{"id":48792,"date":"2023-09-18T07:26:38","date_gmt":"2023-09-18T05:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/?p=48792"},"modified":"2023-09-18T18:09:35","modified_gmt":"2023-09-18T16:09:35","slug":"part-3-the-benevolent-gaze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/en\/magazine\/part-3-the-benevolent-gaze\/","title":{"rendered":"Part 3: The Benevolent Gaze"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Malevolent Gaze: Terror Capitalism<\/h3>\n

After more than 55 years of Israeli military control, the West Bank and Hebron\u2019s old city have morphed into the quintessential chimaera of militarism in the digital age.\u00a0 From motion and heat sensors, license plate scanners, and 24\/7 CCTV to advanced algorithmic facial recognition technologies, Hebron is akin to an Orwellian fantasy, where the single, malevolent gaze of a military watchtower spawns into an assemblage of electronic monitoring devices powered by computers and code.<\/p>\n

In 2021, the Washington Post broke the revelatory story of the nefarious facial-recognition technology, Blue Wolf. Blue Wolf utilises smartphone technology to capture images of Palestinian faces and match them to a biometric database known as Wolf Pack which contains profiles of virtually every Palestinian in the West Bank. This database includes photographs of the individuals, their family histories, education and a security rating for each person. The phone app flashes in different colours to alert soldiers if a person must be detained, arrested, or left alone. A separate civilian smartphone app, White Wolf, has been developed for use by Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Whilst settlers are not allowed to detain people, security volunteers can use White Wolf to scan a Palestinian\u2019s identification card before that person enters a settlement. In addition to Blue Wolf, the Israeli military has installed face-scanning cameras in the divided city of Hebron to help soldiers at checkpoints identify Palestinians before they present their ID cards. A more comprehensive network of closed-circuit television cameras, dubbed \u201cHebron Smart City,\u201d provides real-time monitoring of the city\u2019s population even allegedly seeing into the homes of Palestinians.<\/p>\n

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Map source: B\u2019Tselem<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWhile developed countries around the world impose restrictions on photography, facial recognition, and surveillance, the situation described [in Hebron] constitutes a severe violation of basic rights, such as the right to privacy, as soldiers are incentivised to collect as many photos of Palestinian men, women and children as possible in a sort of competition,\u201d stated Roni Pelli, a lawyer with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.<\/p>\n

Broader global political and economic shifts have legitimized military surveillance systems like Blue Wolf and have their origins in the advent of Surveillance Capitalism. In settler-colonial contexts, this system shifts into the domain of what is often called \u201cTerror Capitalism,\u201d delivering the capitalist demands for data and cheap labour to articulate and actualise the goals of colonial domination. Multiple ethnographic studies draw the conclusion that this methodology of colonisation, among minoritised populations (considered to be outside of civil rights protections), creates dispossession, exploitation and socio-psychological torment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cameras only have one eye \u2014 to see Palestinians. From the moment you leave your house to the moment you get home, you are on camera.\u201d- Issa Amro, Palestinian UN Human Rights Defender and Co-founder of Artists+AlliesxHebron.<\/p>\n

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Artists X Allies + Hebron<\/h3>\n

Artists x Allies + Hebron (AAH) was founded by Issa Amro (b. 1980) a Palestinian activist based in Hebron, West Bank. He is the co-founder of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements. Amro advocates the use of non-violent resistance and civil disobedience to fight the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories. In 2010, he was declared \u201chuman rights defender of the year in Palestine\u201d by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Amongst his many other activist responsibilities, he runs AAH alongside Adam Broomberg. AAH aims to bring the attention of the international community to the situation in Hebron H2 in two ways: Firstly, by broadcasting projects performed in H2 outwards to an international network of cultural venues and their digital platforms. Secondly, by bringing high-profile members of the art world to Hebron, to meet local artists and activists and gain a credible understanding of the situation on the ground.<\/p>\n