The great science fiction fear has always been of AI escaping human control and the machines taking over, as in The Matrix films. The story of Lavender suggests, on the contrary, that the real danger arises when the awesome data-crunching capacities of AI are put in the hands of human beings. Derek Sayer on Israel’s human targeting software and the banality of evil.

Even if Hamas did commit every one of the atrocities of which it has been accused, this would not justify Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza, either morally or in international law. The comparison that needs to be made by the international community is rather with the infinitely greater horrors Israel has inflicted on Gaza since October 7.

The saying that “justice delayed is justice denied” has a parallel for news media and war—journalism delayed is journalism denied. The refusal of the Times to cover the story after it broke was journalistic malpractice, helping to make it little more than a fleeting one-day story instead of the subject of focused national discourse that it should have been.

As important as it is to bring an immediate end to the slaughter in Gaza, writes Sid Shnaid, the long-term solution to the ongoing crisis in Israel-Palestine requires that we address the root of the problem: the institutionalization of Jewish supremacy, based in Zionist ideology, upon which the state of Israel has been built.

Last week, Variety reported that “more than 1,000 Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals have signed an open letter denouncing Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest Oscar speech.” The angry letter is a tight script for a real-life drama of defending Israel as it continues to methodically kill civilians no less precious than the signers’ own loved ones.

The impending famine in Gaza is the result of deliberate, conscious, informed choices, and nobody in the Israeli or American governments can be in any doubt as to where they are leading. As Derek Sayer writes, we are on the threshold of a ‘final solution’ to the Palestinian problem. Ladies and gentlemen, this way for your ambient genocide.

On March 18, the House of Commons passed an opposition day motion put forward by NDP MP Heather McPherson. It called for a reconsideration of Canadian policy toward securing Middle East peace in the midst of Israel’s onslaught in the Gaza Strip. The initial NDP proposal was significantly stronger than the final version—though not nearly as strong as it should have been.

Bob Rae recently stated that “the ultimate responsibility for the conduct of the [Gaza] war lies with the parties who are fighting.” In so doing, Rae, a former Rhodes scholar, ignores the United States’ pivotal role in providing Israel with weapons, money and diplomatic support. Of course, Rae’s official rhetoric must reflect Canada’s deference to US Middle East policy.

If Netanyahu is facing his Rubicon, the West has finally arrived at its own moral crossroads. After months of uncritical support for Israel’s assault on Gaza and weeks of equivocation as the magnitude of its inhumanity has become undeniable, there is still time to draw back from the abyss and defend the post-war order whose highest legal authority is the ICJ.

In its current war against the people of Gaza, the Israeli government has chosen to weaponize the issue of sexual violence for political gain. This statement will be delivered to Israeli officials who have mounted a public crusade manipulating this issue to both legitimize—and divert attention from—their campaign of ethnic cleansing.