TechXGeopolitics #12: Life Under Attack in the West Bank
Also featuring: ISIS intelligence origins, recent interview on The Corbett Report
Welcome to my newsletter, where I set out to highlight significant, yet un- or underreported recent news and trends at the intersection of geopolitics and tech.
Why the intersection of technology and geopolitics? The future of geopolitics will be shaped by today’s tech advances, yet the two topics are often isolated from one another in journalism and geopolitical analysis. This newsletter strives to bridge the gap while also spotlighting relevant work by emerging and veteran writers in independent media.
Feedback on this newsletter’s format and content is more than welcome — please feel free to comment on this page, or write to me at stavroula.pabst@proton.me. Thank you for reading!
Life Under Attack in the West Bank
“If you’re stopped at a checkpoint, soldiers these days are taking folks’ phones and checking their WhatsApp, Telegram and Instagram. If you have a message standing in solidarity with Gaza, or anything the Israeli soldiers see as offensive, they’ll beat you to a pulp, and could even arrest you. My friend Diala, a human rights lawyer, was just arrested at one of these checkpoints this evening. We don’t know why, but it likely relates to her work and messages they found on her phone about it.”
– Fadi Quran, the Middle East and North Africa campaigns director for Avaaz
As genocide continues in Gaza, living conditions deteriorate in the West Bank, which has been under increased lockdown since October 7. Surveillance checkpoints for Palestinians, often enhanced with facial recognition technology, and road closures have increased in recent months, with new curfews strangling opportunities for movement. As a result, many Palestinians in the West Bank cannot work, shop, or socialize. As Avaaz’s Fadi Quran explains, a drive that would take Israeli settlers in the region 80 or 90 minutes could take Palestinians four hours.
Pogroms are also becoming more common in the region, further, with Israeli human rights group Yesh Din reporting on April 16 that Israeli forces had killed at least three Palestinians in recent pogroms that destroyed property in twelve villages across the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlers have become more emboldened in the West Bank, further, despite sanctions. As Sarit Michaeli of rights group B’Tselem told the Financial Times: “The focus of everyone is on Gaza. And the settlers have utilised this as a golden opportunity.”
Siege, Executions, and Mass Graves at Gaza’s hospitals
I highlighted the destruction of Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital in my last newsletter. Testimonies about the Israeli siege suggest mass executions took place at Al Shifa.
At the time of writing, reports now indicate mass graves have been found at Gaza’s Nasser hospital, where about 300 bodies have been recovered. Besieging the hospital in February and rendering it non-functional, Israeli forces have since abandoned the complex.
Once again, testimonies frame Israeli forces at Nasser Hospital with execution-style killings of hospital patients, staff, and others seeking refuge at the hospital. March reporting from the New Humanitarian, further, had indicated Israeli forces abused medical staff at the Nasser hospital, where at least 13 patients died due to the siege’s functional block on medical care.
Recommended Reading: Hamas — Israel’s Useful Enemy by Max Jones at ScheerPost
“Despite its intention of creating a Palestinian state, Hamas has arguably provided Israel with ammunition necessary to further its strategic goals since the fundamentalist group’s conception — with support from Israel.”
Kit Klarenberg: How CIA and M16 Created Isis
“Contrary to the group’s mainstream portrayal, as inspired by fanatic, extreme religious fundamentalism, ISIS are primarily guns for hire.”
– Kit Klarenberg
In light of ISIS claiming culpability for recent terrorist attacks in Russia, Kit Klarenberg elucidates in recent reporting on his substack as to how policy recommendations from groups like the US government-funded Rand Institute manifested in intelligence support of radical jihadist groups, including ISIS, in recent years.
Indeed, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or M16) began supporting insurgent groups in the Middle East through projects like Timber Sycamore, fully aware that such efforts went to support groups “seeking to carve a fundamentalist caliphate out of the territory they occupied.”
Such efforts were no accident: as per the WikiLeaks-released diplomatic cables, US, UK, and Saudi intelligence collaborated to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Al Assad through fermenting rebellion in Syria, which they funded. Groups supported included Al Qaeda’s Iraqi wing (AQI) and offshoot Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), which, as a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report apparently predicted (and in Klarenberg’s words, “seemingly endorsed”), ultimately went on to form ISIS.
Since publication, Klarenberg’s article has met significant censorship, leading to social media users being banned simply for sharing it online. In the meantime, Klarenberg has been suspended from X for several months with no end in sight.
Toby Green: Are Covid Lockdowns Behind the Rise in Extreme Poverty in the Global South?
“According to the World Food Programme, globally 200 million more people are facing acute levels of food insecurity than before the Covid-19 pandemic.”
– Toby Green
In a January 2024 article for the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, academic Toby Green highlights the long-term impacts of COVID-19 lockdown policies on the Global South. Green explains that lockdowns and adjacent policies strangled economies especially reliant in the informal sector, where closures frequently meant no income, no school, and sometimes barred electricity access, leading to increased social distress and societal instability.
Green observes, further, that today’s inflationary pressures, often attributed to the war in Ukraine, in fact have roots in lockdown policies, where a UN food agency report “estimated a 39.7% increase in food prices between May 2020 and May 2021.” In response to such circumstances, Green calls for a re-evaluation of the policy at the international level.
Larger Global Impacts of Lockdown Policy
In addition to blighting global living standards, lockdown and adjacent policies have been blamed for childhood and adolescent learning and socialization losses worldwide. As per research from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, “the average U.S. public school student in grades 3-8 lost the equivalent of a half year of learning in math and a quarter of a year in reading.”
Meanwhile, billionaires have increased their wealth several times over since 2020.
Indie News Network (INN) News #105: Reef Breland and Collin Radix-Carter at Indie News Network covered and discussed my recent articles “Weaponizing Reality: The Dawn of Neurowarfare” (Unlimited Hangout) and “Not Enough War on the Ground, the US is Taking it to Space” (Responsible Statecraft) in a recent live stream. Watch.
Interview on The Corbett Report: I recently appeared on The Corbett Report to discuss my recent Unlimited Hangout article “Weaponizing Reality: The Dawn of Neurowarfare.” In the interview, we discuss the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) legacy of funding neurotechnologies, neurowarfare’s prospective applications to geopolitical power struggles, especially as a “soft-power” tool, and how those working on ongoing “neurorights” proposals deserve scrutiny due to their own efforts to develop such technologies, paired with their proximity to the defense sector. Watch on Substack or on Odysee.
Interview on Press TV: I discussed the humanitarian crisis and genocide unfolding in Gaza on Press TV on 13 April. Watch.
Thank you for reading this newsletter, and for your continued support — as of this week, this newsletter now has almost 600 subscribers! Please know that your time and support is appreciated as it makes my work possible.
If you felt this newsletter was worth reading, please consider a paid subscription or sharing my substack with your friends, family, and colleagues. Doing so helps keep this work accessible to everyone, without a paywall.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
I came to you following your appearance on The Corbett Report. A fascinating, if complicated, and necessary issue we must all strive to understand. Good work Pabst!
Good and easy summary to understand the complexity of Western influence in killers in the Middle East, and with links for those who want to know more.