Ai, Sacred Violence, and War -- The Case of Gaza

This open access book is about how Israel is using Algorithmic Intelligence (AI) and other computer technology in military operations in the Gaza Strip to achieve goals based on ancient religious entitlements. Changes in Israel Defense Force (IDF) ethical codes and innovation policies have not led to victory, but have resulted in a wide range of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in a strategy focused on The Torture of Gaza, which includes ethnic cleansing and is approaching genocide. It covers the history of using AI in war, and current U.S. and Israeli military AI technologies such as Maven, Iron Dome, Pegasus, the Alchemist, Gospel, Lavender, and Where's Daddy, all tested and perfected in the Palestinian Laboratory and marketed as such. This book also places the current data-driven and AI-directed assault on Palestine in the context of Postmodern War, which precludes military victories and enshrines the profits and power of the U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex in a system of perpetual war and militarized technological innovation. Through an analysis of Israeli military policies, AI, sacred texts, and the basic tenets of postmodern war, the book ultimately reveals the limits of the IDF's embrace of illusions about new technologies producing actual victory. War today is about winning hearts and minds, not body counts. As fundamentalist politics achieve more and more power around the world in the context of new information technologies, there is growing danger to the future of all of us.

Chris Hables Gray studies the social and political implications of technoscience. Author of 102 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and Postmodern War (1997), Cyborg Citizen (2001), Peace War and Computers (2005) and Virus is a Language: AI, QAnon, COVID-19 and the New Abnormal (2025). Lead editor of The Cyborg Handbook (1995) and Modified: Living as a Cyborg (2021). He teaches at the University of California at Santa Cruz, gardens and longs for a cat.