Latest news with #Avital
The Guardian
16-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘This is not our first rodeo': Israelis remain stoic amid Iran strikes
The Iranian missile blew the door off the White City museum celebrating Bauhaus Tel Aviv, and shattered the windows of the Quick coffee shop down the road, where cinnamon buns and salads sat in the display case ready for a relaxed summer day that would never come. In the ultra-orthodox neighbourhood of Bnei Bark another missile collapsed a school, killing an 80-year-old man. A third hit partway up a high-rise tower in manicured, suburban Petah Tikva, destroying a reinforced safe room and killing the family inside. Destruction landed randomly across Israel's biggest metropolitan area on Sunday, the third night of Iranian missile attacks, crossing social, economic and religious divides to kill eight people, injure more than 100 and leave many more homeless. After Israel launched the war with attacks on Iranian military commanders and the assassinations of top nuclear scientists early on Friday morning, Iran vowed revenge. Since then more than 20 missiles have evaded sophisticated defences to cause devastation unprecedented in contemporary Israel. While some appear to have targeted strategic sites, many have landed in residential areas far from known military installations. They have brought down apartment blocks and a school, and damaged synagogues, museums, shops and cafes. Entire buildings have collapsed at the worst-hit sites, with severe damage over a radius of hundreds of metres. 'I'm so tired, now I just want to leave,' said Avital, 72, on Monday morning. She was sitting outside the tower in Petah Tikva that had been home for more than a decade, waiting for rescue workers to bring down her clothes and medicine from their 14th storey apartment. 'My husband wanted to go out for a bit on Sunday, but I said: 'No, let's stay here where its safe.' Well, what kind of safety was that?' Their home looks out on the strike site, a gaping hole in the neighbouring block, where four people were killed. Avital is now moving to a hotel to wait for news on whether their building can be repaired, and hopes that the war will end soon. 'This is our country; we don't have anywhere else to go'. At the start of the war, the government urged people to shelter in communal shelters or individual safe rooms – a legal requirement in all new builds in recent years – when the air raid sirens sound. A sophisticated multi-layer warning system puts Israelis on notice to stay by a 'protected area' when imminent attacks are expected, and usually gives an early alert 10 minutes or more before the missile is expected to land. But in Petah Tikva, one safe room was taken out by a direct hit, leaving the government scrambling to reassure people that this was extremely rare, fearing they might shift to sheltering in basements or stairwells instead. Those leave people vulnerable in other ways. Some have been killed by collapsing buildings, blast waves from the explosion, or smoke inhalation from fires sparked by the impact. A quarter of Israelis do not have the option of safe rooms, state ombudsman Matanyahu Englman admitted on a visit to Bat Yam, where another missile took down part of a high rise, and left buildings unsafe for several blocks around. 'This is quite a large proportion of the population,' he said. 'We have found some deficiencies and raised recommendation for the government to do more. Beside fighting enemies outside the country we have to take care of civilians. The area hit in central Tel Aviv is one of them, a district mostly made up of historic low-rise buildings from the 1930s. Few have safe rooms. Liad Scharf, 48, was sheltering in his basement when the missile hit, sending chunks of plaster showering down, and cracks through the walls of his bedroom upstairs. He is worried that the war will stop his daughters coming to visit over the summer, but the damage at home is 'just money'. The apartment can be patched up, said Scharf, who backs the government's decision to attack Iran, despite the heavy personal and national price. Israel has endured multiple wars, and is surrounded by enemies who will destroy it if the country doesn't fight, he said. 'This is not our first rodeo. Or our second, or our third or our fourth,' he said. 'We are strong, and we have to do what's necessary.' Death tolls in both Tehran and Israel are likely to mount. Military officials have admitted that the scale of Iran's nightly barrages, with dozens of missiles sent in multiple waves, means that even its sophisticated air defence systems cannot stop all the warheads. At the start of the war Israel estimated Iran had about 2,000 missiles. Many have been destroyed, and nearly 300 fired at Israel, but it is still thought to have an arsenal on a scale that dwarfs previous threats to the country. Rockets from Hezbollah or Hamas are mostly blocked by the Iron Dome defence system and the few that do land cannot rip apart whole blocks. Yemen's Houthis and Iraq, in the years under dictator Saddam Hussein, have also fired ballistic missiles at Israel, but they each deployed a few dozen warheads in total. Analysts also warn that Israel's stockpiles of expensive air defence missiles are not unlimited, and while inventories are a closely guarded military secret, if they are depleted too fast it could make the country even more vulnerable. There is also likely to be economic pain from the war. The economy is partially shut down, with large gatherings of people banned, many businesses closed, and all flights cancelled, making it hard to enter or leave the country. But for now a large portion of the country see the losses of lives, homes, earnings and much else, as a painful but necessary sacrifice for the country's future. 'The diplomatic solutions were not working out,' said real estate agent Ofek, 24, who had come to check on his grandfather, who lives just a couple of blocks from the Bat Yam site. 'I guess this is the price we have to pay to be safe.'
The Independent
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Creator of ‘Gaza Riveria' AI video shared by Trump speaks out
The creator of a bizarre AI-generated video showing Donald Trump's vision Gaza Strip has spoken out, saying the clip was intended as satire. Last week, the US president took to his social media platform Truth Social to share the 35-second clip, that includes Mr Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sipping cocktails and lounging topless beside a pool. The video begins with masked, gun-wielding men and small children picking through rubble in the city's ruins, before ' Gaza 2025' and 'What's Next?' appear on the screen in bold, red, white and blue letters. 'Donald's coming to set you free, bringing the life for all to see, no more tunnels, no more fear, Trump Gaza is finally here,' blares the backing track over the montage of the newly-regenerated Gaza. Solo Avital, a US-based filmmaker and artist, said he made this video while experimenting with AI software in early February, and he was 'surprised' when the clip went viral. 'We are storytellers, we're not provocateurs, we sometimes do satire pieces such as this one was supposed to be,' he told the Guardian. 'This is the duality of the satire: it depends what context you bring to it to make the punchline or the joke. Here there was no context and it was posted without our consent or knowledge.' Mr Avital, an Israeli-born US citizen, said he was trying out the Arcana AI platform, and decided to create 'satire about this megalomaniac idea about putting statues [in Gaza]' to see what the tool could do. His business partner, Ariel Vromen, then posted it on his Instagram page before Mr Avital convinced him to take it down because 'it might be a little insensitive and we don't want to take sides'. He denies sharing the video with the president. The AI-generated clip emerged shortly after the US president unveiled his property development plan for Gaza, under which he said he wants to 'clean out' the population of about 2 million people to create the 'Riviera of the Middle East'. Elsewhere in the video, streets are lined with golden Trump statues and stores selling busts of his head – including a clip of a child holding a giant, golden Trump balloon. The words 'Trump Gaza' appear everywhere around the region, inscribed on signs and buildings. Then, a group of bearded, long-haired belly dancers perform on the beach. Trump, who is wearing a full suit, is then seen dancing with – and ogling at – another belly dancer inside a hall. Trump and Netanyahu sunbathe beside the pool wearing only a small pair of trunks and sipping on cocktails, surrounded by lavish apartment blocks.
The Guardian
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Trump Gaza' AI video intended as political satire, says creator
The creator of the viral 'Trump Gaza' AI-generated video depicting the Gaza Strip as a Dubai-style paradise has said it was intended as a political satire of Trump's 'megalomaniac idea'. The video – posted by Trump on his Truth Social account last week – depicts a family emerging from the wreckage of war-torn Gaza into a beachside resort town lined with skyscrapers. Trump is seen sipping cocktails with a topless Benjamin Netanyahu on sun loungers, while Elon Musk tears flatbread into dips. The video first emerged in February, shortly after Trump unveiled his property development plan for Gaza, under which he said he wants to 'clean out' the population of about 2 million people to create the 'Riviera of the Middle East'. Trump then posted the clip without any explanation on his Truth Social platform on 26 February. Solo Avital, an LA-based film-maker, said he created the video in less than eight hours while experimenting with AI tools in early February, and that its spread had 'surprised the hell out of me'. 'We are storytellers, we're not provocateurs, we sometimes do satire pieces such as this one was supposed to be. This is the duality of the satire: it depends what context you bring to it to make the punchline or the joke. Here there was no context and it was posted without our consent or knowledge,' he added. Avital, who is a US citizen born in Israel, and his business partner, Ariel Vromen – director of the 2012 film The Iceman, starring Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder and Chris Evans – run EyeMix, a visuals company where they produce documentaries and commercials. Avital said he was experimenting with the Arcana AI platform, and decided to create 'satire about this megalomaniac idea about putting statues [in Gaza]' to see what the tool could do. He had shared the video clip with friends, while his business partner posted it on his popular Instagram for a few hours, before Avital encouraged him to take it down on the grounds 'it might be a little insensitive and we don't want to take sides'. The pair shared an early version with Mel Gibson, who Trump named as a special ambassador to Hollywood in January and who has previously collaborated with EyeMix and Arcana. Gibson told them he shared another video about the LA fires with people close to Trump, but denied sharing the Gaza video with the president, the creators said. The first Avital knew that the video had reached a wider audience was when he awoke to thousands of messages on his phone, as friends alerted him to Trump's post. Avital said he was surprised by some of the reactions to the video. 'If it was the skit for Saturday Night Live the whole perception of this in the media would be the opposite – look how wild this president is and his ideas, everyone would think it's a joke.' He said the experience had reinforced for him 'how fake news spreads when every network takes what they want and shoves it down their viewers with their narratives attached'. He hoped this experience would 'spark a public debate about rights and wrongs' of generative AI, including what the rights of creators are. However, as a creative industries professional, he said he generally welcomed AI, saying it is 'the best thing that's happened to creativity by a long shot. Everyone who thinks it will kill creativity, we're proof to the contrary. This film wouldn't have been created without human intervention.' Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specialises in identifying deepfakes, said this was 'not the first time and won't be the last time' that AI-generated clips about news events would go viral. He noted there had been a flurry of content created around the LA wildfires, including a video of a burnt Oscars trophy. He said Avital's experience should make people realise 'there's no such thing as 'I just shared with a friend'. You make something, assume you don't have control.' He added the fact the video was intended as political satire but repurposed as 'very compelling, visceral' propaganda by Trump highlighted the risk of AI-generated video. 'It allows individuals without a lot of time, money and, frankly, skill you would normally need, to generate some pretty eye-popping content. That is really cool, you can't argue,' he said. But there is a dark side to this new capability: 'This tech is being used to create child sexual abuse material, non-consensual intimate imagery, hoaxes, conspiracies, lies that are dangerous to democracies.' Although this video is obviously computer-generated, since videos are typically not hyper-realistic, he warned: 'it's coming'. 'What happens when you get to a point where every video, audio, everything you read and see online can be fake? Where's our shared sense of reality?' He believes AI platforms have a responsibility to 'put guardrails' on this technology, to prevent it from being misused. 'Lots are following this model of 'move fast and break things', and they're breaking things again. We could forgive this mindset at the dawn of the modern internet, nobody is looking at this thinking we need more of this, more Elon Musk, more Mark Zuckerberg.'
Washington Post
15-02-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
IF IF IF American hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen freed during Israel-Hamas ceasefire
Sagui Dekel-Chen, an American Israeli dual national abducted by Hamas in Israel during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, was released on Saturday as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal, bringing to an end his 16 months in captivity. Dekel-Chen, 36, is a father of three but has not met his youngest, as he was kidnapped when his wife was pregnant. His release follows a tense week during which Hamas said it would delay freeing hostages in response to alleged Israeli violations of the ceasefire and later reversed course. Saturday's release also included Sasha Alexander Troufanov, 29, who holds Russian and Israeli citizenship; and Iair Horn, 46, who was born in Argentina. They were set to be exchanged for 369 Palestinian prisoners and detainees being held by Israel, according to the Hamas-run Prisoners Media Office. Israel did not immediately confirm. The agreement between Israel and Hamas, which began Jan. 19, involves a 42-day ceasefire in the first phase, during which 33 hostages, most of whom are presumed to be alive, are being released. Another American, Keith Siegel, 65, was freed Feb. 1, and there is now one remaining U.S. citizen held hostage, Edan Alexander, who was serving in the Israeli military and is not planned to be released in the first phase. On the morning of his abduction, Dekel-Chen, a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz, was at his workshop where he was working to convert a bus into a mobile classroom. His wife, Avital, who was then seven months pregnant, and their two young daughters survived by hiding in a safe room for nine harrowing hours. His family was informed by hostages released in November 2023 that he was alive in Gaza but wounded. Avital gave birth to their third daughter two months after his kidnapping. She named the baby Shachar, which means dawn in Hebrew. Dekel-Chen's father, Jonathan, originally from Connecticut, immigrated to Israel in the 1980s. Dekel-Chen spent four years in the United States, where he discovered a love of baseball, and later played on Israel's junior national team. In an interview with Slate in 2023, his father said that Dekel-Chen loved life on Nir Oz and 'grew up in the agricultural machine shop, as my tagalong in the fields, supervising and servicing machinery.' As an adult, he developed a passion for repurposing old buses into new spaces, including a mobile home and a grocery store. Avital, whom he met as a teenager, sometimes jokingly asked if he loved his buses more than her. Speaking to the Times newspaper last month, his father stressed, 'There's no way for us to know if he's even aware that his wife and two, now three, daughters survived the massacre at Nir Oz,' adding, 'I think that alone must be torture.' Sharing a poignant reflection on Instagram last year, Avital wrote that she sometimes doesn't recognize her own life when scrolling through photos on her phone. 'In all this chaos, I just want to see one thing,' she wrote, addressing Sagui: 'Your face.' Karen DeYoung and Ellie Silverman contributed to this report.
Washington Post
15-02-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Hamas to release three hostages, including an American citizen
JAFFA, Israel — Hamas on Saturday said it would hand over three hostages, among them an American citizen, and Israel is expected to release 369 Palestinian prisoners, in a highly scrutinized sixth exchange days after the tenuous one-month ceasefire appeared on the brink of collapse. Israeli American Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, Russian Israeli Sasha Alexander Troufanov, 29, and Iair Horn, 46, who was born in Argentina, were expected to be released into International Red Cross custody Saturday morning from Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. In previous weeks, Hamas militants have paraded hostages onto a stage, where they were forced to pose for photos before being led through a large crowd of civilians and armed Hamas fighters from the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades. A sign on the stage Saturday draped in Palestinian and Hamas flags read 'No migration except to Jerusalem' in an apparent rebuttal to President Trump's plan to resettle Palestinians from Gaza. The three men are residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz, where they were taken by Hamas fighters during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel and will reunite with their family and undergo medical care after returning to Israel. Previously released hostages said their captors subjected them to physical and psychological torture. Dekel-Chen was at work at the Kibbutz's machine shop, where he converted airport buses into mobile classrooms, when the Hamas-led assault began, according to his family. His wife, Avital, and their two young daughters survived by hiding in their home's safe room. Avital was pregnant at the time and gave birth to their third daughter two months later. Horn, who organized Kibbutz parties and managed the community's pub, was kidnapped alongside his brother Eitan, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. Troufanov was taken hostage along with his mother, grandmother and girlfriend, who were released during a brief humanitarian pause and prisoner exchange in November 2023. Gunmen killed his father during the attack. Some 1200 Israelis were killed and 250 others taken hostage during the surprise Hamas attack. Israel in response vowed to eliminate Hamas and launched a withering war that's killed more than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza and decimated the coastal enclave. As part of the three-phase ceasefire that began Jan. 19, Hamas agreed to initially release 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for a temporary halt in fighting in Gaza, release of Palestinian prisoners and surge in humanitarian aid to the Strip. The remainder of the more than 50 hostages, both dead and alive, are to be released during the deal's second phase. The deal, however, does not put an end to the fighting and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not ruled out a return to war. The shaky ceasefire has hit repeated bumps, perhaps the most serious on Tuesday when Hamas said it would delay hostage releases over Israel blocking the entry of tents, heavy machinery and medical supplies, among other alleged ceasefire violations. President Donald Trump warned 'all hell is going to break out' if hostages were not released and Netanyahu threatened to end the ceasefire before mediators intervened and Hamas on Thursday reversed course. As the ceasefire agreement teetered, Trump's proposal to take 'ownership' over Gaza, develop the Strip and permanently remove its 2.2 million residents continued to spark outrage and condemnation across the Arab world. He told Fox News on Monday that Palestinians from Gaza would not have the right to return, eliciting fear and frustration among the war-traumatized population, who still face compounding humanitarian crises weeks into the ceasefire and aid surge. In Israel, the gaunt and pale appearance of three Israeli hostages released last week raised fears over the conditions of those still in captivity. 'We are afraid to see what will be be,' Maayan Arbel, 46, told The Washington Post of the remaining hostages as she held a poster of Dekel-Chen in Tel Aviv's Hostage Square. Previous handovers have turned chaotic when crowds jostled for glimpses of the hostages and prompted fears in Israel over their safety. In one exchange in late January, Netanyahu briefly delayed the release of Palestinian prisoners in protest, underscoring the high stakes at each step of the ceasefire. In total, Hamas has released 21 hostages as part off the ceasefire, 5 of whom are Thai citizens kidnapped while working in Israeli fields. Securing the release of U.S. citizens held in Gaza has been a top Trump priority, as it was for former president Joe Biden. In the fourth exchange, on Feb. 1, Hamas released U.S. citizen Keith Siegel, who was taken hostage from his home on Kibbutz Kfar Azan on Oct. 7, 2023. Another U.S. citizen held captive, Edan Alexander, 21, from New Jersey, was serving in the Israeli military and is expected to be released in the ceasefire's second phase along with other Israeli soldiers. Hamas is believed to be holding the bodies of four more U.S. citizens killed in the Oct. 7 attack. Four other Americans taken hostage by Hamas were released in November of 2023. Following Saturday's releases in Gaza, Israel is set to release 369 Palestinians, among them 333 who were detained from Gaza since the war began, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Prisoners Society. The rest of those slated for release are from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, 24 of whom will be exiled and sent to Egypt, according to the society. Israel did not immediately disclose how many Palestinians would be released. More than 730 Palestinians, among them more than 200 Palestinians detained in Gaza, have been released so far in the deal. Prison conditions for Palestinians have severely worsened since Oct. 7, and released detainees say they have been subject to physical and psychological abuse and torture. As the skies have quieted over Gaza, however, tensions are rising in the West Bank where Israeli settler violence has spiked. On Jan. 21, Israel launched its longest-lasting raid in the occupied territory in two decades and has detained at least 380 Palestinians during raids on northern West Bank cities, villages and refugee camps, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society. Israel Defense Forces says it is targeting militants in places such as Jenin, Tubas and Tulkarm. Residents and rights groups say civilians have been killed or arrested in the raids and infrastructure torn up. Israeli forces have killed 44 people and more than 40,000 people have been displaced by Israeli military operations in just over three weeks, according to OCHA, the U.N. humanitarian agency. Israeli authorities have also raided the homes of families of prisoners slated for release and warned them against holding celebrations. Heidi Levine contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
