Israel has used the genocide in Palestine and erasure of Lebanon to test its latest precision weapons and surveillance technologies. Captured onto our telephone screens we witness journalists targeted, entire families erased, and landscapes scorched - all precise targets in the pursuit of ‘militants’. This data is making calculations and is stored somewhere. We connect Palestine to the construction of data centres in Belgium to aggregate and store data for the processing of AI technologies. The latter requires a lot of resources and public infrastructures to run, like land, water, electricity. These data centres place themselves in economically depressed communities in Belgium with the promises of bringing jobs - yet what they bring is limited transparency into their plans for expansion and ongoing operations. The first data centre in Europe was erected in Wallonia in 2007 is today called the most “water hungry” in all of Europe. A new construction is underway with promises not to ruin the waterways and landscape but to compensate through other mechanisms.
This panel asks:
- What is precision technology in weapons, how does it work, and does it work?
- How is Big Tech complicit in the genocide - albeit in the design or storage of these AI technologies of surveillance and capture
- What is the connection between land movements in Belgium mobilized by the draining of their resources, with the ongoing erasure of the peoples and geographies of the Levant
Invited Speakers
Anan Quzmar
Anan Quzmar is a Palestinian human rights researcher from the West Bank. He has worked with the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, Independent Commission for Human Rights, and Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit University. Since October 2023, he has documented the targeted killing of journalists in Gaza and researched the use of AI-assisted weapons systems in the genocide. In the summer of 2026, he helped organise a gathering in Europe bringing together journalists and writers from Gaza to develop community-led approaches to documenting the stories of their colleagues and profession. He holds a master’s in development studies from SOAS and recently completed an LL.M. in human rights at Nova Law School.
Martine Jaarsma
Martine Jaarsma is a PhD researcher at the University of Antwerp. She holds a master degree in Conflict Studies and Human Rights as well as a master in Public International Law, both from Utrecht University. In her interdisciplinary research she will examine the impact that the daily practices related to the design and use of algorithmic technologies for aerial targeting have on the meaningful application of key principles of International Humanitarian Law.
Moderated by
Valensiya Akamme
Valensiya Akamme is a doctoral researcher at University of Antwerp. Her work focuses on the politics of knowledge circulation and (in)visibilisations surrounding socio-ecological harms and environmental policy-making, as well as struggles for reparative justice. Her background is in political science, and her past work focused on the governance of information and digital technologies.