way, of course, again, we question that we don't believe that most checkpoints are for security reasons and so forth. But just for the sake of example, it's very easy to say that this is for security reasons. Because we need to stop this guy from reaching this place, or because we have intelligence on this car that is going to bring a bug to that village and whatever. The more we do things that are detached from these kind of very clear explanations, tt becomes way more difficult to explain what we're doing here really. So you can very easily say okay, especially commission system in the checkpoint, you can justify it in some ways and Israel tried. But what is is very difficult to justify is the game. Why are you sending soldiers to play in taking photos of Palestinians? And then when you dive deeper, why are you even creating a biometric database of people in their village? It's not people who have a pyramid, there is no reason for you to know these kids' biometric information. I haven't mentioned today, but we're also talking about photos of children, and anyone, not related to what they did, and so forth, who they are. I think these kinds of systems are another step in that direction. And therefore, I think that they are another way to explain the absurdity of the security justification, which is the most important justification that Israel uses in order to say, 'We know it looks bad, but it's all for our security.' That's like the classic thing you will always hear from Israel. But this doesn't justify everything. You can justify using security -- anything you want. And these kinds of systems are extremely difficult, especially when simultaneously, the entire international community is talking about how we should not use or limit the use of these exact same systems. And when we talk about this, there is a dual use the systems. The most drastic comparison that I heard from experts and not from me, but from specific things that China does. Of course, China does way, way more extensive. I'm not comparing. But do we want... Now talking about an Israeli. This is what we want, like, we are going to be in the same family with China and Russia? Like this is what we want? This is the trajectory we're going towards. So I think we all have to understand that and work against this.

 

Hadar Susskind

And I think that wraps it up, right? That's exactly it. It's, do we want to be a country and a regime controlling another people and one that are, you know, building a database and surveilling an entire population? Like you said, it's not just checkpoints, it's not just people who have permits. It's, you know, men and women and children going about their daily lives. And, you know, this is mapping and surveilling as one more tool of control.  Ori, thank you very much for joining us today for coming on and talking and helping to explain what is a complex and complicated issue. And I appreciate all the work that you're doing, you and your colleagues at Breaking the Silence, please give them all our thanks. And thank you, everybody, for joining us today. Again, this has been recorded. We will share it online if you want to share it with other folks. And thank you for being with us. And we'll see you all soon. 

 

Ori Givati

Thank you very much.