In Amman, people rely on taxis and Ubers to get most anywhere; it is not a walkable city if you wish to get out of your neighborhood. There are few sidewalks, highways cross through central public places, and everything is far apart, so inevitably a person will spend at least 5-10 JD (7-14 USD) a day getting around. To book a ride, the Uber app is most commonly used. However, during the last few months people in Amman have been finding that their GPS either leads the drivers astray or does not register the pick-up location at all.
Donate to sustain the work, here!
This is due to GPS interference perpetrated by the Israeli military. The IOF admitted that GPS services have been restricted in “combat zones” which understandably makes people fearful. The Zionist regime has a long history of collecting data.
Israel is the world’s leading exporter and innovator of digital forensic technologies. Israeli spyware can take complete control over a phone and make calls and send messages to anybody as well as download content, steal texts, record calls and emails, and turn on cameras or microphones to record conversations. They claim to use spyware only to target “terrorists,” but malware manufactured by the Israeli firm Candiru was found on the phones of politicians, journalists, and scholars in Iran, Yemen, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Turkey, in 2021. Pegasus spyware, which is able to be remotely installed on phones, has been targeting activists, human rights workers, and journalists worldwide. In 2021 and 2022, spyware manufactured by Cytrox infected the phones of journalists in Egypt and the E.U. In 2023, manufactured spyware from Quadream was also found on the phones of international human rights defenders and journalists. In addition, it has been proven that an Israeli firm named Team Jorge has meddled in African democratic elections for years, specifically in Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal.
Some of these firms have been held accountable by private companies for illegally stealing social media users’ data and harvesting it for profit. In 2018, Meta sued Voyageur Labs for using nearly 40,000 fake Facebook accounts to collect data on an estimated 600,000 users. In 2020 they sued BrandTotal Ltd. for stealing personal data from users. In 2023, Meta and X/Twitter sued Bright Data for harvesting and selling user content from several different social media platforms.
Palestinians — as well as everyone else — have a fundamental right to privacy, movement, assembly, and freedom of expression as enshrined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Unchecked surveillance to infiltrate and collect civilians’ data is a dangerous crime. The way Israel treats non-Jewish people is in stark contrast to the right of privacy granted to Israeli citizens. Israeli forces not only occupy physical spaces, but digital spaces as well. They must be stopped, not only because I want my taxi and djooge nis (half chicken) food delivery on time but because this threatens everyone’s safety.
More on the topic of digital security:
The friend I am staying with used to use dating apps, but had to delete her account within the first month of living in Amman. This is because overtly Zionist Israeli users have shown up on many of the top dating platforms, here as well as in Lebanon, UAE, Egypt, and Palestine. People living in those countries perceive this to be deliberate psychological warfare, since many Israeli dating bios have slogans such as “death to Arabs” or “we will wake up to no Gaza.” They often wear military clothing and hold machine guns in their profile pictures. If you are not an Israeli citizen, there is no public or private arena left that is free of the threat of violence.
It is unclear if the reason Zionists are showing up on surrounding countries’ dating apps is a result of GPS interference or actually due to an attempt at cyber-terrorization. It is unknown whether accidentally matching with these Israelis will put people on a list to be tracked or infect their electronic devices with malware, but many suspect as much.
For LGBT+ people, this possibility is especially dangerous. Even though dating apps have historically made dating safer for queer people, it must be assumed now that anyone they match with are spies. It indeed has been proven that the IOF has used dating apps to blackmail gay Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank into becoming informants. To Zionists, this has the added benefit of disintegrating the social fabric and trust of Palestinian communities.
The organization Jewish Voice For Labour confirms that a shocking number of gay people have “received threatening messages via Grindr, Instagram, or Facebook, from an anonymous individual who had their identifying information, forcing them to turn into informants.” B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, confirms that Israel has forced tens of thousands of Palestinians to work as informants since 1967, many of whom are gay.
The Palestinian Authority, who are traitors to the Palestinian liberation movement and work closely with the Israeli military, also keep files on “homosexuals” that they turn over to the Israeli military. Under the direction of the IOF, they have assisted in isolating gay Palestinians from their communities and exploiting them for intelligence. But in many ways, those working within the P.A. have been coerced into their positions as well; they are promised greater freedoms and access to power if they act against what is best for their people and align with the occupation.
Israelis try to present Israel as a haven for LGBT+ people (even though gay marriage is still illegal there, too) and try to frame Palestine as being uniquely hostile to queer people. They often reference a law created in the British Mandate that makes homosexual acts punishable by death in Palestine, without revealing that that law was not written by Palestinians and is never enforced. While it is socially taboo to be openly gay in Palestine, it is not criminalized by any authority other than the IOF. In fact, there is no law in the West Bank that bans sexual relations between consenting adults of the same sex.
It is Israel who threatens the lives and safety of queer Palestinians — not other Palestinians. At checkpoints, the IOF commonly checks Palestinians’ phones and will interrogate, beat, and arrest anyone who has downloaded Grindr or has any reference to being gay. The IOF will then use the information they have gained to blackmail the person to become a collaborator. I do not entirely blame those who choose to collaborate; the real sin lies with Israel, who not only threatens to out queer Palestinians to their families and friends, but also to withhold education and medical access to anyone connected to them. It is an impossible situation to be in.
Israel’s targeting of gay people goes beyond Palestine. In 2015, an Israeli surveillance company called Unit 8200 provided Uganda with malware used against LGBTQ+ activists. They certainly do not particularly care about LGBT+ people when they are bombing civilian homes. How many queer people have they killed in Lebanon, for instance? Clearly, Zionists do not care about anyone but themselves and other Jews.