A mother bids farewell to the body of her child who was killed in the aftermath of overnight Israeli bombardment in al-Maghazi in the central Gaza Strip, at the morgue of the Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah. (Photo by AFP)
New York, November 22 (RHC)-- Israel has been employing an artificial intelligence firing system jointly manufactured by an Indian arms company during its ongoing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to a report. Citing documents and news reports, the Middle East Eye (MEE) news portal reported on Wednesday that the occupation forces have been using the Arbel system since the beginning of the Israeli regime’s bloody war on Gaza.
Arbel was unveiled at a defense expo in Gandhinagar in the Indian state of Gujarat in October 2022 as a co-venture between Israeli Weapons Industries (IWI) company and India’s Adani Defense & Aerospace. At the time, several Indian media described it as “India’s first AI-based firing system.”
In April 2024, IWI introduced Aber as a new “computerized small arms system,” saying it was designed to increase combat lethality.
Noah Sylvia, a research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said the Israeli military “has demonstrated a disregard for civilian life in Gaza to the point of routinely targeting children with small arms, meaning that Arbel could easily be used to make the killing of civilians, of children, more efficient.”
India, which is the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons, has in recent years become a major co-producer of Israeli weapons.
Indian human rights activists and scholars have raised concerns about India’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes given the huge death toll in Gaza.
In September, however, India’s top court dismissed a petition seeking to suspend the country’s military exports to Israel.
Marwa Fatafta, Middle East policy and advocacy director for Access Now, warned that Israel’s partnering with India, may provide “a new and terrifying blueprint for tech-enabled warfare... this time through Indian-Israel military tech.” “Rarely does a technology stay dormant in one location,” Fatafta added. “The lawlessness and impunity in which Israel commits egregious crimes with the use of AI should terrify everyone.”
Israel unleashed its bloody Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023, after the Hamas resistance group carried out its historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
The Tel Aviv regime has so far killed at least 43,985 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 104,092 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel faces an ongoing South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).