Israel Uses WhatsApp Meta to Kill Palestinians in Gaza with AI System

GAZA – Israel’s killing of Palestinians in Gaza through an artificial intelligence (AI) targeting system assisted by the WhatsApp Meta messaging platform, according to a new report.

Earlier this month, reports revealed Israel used an artificial intelligence system called ‘Lavender’ to identify individuals in the Gaza Strip before targeting and attacking them, processing as many as 37,000 Palestinians within its scope.

Rather than simply acting as a simple targeting mechanism, these systems have intentionally high civilian casualty rates, with Israeli military and intelligence sources admitting they hit targets even when they were in their homes with their entire families.

As one source said at the time, “Israeli forces bombarded their (Palestinians’) homes without hesitation, as a first resort. It’s much easier to bomb a single-family home. This system is built to look for those in these situations.”

However, according to software engineer and blogger, Paul Biggar, one important detail in the method used by the Lavender system is the involvement of the messaging platform, WhatsApp.

The main determining factor in the system’s identification is whether someone is in a WhatsApp group containing other suspected fighters.

Besides the inaccuracy of the method and moral questions in targeting Palestinians based on shared WhatsApp groups or social media connections, there are also doubts that the platform is privacy-based and guarantees “end-to-end” encryption for messages.

Alleging WhatsApp’s parent company, Meta, made it complicit in Israel’s killing of a “pre-crime” suspect in Gaza, Biggar accused the company of directly violating international humanitarian law, as well as its public commitment to human rights.

The revelation is the latest evidence of Meta aiding the suppression of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices, with the platform long criticized for taking significant steps to silence dissent against Israeli and Zionist narratives.

Such steps include allowing ads promoting disasters against Palestinians and even trying to flag the word ‘Zionist’ as hate speech.

However, Meta’s sharing of WhatsApp users’ private data and messages with the Israeli military and its AI targeting system reveals another level of collaboration, but potentially makes it directly complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Questioning the accuracy of the report, a WhatsApp spokesperson told MEMO, “We have no information that this report is accurate. WhatsApp has no backdoors and we do not provide bulk information to any government. For more than a decade, Meta has provided consistent transparency reports and those reports cover the limited circumstances in which WhatsApp information is requested. Our principles are firm, we carefully review, validate and respond to law enforcement requests based on applicable law and consistent with internationally recognized standards, including human rights. Our next report will come next month, just in time. We agree that privacy is more than just end-to-end encryption, which is why we work hard to protect the limited information available to us and we continue to build more features to protect people’s information.”

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