Summary
Miriyam Aouragh’s term (Aouragh, 2015, as cited) for the material side of Israel’s digital occupation — the warfare, surveillance and destruction directed at Palestinian communications and Internet infrastructure — as against the immaterial side, Hasbara 2.0 (Aouragh, 2016, as cited) (For Palestine — Essays from the Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture Group, PDF p.234-237).
Details
- Cybercide is “intimately embedded in military procedures”: the ICT sector is part of the military-industrial complex; it was first clearly seen in the July 2006 war on Lebanon, was stronger in Operation Cast Lead, and reached a tipping point in the storming of the Mavi Marmara on 31 May 2010, when laptops and phones were confiscated and cellular and radio communication blocked (PDF p.235-236).
- Its practices include jamming and hacking telephones, Internet and broadcast signals, severing Gaza’s north-south landline, digging up cables, bombing broadcasting stations, raiding offices (Stop the Wall, 2012; Addameer) and confiscating computers, and using confiscated personal communications to blackmail Palestinians into collaboration (PDF p.236-237).
- Aouragh situates it in “cyber-colonialism”: a double-layered mechanism of overt and covert, latent and manifest control, ending in “a politics of controlling, altering, and deleting” (PDF p.237).
Related pages
For Palestine — Essays from the Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture Group, Miriyam Aouragh, Hasbara, Settler Colonialism, Addameer