Former President Mary Robinson has said Israel is making the same mistakes as the US did after 9/11 in its “disproportionate, violent” response in Gaza to the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas.
She said “bad” government meant Israel was using artificial intelligence to target Hamas and Hezbollah leaders “regardless” of whether hundreds of people were killed in the process.
It was reported by the Israeli-Palestinian magazine +972 in April that Israel has used artificial intelligence to identify targets in Gaza, despite the tools having an error rate of 10%. The Israeli military denied the reports, while the UN secretary general described them as “deeply troubling”.
“There’s a certain sense that the life of people in Gaza and the life of people in Lebanon is much less important than Israeli lives,” Robinson said, adding that this was against article one of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and life.
Speaking to the Coroners Society of Ireland in Mayo yesterday, Robinson recalled that US President Joe Biden, when he visited Tel Aviv after the October 7 Hamas attacks, had cautioned that an enraged US had “made mistakes” after 9/11.
Biden said at the time: “We were enraged in the United States. We sought justice and got justice, but we also made mistakes.”
Robinson said: “Unfortunately, Israel has made similar type mistakes – a complete disproportionate, violent response in Gaza.”
Robinson said “nothing justifies” the “horrendous attacks” of October 7, the anniversary of which is approaching. The attacks by Hamas resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to official Israeli figures. More than 240 hostages were taken, 97 of whom remain unaccounted for.
Robinson said: “Israel and the army were humiliated. You’ve got a bad right-wing government, which is a problem for Israel, and they are aggressively now trying to compensate almost for the humiliation of the seventh of October.”
Robinson noted the recent advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, “in which they have simply restated the truth: the occupation is the problem”.
“It is illegal. It should stop. Israel should withdraw. There must be a two-state solution. It’s as simple as that.”
“I do understand the trauma of not just the Israeli people, but also the Jewish diaspora around the world,” Robinson said.
“They are traumatised, and they’re not thinking straight, if you like, and they’re being badly led.”
Robinson visited Israel and Palestine last year as a member of The Elders, the organisation of public figures and statespeople advocating for peace and human rights, along with former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. In a damning report afterwards, they said they had heard from Israeli, Palestinian and human rights organisations of the “ever-growing evidence that the situation meets the international legal definition of apartheid”, adding that they had heard “no detailed rebuttal of the evidence of apartheid”.
Speaking in Mayo yesterday, Robinson said it had been “so sad” on that trip to see how years of good work on human rights by Israeli organisations was being undone.
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