DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — When Ellie, a British-Iranian living in the United Kingdom, tried to call her mother in Tehran, a robotic female voice answered instead.
“Alo? Alo?” the voice said, then asked in English: “Who is calling?” A few seconds passed.
“I can’t heard you,” the voice continued, its English imperfect. “Who you want to speak with? I’m Alyssia. Do you remember me? I think I don’t know who are you.”
Ellie, 44, is one of nine Iranians living abroad — including in the U.K and U.S. — who said they have gotten strange, robotic voices when they attempted to call their loved ones in Iran since Israel launched airstrikes on the country a week ago.
They told their stories to The Associated Press on the condition they remain anonymous or that only their first names or initials be used out of fear of endangering their families.
Five experts with whom the AP shared recordings said it could be low-tech artificial intelligence, a chatbot or a pre-recorded message to which calls from abroad were diverted.
It remains unclear who is behind the operation, though four of the experts believed it was likely to be the Iranian government while the fifth saw Israel as more likely.
Only the second most terrifying story I’ve read today
Be careful, even suggesting that Israel isn’t committing genocide might get you banned from communities on lemmy.
To give a better idea of how Iran wants to eliminate Israel (the country):
“Either you must choose ‘gradual death’ in hellish life in shelters or save your lives from the 24-hour missile rain and flee as soon as possible from the lands usurped by your ancestors, so that you may survive.” - IRGC Statement https://iranwire.com/en/news/142321-irgc-says-it-fired-2000-kilometer-range-missiles-at-israel/
Iran’s goal is to make Israelis flee from the lands “usurped by your ancestors”. So they recognize that Jewish people in Israel were born there, and they want to force them to leave their lands. So… ethnic cleansing.
There have been attempts by Israel in the past to have a peace plan with Palestine. Land for Peace. And remember Israel unilaterally withdrew both the military and their settlements from Gaza. There was a brief time when we were all hopeful as Gaza was free from Israeli occupation. They could trade with Europe easily and become a place of peace and prosperity. Once that happened we could pressure Israel to withdraw from the West Bank as there’s no way they could claim that occupying it was for security anymore. There was a clear path opened towards a free Palestinian state.
Then Hamas took power with a plurality of the vote and it all went to shit. It’s going to very difficult to convince Israel that ending the occupation will improve security for their people after what happened on October 7. But who knows, maybe a group of Palestinians that are tired of constant war might be able to get power and change things.
I feel like most Israelis want peace, just they also don’t want to be murdered in their sleep by a Hamas terrorist. I don’t think it’s a land thing, though obviously in a democracy different politcal parties will have different agendas. Israel has shown a willingness in the past to trade land for peace. It’s more of a problem of Israelis not trusting Palestinians. And October 7 means that it will probably be at least a generation and a change in Palestinian leadership before Israelis can trust Palestinians on a land for peace kind of deal. But that change in leadership has to come from within. There also needs to be a change in leadership in Israel, but that’s kind of automatic since Israel is a democracy.
The last time Israel gave up ground, Palestinians voted for Hamas. It seems Israel conceding territory is seen as a sign of weakness by too many Palestinians. Maybe the next generation will think differently. At least I hope.
I’d be better off for it then. If a power hungry mod cares more about their feels than the truth, then that’s a community I don’t want to be a part of.
And yeah, Iran, like most majority Muslim countries, wants Israel out of the Holy Land for religious reasons, and politically, they don’t want strong western influence in the region. Israel likewise wants to retain control of the Holy Land and maintain western allies to help keep them secure. Both sides have legitimate reasons to hate the other, and, neither side seems interested in murdering everyone on the other side, they just want their religious and political objectives met, which consists solely of control over the Holy Land.
And yeah, of course Israel wants peace, their objectives are met by holding that territory. The problem is that most Muslim-majority countries don’t see Israel as legitimate, because it was created arbitrarily by western powers by taking land away from Muslims.
I hope so too, on both sides. Israel needs to accept that Palestinians deserve self-rule, and Palestinians need to accept that Israel has that same right. The boundaries will need some changes, but hopefully there’s a resolution that’s acceptable to most people on both sides.
I mostly agree with you. Sorry if it seems like I’m nitpicking, but you said a lot there (and that’s not a bad thing) so I’m just breaking it down a little.
I don’t think hate is ever legitimate.
Iranians are encourages to regularly chant “death to Israel” regularly. I don’t feel comfortable trusting that it’s just propaganda and there’s no intent there. We’ve been burned a lot lately with because people voted for Trump thinking “he’s just saying he wants to deport millions of people, he won’t really do that”. Sometimes the crazy things people say is just propaganda, sometimes it’s what they really mean. Having trust that an authoritarian is lying seems unwise.
And if I think long term, some young person in Iran chanting “death to Israel” today may someday in a position of power in the future. Bad things could happen someday if a true believer gets into power. Especially if Iran has a nuclear weapon on that day. So I understand why Israel is doing everything they can to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. It’s life or death for them.
I also understand why they want a regime change in Iran. Even if their nuclear weapons program is gone today, they could rebuild it and in a decade or so we’re doing this all over again. But a regime change is something Iranians will have to fight for, we all know regime changes imposed by foreign countries don’t work out well. No way to know if that will happen, that’s beyond anyone’s control outside of Iran.
And that’s the problem. That’s irrelevant now because most of the population of Israel was born there. I’ve met Israelis and they weren’t particularly religious. Israel isn’t some “Holy Land” to them it’s the place where they were born. People have a right to live where they were born. Wanting to restore the ethnic makeup of a region to conform to how it was in a history book is fascistic thinking. Now the Israelis I’ve met were just the ones that travel so obviously there are different kinds people in Israel that do think it’s a holy mission to makes settlements and all of the bullshit. But the wrongs that have been done with the settlements doesn’t justify massacring villages or anything else Iran’s terrorist proxies are doing.
This hatred of Israel isn’t good for other countries in the middle east. Hate is the easiest emotion for authoritarians to manipulate. This results in people being more acting of authoritarian regimes so long as the do some display of attacking “the evil enemy”.
I hope people can get put aside their hatred long enough to see the destruction it’s caused. Hating Israel isn’t improving anything for people in Gaza or anywhere else in the Middle East.
Iran’s intention is to eradicate a Jewish state in the Levant. Hamas have stated that they would repeat Oct 7 over and over (seems a stupid thing to say out loud even if one is on their side) and in fact their insane leadership called for world Islamist domination.
“We Will Repeat The October 7 Attack, Time And Again, Until Israel Is Annihilated; We Are Victims – Everything We Do Is Justified”
Whether we agree with the establishment of Israel in the first place or not, it aint going anywhere so to continue trying to eradicate it 77 years later exacerbates suffering.
Aboriginal Australians got a raw deal but are still doing better than Gazans because they didn’t continue warring. They are still fighting politically and rightly so.