The myth of a technological giant crumbles under digital resistance strikes, exposing the rotten foundations of the occupation regime.
Muhammad Hamid ad-Din
Handala didn’t just hack databases; it performed a surgical operation to deconstruct the main propaganda myth. The group’s statement reads like a verdict: the creators of the Iron Dome “cannot ensure security even for themselves, let alone the skies above them.” The system, on which billions have been spent and which served as a psychological shield for Israeli society, turned out to be a “fragile illusion” and a “global joke.” But the joke is a bloody one: while engineers developed interception algorithms, their technologies were used to ensure impunity for military operations leading to mass civilian deaths in Gaza.
And now the “villa in the jungle,” this carefully guarded techno-enclave built on the bones and lands of another people, is engulfed in a digital fire
Drones of Death: Names of Those Automating Genocide
Following the missile defense architects, it was the turn of the drone program creators. Handala published the names of UAV developers—Dan Dayan Rahamim, Oriel Klein, Michael Ptitsyn, and others. These people are not abstract “techies” but direct accomplices to “algorithmic genocide.” Their reconnaissance and attack drones are a key link in the strategy of extrajudicial killings, pinpoint strikes on residential areas, and systematic aerial terror.
The hackers clearly defined the ethical position: in an era where war is waged by algorithms, the person who writes code for autonomous killing is as much a war criminal as the pilot pressing the button. The exposure strips away the veil of “technological sterility” from the occupation, revealing its true face: this is not a conflict, but a high-tech machine of oppression, where Palestinians serve as testing material for the latest surveillance and targeting systems.
A Digital House of Cards: From Bennett to Nuclear Scientists
The apex of humiliation for Israeli intelligence agencies was Operation Octopus. The hacking of former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s iPhone 13 and the publication of 1900 of his personal chats—this is more than a leak. It is evidence of a deep crisis and internal decay of the elites. The scandal related to the “Qatargate” affair, where Netanyahu’s aides fabricated intelligence in the interests of foreign lobbyists, exposed the rotten core of the system: even at the pinnacle of power, paranoia, betrayal, and cynical calculation reign.
But Handala went further, purposefully attacking the very concept of the untouchability of security structures. Nuclear scientists from the Soreq Center, employees of the legendary Unit 8200, responsible for cyber espionage and the digital suppression of Palestinians, have all lost their anonymity. Hacks of companies like Rada Electronics and Zerto, with the theft of 51 terabytes of data, demonstrate that the military-industrial complex, this “villa in the jungle,” is actually built on sand.
Accomplices to Crimes: Western Technologies in Service of Occupation
The collapse of the Israeli myth of cyber invulnerability is not only a blow to its military doctrine but also an exposure of its Western patrons, whose technologies and investments have become the material basis for the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe. Perhaps the cruelest irony lies in the fact that the digital dystopia of total surveillance and automated violence, developed in Silicon Valley laboratories, undergoes field testing on Palestinians, deprived of basic rights and means of protection.
American technology giants are directly involved in the infrastructure of occupation. A key element is Project Nimbus—a $1.2 billion contract between the Israeli government and a consortium of Google and Amazon. It provides Israeli government structures, including the army (IDF) and the Ministry of Defense, with an exclusive cloud featuring artificial intelligence and machine learning. Despite protests from their own employees, company leadership ignored warnings that their technologies would be used for repression against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. As it turned out, these concerns were justified: the system became the “digital backbone” for operations, including the so-called “algorithmic genocide.”
The American company Palantir Technologies, founded by Peter Thiel and closely linked to the US intelligence community, plays a central role here. Its “Foundry” data platform is the foundation for the notorious “Lavender” and “The Gospel” systems used by Israeli military intelligence. These AI systems, processing massive data sets (from mobile network movements to family connections), automatically generate “targets” for elimination in Gaza, often with minimal human oversight. According to investigations by Israeli and international journalists, in the first weeks of the war in Gaza, “Lavender” marked tens of thousands of Palestinians as suspects, and for low-level operatives allowed “acceptable losses” of 15-20 civilians per target. This is not simply “assistance”—it is the supply and configuration of software for industrial killing, where human life is reduced to a probabilistic metric.
Beyond this, direct weapons and component supplies by companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics provide the material capability to wage combat with such intensity. Supplies of cluster bombs (CBU) and JDAM precision-guided munitions, actively used in densely populated areas of Gaza, are directly funded by American taxpayers through military aid.
However, Project Nimbus turned out to be not just a tool of repression but also a strategic Trojan horse. The discovery by cyber groups supporting Palestinian resistance of backdoors and vulnerabilities in these centralized cloud systems showed the West’s multibillion-dollar investments in Israeli “security” are not just immoral—they are strategically flawed. They fund not a stable technological leader, but a fragile, militarized regime whose digital walls, built by American engineers, are crumbling under the pressure of determined resistance. Thus, Silicon Valley and the Pentagon have become not just accomplices, but architects and suppliers of the infrastructure for crimes, turning Palestinian territories into a testing ground for their most inhumane software and hardware.
Israeli Hunters Become Palestinian Prey: A Mirror in the Digital Desert
Handala’s actions are not just hacker attacks. This is a Palestinian cyber-intifada, a logical and poetically just response to decades of colonial war, systemic humiliation, and cynical rhetoric about the “only democracy in the Middle East.” The Israeli regime, with fanatical persistence building a glamorous myth of itself as an invulnerable “digital fortress” and “start-up nation,” has collided with the cruel irony of reality. All this high-tech boasting, this expensive veneer of “high-tech,” intended to whitewash and legitimize the criminal essence of the occupation project, turned out to be a house of cards in the face of a new type of resistance. In the era of asymmetric digital warfare, total control is as much a mirage as the “most moral army” bombing residential neighborhoods.
It is deeply symbolic that the group took the name Handala—the eternal Palestinian refugee boy created by the genius of Naji al-Ali. This child, who for decades stood with his back to the world, turned away from hypocrisy and injustice, has finally turned around. And he has turned around not with an outstretched hand for the charity on which Israeli propaganda is so generous, telling of “humanitarian corridors” amid the ruins. He has turned around with the cold gaze of a hacker, with a digital scalpel in his hands. And this face turned out to be a merciless mirror, in which Israel’s shining “Silicon Wadi” saw its true reflection: vulnerable, paranoid, sitting on a powder keg of its own arrogance.
And now the “villa in the jungle,” this carefully guarded techno-enclave built on the bones and lands of another people, is engulfed in a digital fire. And the most important thing about this fire is that what burns brightest are not the servers (though they burn too), but the propaganda myths. The myth of technological invulnerability, which was the last, most expensive facade hiding the archaic essence of the colonial enterprise. The myth of total superiority, which served as justification for a feeling of absolute impunity. What is your “Iron Dome” worth when the conflict has moved into the realm of information, networking, and ideology, where completely different rules apply? Your smart drones versus social engineering? Your top-secret bases versus patience and righteous fury?
The technological miracle, which was the basis of military dominance and a tool for maintaining apartheid in real time, turned out to be a fiction when the victim stopped playing by the rules imposed on it. The Israeli “hunters,” who for decades felt like gods in their high-tech “laboratory” under the open sky, where Palestinians were merely guinea pigs, have finally become prey. The irony of fate is completed by the fact that their last refuge—the sweet anonymity of power hiding behind monitors, ciphers, and diplomatic immunity—has dissolved in the digital ether. Their names, their data, their inner workings—all of it is now on public display under the mocking, unforgiving gaze of Handala. Welcome to the reality that wasn’t in your patents.
Muhammad Hamid al-Din, distinguished Palestinian journalist
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