Latest news with #Negev
National Post
2 days ago
- General
- National Post
Ronen Itsik: Israel's strategy of conquering Gaza to destroy Hamas is the right one
While Israel has been facing intense international opposition to its latest assault on the Gaza Strip, which involves conquering and holding territory to prevent Hamas from moving back into areas previously cleared of terrorists by the Israel Defence Forces, there is little question that this is the only way for Israel to achieve its goal of completely eradicating Hamas as a governing entity. Article content Article content Article content 'Gideon's Chariots,' the last stage in the Israel-Hamas war, is a military operation aimed at tightening the siege on Hamas in Gaza, in order to increase pressure on the group to release the Israeli hostages it holds, neutralize its dictatorial control over the Gaza Strip and prevent it from rebuilding and rearming. Article content Article content Since the commencement of the Israel-Hamas war and the broader Middle East conflict on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has been facing multiple existential threats. The initial and most acute of these was the infiltration of thousands of Hamas terrorists into the western Negev desert in southern Israel, resulting in the tragic deaths of 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the abduction of more than 250 individuals, including women, children and the elderly. Article content The immediate focus of Israel's military campaign was the degradation of the operational capabilities of Hamas's military wing. This organization posed a significant threat to southern Israel, possessing tens of thousands of fighters and the capacity to launch tens of thousands of rockets toward Israel. Hamas was a deeply entrenched adversary, fortified within an extensive tunnel network equipped with command-and-control structures, and was more than willing to target soldiers and civilians alike. Article content Article content Israel was therefore compelled to tackle this threat through intensive combat operations, all while navigating the complexities of a densely populated urban environment. Furthermore, Israel had to take steps to minimize harm caused to the hostages being held by Hamas, the majority of whom were believed to be concealed underground in potentially booby-trapped locations and subjected to inhumane conditions. Article content Article content Concurrently, Israel was required to concentrate substantial forces on its northern border, particularly with Lebanon. There, Hezbollah, a terrorist group aligned with Iran, was preparing to raid communities in northern Israel, boasting thousands of commando fighters and the capability to launch thousands of rockets, all with Iranian blessing, funding and know-how.
Irish Times
25-05-2025
- General
- Irish Times
‘We are part of this land' - Thousands of Israel's Bedouin face demolitions and evictions in the Negev desert
Freij Al-Hawashleh's Israeli ID lists his date of birth as 00.00.1939, because no one in his village of Ras Jrabah was sure what month he was born. But he knows the spot, by a large tree in the dusty Negev desert, where he began life in a Bedouin tent: 'My grandfather was born here, I was born here. We are part of this land.' The state of Israel was established when Al-Hawashleh was about nine. Tens of thousands of Bedouin were forced from the desert in 1948 or fled elsewhere in the region; those who remained were later granted Israeli citizenship and became part of Israel's Arab minority. Al-Hawashleh describes meeting Jewish Israelis who arrived in caravans at Ras Jrabah for the first time: 'We gave them water and milk.' Ras Jrabah lies on the outskirts of Dimona, a predominantly Jewish Israeli town built on the ancestral land of Al-Hawashleh's tribe. For two decades, he worked as a gardener for the municipality, maintaining the manicured parks and playgrounds that exist for both children and dogs in Dimona. READ MORE On the drive from Dimona to Ras Jrabah, the tarmac road turns to a dirt track that passes by a single toilet cubicle standing on the shrub land and rubber tubes snaking across the open ground carrying a rudimentary water supply to the Bedouin village. A tin-roofed mosque and a large concrete tube that has served as an inadequate, makeshift bomb shelter for lethal rockets falling in the Negev during the Israel-Hamas war mark the entrance to Ras Jrabah. Freij Al Hawashleh, a Bedouin elder in the village of Ras Jrabah in the Negev desert, southern Israel. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy About a third of the 310,000 Bedouin community in the Negev live in Bedouin villages like Ras Jrabah that are not legally recognised by the Israeli government. As a result, these communities are denied access to basic infrastructure including state electricity and sewage systems, as well as schools and medical clinics, while facing regular eviction and demolition orders for construction deemed illegal under Israel's planning laws – even if the construction predates the relevant law. Eleven unrecognised villages with 6,500 Bedouin are now fighting eviction orders in Israeli courts, while facing the highest rates of poverty in Israel – which have worsened amid the economic fallout of the war in Gaza. [ Israel's nomadic Bedouins at odds with modernised state Opens in new window ] Since 2019, the Ras Jrabah community – half of whose members are children – has been facing the threat of eviction after the Israel Land Authority filed 10 lawsuits accusing the Bedouin villagers of living illegally on state land zoned for the expansion of Dimona, a bastion of support for the right-wing Likud party led by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The community has been told it must move to one of the Bedouin villages recognised by the Israeli state in the 2000s. 'The government says we have to move to Qasr al-Sir,' says Al-Hawashleh, who believes there will be tension and possible violence if his tribe and the two other tribes living in Ras Jrabah move to land already occupied by the other Bedouin tribes in Qasr al-Sir. 'They want us to be at war with other tribes.' Freij Al Hawashleh: 'My grandfather was born here, I was born here. We are part of this land.' Photograph: Hannah McCarthy The rapid, state-driven urbanisation of Bedouin tribes after centuries of nomadic living has fractured long-standing familial structures and separated communities from the land and animals that formed the backbone of the Bedouin livelihood and culture. The seven Bedouin townships the Israeli state established in the 1960s have become ghettos where Bedouin live on the periphery of Israeli society, with few economic opportunities and high rates of crime. A handful of Bedouin villages were recently recognised , but Marwan Abu Frieh, a lawyer with Adalah, a Palestinian human rights centre in Israel, says: 'There is very little difference in practice between the infrastructure and services in recognised and unrecognised Bedouin villages.' [ Ireland condemns Israeli destruction of Bedouin homes in West Bank Opens in new window ] Born in an unrecognised Bedouin village since demolished, and now living in Rahat, the largest Bedouin town, Frieh says successive Israeli governments have concentrated Bedouin people into small, urban areas while building on Bedouin land, citing examples of Jewish Israeli towns, forests and military firing zones that have been built on Bedouin land – 'we've lost almost all of our lands'. Ras Jrabah residents are willing to become part of Dimona if a section of the new neighbourhood includes housing for them, as well as an agricultural zone for their livestock to graze on. 'We have lived here for years, and receive all of our services from the Dimona municipality,' says Al-Hawashleh. 'Our life is here.' Adalah and the NGO Bimkom submitted an alternative plan to the planning authority that outlined how the integration of 90 families from Ras Jrabah into Dimona could be achieved without obstructing or fundamentally altering the expansion plan for the Israeli town – which will double in size. The Ras Jrabah community is awaiting a decision from Israel's supreme court after Adalah appealed its eviction and the requirement to pay the state's legal expenses. Adalah lawyer Myssana Morany argued in March that the plan to evict residents of Ras Jrabah and expand the town of Dimona for other residents was 'clearly segregationist', citing numerous international human rights conventions that prohibit segregation and the forced displacement of populations, particularly indigenous peoples. One of the main roundabouts in Dimona features a display depicting a Bedouin with three camels. Israel refuses to classify camels as 'farm animals', preventing Bedouin herders from enjoying grazing rights in the Naqab desert region. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy Dolev Arad, the chief of staff at the Bedouin Authority, the official agency for the development and settlement of the Bedouin in the Negev, which lacks popular support from Bedouin communities, said: 'We do not prevent anyone from living in Dimona, Beersheba or anywhere else they choose.' But without a section specifically zoned for Bedouin, housing in Dimona is unaffordable for impoverished Ras Jrabah villagers and ill-suited to their communal and agricultural lifestyle. Amos Sarig, a spokesman for Dimona municipality, rejected the claim that Ras Jrabah predated Dimona, and noted that the district court has ruled that the evidence demonstrated only that it had existed since 1978, despite aerial photographs filed in court demonstrating that the village was already there in 1956. Bedouin leaders say they often struggle to meet demands for proof of ownership because they have not historically kept physical records. Sarig says the Dimona municipality has asked for the supreme court appeal to be expedited 'because thousands of housing units need to be built there'. There was, however, low demand for Dimona – which is near a nuclear facility – when the government ran a national housing lottery in 2021, while newly constructed apartments have been slow to sell. Frieh is not optimistic about Ras Jrabah's chances of succeeding at the supreme court. 'You can postpone yes, but to win a case regarding land in Israel, they have maybe a 10 per cent chance [of winning],' he says. According to the far right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir , there was a 400 per cent increase in demolition orders carried out in the Negev in 2024, with many families dismantling their own homes to avoid onerous penalties if the Israeli authorities demolish them. 'People come to my office with more than $100,000 in fines,' says Frieh. [ Defiance in Bedouin hamlet as Israel prepares to demolish it Opens in new window ] Not far from Ras Jrabah is what remains of another unrecognised Bedouin village that was once home to 70 families. Wadi al-Khalil was razed in May 2024 in the presence of hundreds of Israeli security personnel on t he pretext of expanding the highway that runs by the Bedouin community. Wadi al-Khalil was razed in May 2024 in the presence of hundreds of Israeli security personnel on the pretext of expanding the highway that runs by the Bedouin community. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy Piles of rubble and household debris – with a handful of tents for Bedouin families with nowhere else to go – are all that's left. 'Many of them lost everything,' says Frieh.
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Most AI chatbots easily tricked into giving dangerous responses, study finds
Hacked AI-powered chatbots threaten to make dangerous knowledge readily available by churning out illicit information the programs absorb during training, researchers say. The warning comes amid a disturbing trend for chatbots that have been 'jailbroken' to circumvent their built-in safety controls. The restrictions are supposed to prevent the programs from providing harmful, biased or inappropriate responses to users' questions. The engines that power chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude – large language models (LLMs) – are fed vast amounts of material from the internet. Despite efforts to strip harmful text from the training data, LLMs can still absorb information about illegal activities such as hacking, money laundering, insider trading and bomb-making. The security controls are designed to stop them using that information in their responses. In a report on the threat, the researchers conclude that it is easy to trick most AI-driven chatbots into generating harmful and illegal information, showing that the risk is 'immediate, tangible and deeply concerning'. 'What was once restricted to state actors or organised crime groups may soon be in the hands of anyone with a laptop or even a mobile phone,' the authors warn. The research, led by Prof Lior Rokach and Dr Michael Fire at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, identified a growing threat from 'dark LLMs', AI models that are either deliberately designed without safety controls or modified through jailbreaks. Some are openly advertised online as having 'no ethical guardrails' and being willing to assist with illegal activities such as cybercrime and fraud. Jailbreaking tends to use carefully crafted prompts to trick chatbots into generating responses that are normally prohibited. They work by exploiting the tension between the program's primary goal to follow the user's instructions, and its secondary goal to avoid generating harmful, biased, unethical or illegal answers. The prompts tend to create scenarios in which the program prioritises helpfulness over its safety constraints. To demonstrate the problem, the researchers developed a universal jailbreak that compromised multiple leading chatbots, enabling them to answer questions that should normally be refused. Once compromised, the LLMs consistently generated responses to almost any query, the report states. 'It was shocking to see what this system of knowledge consists of,' Fire said. Examples included how to hack computer networks or make drugs, and step-by-step instructions for other criminal activities. 'What sets this threat apart from previous technological risks is its unprecedented combination of accessibility, scalability and adaptability,' Rokach added. The researchers contacted leading providers of LLMs to alert them to the universal jailbreak but said the response was 'underwhelming'. Several companies failed to respond, while others said jailbreak attacks fell outside the scope of bounty programs, which reward ethical hackers for flagging software vulnerabilities. The report says tech firms should screen training data more carefully, add robust firewalls to block risky queries and responses and develop 'machine unlearning' techniques, so chatbots can 'forget' any illicit information they absorb. Dark LLMs should be seen as 'serious security risks', comparable to unlicensed weapons and explosives, with providers being held accountable, it adds. Dr Ihsen Alouani, who works on AI security at Queen's University Belfast, said jailbreak attacks on LLMs could pose real risks, from providing detailed instructions on weapon-making to convincing disinformation or social engineering and automated scams 'with alarming sophistication'. 'A key part of the solution is for companies to invest more seriously in red teaming and model-level robustness techniques, rather than relying solely on front-end safeguards. We also need clearer standards and independent oversight to keep pace with the evolving threat landscape,' he said. Prof Peter Garraghan, an AI security expert at Lancaster University, said: 'Organisations must treat LLMs like any other critical software component – one that requires rigorous security testing, continuous red teaming and contextual threat modelling. 'Yes, jailbreaks are a concern, but without understanding the full AI stack, accountability will remain superficial. Real security demands not just responsible disclosure, but responsible design and deployment practices,' he added. OpenAI, the firm that built ChatGPT, said its latest o1 model can reason about the firm's safety policies, which improves its resilience to jailbreaks. The company added that it was always investigating ways to make the programs more robust. Meta, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic, have been approached for comment. Microsoft responded with a link to a blog on its work to safeguard against jailbreaks.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
1,600-year-old African ebony figurines found in Christian necropolis in Israel
Archaeologists have uncovered two ebony figurines in a Christian necropolis south of Tel Malhata settlement, suggesting the presence of possibly Ethiopian members of that community. Between July 2016 and May 2017, two salvage excavations at a future military base unearthed two burials out of 155 tombs with signs of African ownership. Researchers described the bone figurines as rare. However, the black wood carvings were unique. Authors of the new study published in IAA's journal Atiqot called the two ebony figurines 'the most interesting finds' in their excavation. Whoever carved them used a species of tree from Sri Lanka and southern India, highlighting a trade network. The study presents an early Christian enclave and an African family, most likely, that called the Negev desert home. In two neighboring graves, archaeologists unearthed two ebony pendants, suggesting a familial connection between the deceased. Two female heads carved in bone and ebony were buried with a young woman who died between 20 and 30 years old. Inside the tomb of a young child aged 6-8, most likely male, archaeologists found a male figurine. They suspect it was her boy. The holes punched in the artifacts indicate that they would have worn them. Tel Malhata in the Negev desert in Israel sat at a crossroads, hinting at why ebony or this woman might have appeared here in the first place. The Diospyros ebenum tree, native to Sri Lanka and Southern India, gained notoriety in the ancient world for its precious black wood used in luxury items. Traders transported the ebony to Egypt or the Horn of Africa by ship. From there, trade caravans brought it through the Negev, as a significant trade in that larger network route ran nearby Tel Malhata. Archaeologists couldn't confirm whether the faces were carved in Africa or Israel. However, the ebony would have traveled along these pathways, and they suspect that they represented ancestors, not deities, suggesting that they kept an older tradition even if they were Christian. Researchers attempted to analyze the skeletal remains without clear conclusions as to the relationship between the adult woman and the male child. Given the clear association between the male and female figurines, archaeologists concluded that they probably belonged to the same family. Under Justin I, the 6th century CE, Ethiopians were among the first Africans to convert to Christianity—the burials date between the sixth and seventh centuries. So archaeologists deduced that they were from this demographic, possibly settling in the Negev. Many Ethiopians lived in the Byzantine world, the study explained. However, in Israel, the presence of ebony figurines at Tel Malhata was a significant and surprising first. As no Jewish graves have yet been discovered, that would suggest the presence of a well-established Christian community with one African, most likely Ethiopian, family. The positioning of their bodies at an east-west orientation further confirmed their religious affiliation. Perhaps further tests will reveal more about the Ethiopian family that lived in the desert in a Christian community. Read the study in Atiqot.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
'Very rare' African ebony figurines found in 1,500-year-old Christian burials in Israeli desert
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Archaeologists in Israel have unearthed three 1,500-year-old Christian burials that contain very rare figurines crafted from ebony and bone and depict people from Africa. The figurines — which were likely worn as pendants — might depict these individuals' ancestors, researchers wrote in a new study, which was published in the most recent 2025 issue of the journal 'Atiqot. It's possible that the buried individuals or their ancestors were Africans who had converted to Christianity and then moved to the Negev, the researchers wrote. "The figurines show that a Christian community lived in the south of the country about 1,500 years ago, possibly with some of its members coming from Africa," the researchers said in a statement from the Israel Antiquities Authority. The three burials, which held the remains of two women and one child, were found within a cemetery near the archaeological site of Tel Malḥata in the northeastern Negev. The cemetery dates to the Roman-Byzantine period and has many cist, or stone-lined graves. Archaeologists have been excavating Tel Malḥata since the 1970s and have found artifacts showing that the site has been occupied off and one since the Middle Bronze Age (2000 to 1500 B.C.). During the early Roman period, the site had a fortress or fortified mansion, which later became "a central settlement and an administrative capital" during the Roman-Byzantine period, the researchers wrote in the study. Various papers have noted that the site sat on "an important trade crossroads through which passed luxury goods from Arabia and beyond," the team wrote in the study. Related: Ancient Egyptian queen's bracelets contain 1st evidence of long-distance trade between Egypt and Greece Trade likely brought the ebony to the individuals. Ebony is a black wood, which in this case came from the Ceylon ebony (Diospyros ebenum), a slow-growing tree from southern India and Sri Lanka. The Byzantine Empire began trading with India and Sri Lanka in the fourth century A.D., which provided the empire with plants, spices, cotton, silk and ebony, the researchers noted. The burials date from the sixth to seventh centuries A.D., a few centuries after this trade started. Of the five figurines analyzed, three are made from bone and two from ebony. While bone figurines were "common from the Neolithic period onward, and used in domestic rituals as well as in burials," the team wrote in the study that "ebony figurines are very rare." Even though the deceased were buried in Christian-style burials, "it is possible that the figures represent ancestors, and thus they reflect traditions passed down from generation to generation — even after the adoption of the Christian religion," the researchers said in the statement. One cist tomb held a woman who died between the ages of 18 and 21 and who had several grave goods: glass vessels, a bronze bracelet and a bone figurine depicting a woman, the researchers reported. Another cist tomb held a woman who may have been slightly older — she died between the ages of 20 and 30. She was buried with two alabaster jars and several grave goods, including one bone figurine showing the "upper part of a female body" and one ebony figurine that "depicts a very detailed face of a female, with typical African features," the researchers wrote in the study. RELATED STORIES —2,100-year-old farmstead in Israel found 'frozen in time' after owners disappeared —3-year-old picks up 'beautiful stone,' discovers 3,800-year-old scarab amulet in Israel —2,300-year-old grave in Israel contains remains of Greek courtesan who may have accompanied Alexander the Great's army The last cist tomb held the remains of a 6- to 8-year-old child who was buried with bronze jewelry and two figurines — one made of bone and one of ebony. The ebony pendant "shows a very detailed face and torso of a male figure, with typical African features," the researchers wrote in the study. "The figurine has long hair, and possibly represents an ancestor of the deceased." The ebony pendants in the woman's and child's graves are similar in size and style, which hints that they were related and were perhaps mother and child, the researchers said. "It is likely that a woman and a child who were buried side-by-side, and in whose graves two of the figurines were discovered, belonged to the same family — and perhaps they were even mother and son," the researchers said in the statement.
