No technology in service of apartheid and genocide

The Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona features the participation of numerous Israeli technology companies and the Israel Export & International Cooperation Institute, an organization supported by the government of Israel and its Ministry of Industry.

Digital technology is playing a significant and dangerous role in the genocide against the Palestinian people. As the Israeli occupation advances and the siege on the Palestinian population intensifies, the network of technologies, companies, and businesses that support and facilitate the massacre becomes increasingly evident.

Israel is using artificial intelligence technologies to develop indiscriminate attacks against the population and civilian homes and infrastructure, aiming to maximize human damage and destroy the fabric of life in Gaza. The use of artificial intelligence also seeks to mask the mass murder operation that the Israeli regime has turned the military operation on the Strip into. The development of these tools aims to bypass International Humanitarian Law and indicates an increase in the automation of mass killings in the future of warfare.

Israel uses military force and technology to maintain its system of colonial occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing and has based its economic growth on the export of this technology. The Israeli technological conglomerate uses tools such as facial recognition, cyber espionage techniques, tracking and geolocation, and device intervention to persecute the entire Palestinian population. Amnesty International has determined how Israeli authorities extensively use these technologies to support the continuous domination and oppression against the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories.

The deep ties between Israel and major technology companies have enabled a bidirectional flow of benefits and complicity. On one hand, this allows Israel to deploy rapidly innovating technology developed by transnational companies and integrate it into its surveillance, control, and repression infrastructure in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. On the other hand, Israeli technology developed to control the Palestinian people is made available to national and international technology companies to expand and export to other countries for repressive purposes. Israel uses Palestine, especially the Gaza Strip, as a testing ground to test new technologies, weapons, and methods of repression that are later exported to be used against civilians worldwide. These products are marketed as "combat-proven" – that is, against the Palestinian civilian population – and this has become an added value in the international security and defense market.

Violations of international law, war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed by Israel during its frequent attacks against the Palestinian population are well-documented. Israel can only act with such impunity because governments, companies, and research centers cooperate with its military and security industry and support it. International companies are complicit in the violations of international law committed by Israel, among other things by operating in illegal Israeli settlements and acting as contractors for the Israeli army and state.

The participation of Israel and its technology companies in the MWC Fair is a form of legitimization of the crimes against humanity and genocide against the Palestinian people. The Geneva Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide obliges states to take measures to prevent any action that benefits the perpetuation of genocide practices.

Facilitating the business of Israeli technology companies that may cause crimes against humanity and genocide is an act of complicity and goes against the principles of International Law. States and institutions have an obligation to take measures and not provide coverage for actions that may enable the genocide that Israel commits on the Gaza Strip.

In 2022, the GSMA banned the Pavilion and companies from Russia at the MWC following the request made by states and institutions due to the violation of International Law that the invasion of Ukraine entailed.

Barcelona should set an example and be a model of technological development that respects Human Rights and International Law.

Mayor Jaume Collboni should request the withdrawal of Israeli institutions and companies from the MWC fair and not maintain or facilitate any kind of relationship with Israeli companies and institutions.

Enough complicity with genocide and apartheid. Enough complicity with Israel.