NEW YORK: What’s the price of peace?
That question could be partially answered Monday night when Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov auctions off his Nobel Peace Prize medal. The proceeds will go directly to UNICEF in its efforts to help children displaced by the war in Ukraine.
Muratov, awarded the gold medal in October 2021, helped found the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and was the publication’s editor-in-chief when it shut down in March amid the Kremlin’s clampdown on journalists and public dissent in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It was Muratov’s idea to auction off his prize, having already announced he was donating the accompanying $500,000 cash award to charity. The idea of the donation, he said, “is to give the children refugees a chance for a future.”
In an interview with The Associated Press, Muratov said he was particularly concerned about children who have been orphaned because of the conflict in Ukraine.
“We want to return their future,” he said.
He added that it’s important international sanctions levied against Russia do not prevent humanitarian aid, such as medicine for rare diseases and bone marrow transplants, from reaching those in need.
“It has to become a beginning of a flash mob as an example to follow so people auction their valuable possessions to help Ukrainians,” Muratov said in a video released by Heritage Auctions, which is handling the sale but not taking any share of the proceeds.
Muratov shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year with journalist Maria Ressa of the Philippines.
The two journalists, who each received their own medals, were honored for their battles to preserve free speech in their respective countries, despite coming under attack by harassment, their governments and even death threats.
Muratov has been highly critical of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the war launched in February that has caused nearly 5 million Ukrainians to flee to other countries for safety, creating the largest humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War II.
Independent journalists in Russia have come under scrutiny by the Kremlin, if not outright targets of the government. Since Putin came into power more than two decades ago, nearly two dozen journalists have been killed, including at least four who had worked for Muratov’s newspaper.
In April, Muratov said he was attacked with red paint while aboard a Russian train.
Muratov left Russia for Western Europe on Thursday to begin his trip to New York City, where live bidding will begin Monday afternoon.
Online bids began June 1 to coincide with the International Children’s Day observance. Monday’s live bidding falls on World Refugee Day.
As of early Monday morning, the high bid was $550,000. The purchase price is expected to spiral upward, possibly into the millions.
“It’s a very bespoke deal,” said Joshua Benesh, the chief strategy officer for Heritage Auctions. “Not everyone in the world has a Nobel Prize to auction and not every day of the week that there’s a Nobel Prize crossing the auction block.”
Since its inception in 1901, there have been nearly 1,000 recipients of the Nobel Prizes honoring achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and the advancement of peace.
The most ever paid for a Nobel Prize medal was in 2014, when James Watson, whose co-discovery of the structure of DNA earned him a Nobel Prize in 1962, sold his medal for $4.76 million. Three years later, the family of his co-recipient, Francis Crick, received $2.27 million in bidding run by Heritage Auctions, the same company that is auctioning off Muratov’s medal.
Melted down, the 175 grams of 23-karat gold contained in Muratov’s medal would be worth about $10,000.
The ongoing war and international humanitarian efforts to alleviate the suffering of those affected in Ukraine are bound to stoke interest, Benesh said, adding it’s hard to predict how much someone would be willing to pay for the medal.
“I think there’s certainly going to be some excitement Monday,” Benesh said. “It’s it’s such a unique item being sold under unique circumstances ... a significant act of generosity, and such a significant humanitarian crisis.”
Muratov and Heritage officials said even those out of the bidding can still help by donating directly to UNICEF.
Russian journalist sells Nobel Prize for Ukrainian children
https://arab.news/wgudu
Russian journalist sells Nobel Prize for Ukrainian children
- Dmitry Muratov helped found the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and was the publication’s editor-in-chief when it shut down in March
Journalist quits broadcaster after comparing French actions in Algeria to Nazi massacre
- Historians from both sides have over the last years documented numerous violations including arbitrary killings and detention carried out by French forces and the history still burdens French-Algerian relations to this day
PARIS: A prominent French journalist on Sunday announced he was stepping down from his role as an expert analyst for broadcaster RTL after provoking an uproar by comparing French actions during colonial rule in Algeria to a World War II massacre committed by Nazi forces in France.
Jean-Michel Aphatie, a veteran reporter and broadcaster, insisted that while he would not be returning to RTL he wholly stood by his comments made on the radio station in late February equating atrocities committed by France in Algeria with those of Nazi Germany in occupied France.
“I will not return to RTL. It is my decision,” the journalist wrote on the X, after he was suspended from air for a week by the radio station.
On February 25 he said on air: “Every year in France, we commemorate what happened in Oradour-sur-Glane — the massacre of an entire village. But we have committed hundreds of these, in Algeria. Are we aware of this?“
He was referring to the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, where an SS unit returning to the front in Normandy massacred 642 residents on June 10, 1944. Leaving a chilling memorial for future generations, the village was never rebuilt.
Challenged by the anchor over whether “we (the French) behaved like the Nazis,” Aphatie replied: “The Nazis behaved like us.”
On X, he acknowledged his comments had created a “debate” but said it was of great importance to understand the full story over France’s 1830-1962 presence in Algeria, saying he was “horrified” by what he had read in history books.
After being suspended for a week by the channel it means that “if I come back to RTL I validate this and admit to making a mistake. This is a line that cannot be crossed.”
His comments had prompted a flurry of complaints to audio-visual regulator Arcom which has opened an investigation.
France’s conduct in Algeria during the 1954-1962 war that led to independence and previous decades remain the subject of often painful debate in both countries.
Historians from both sides have over the last years documented numerous violations including arbitrary killings and detention carried out by French forces and the history still burdens French-Algerian relations to this day.
The far-right in France has long defended French policies in those years with Algeria War veteran Jean-Marie Le Pen, who co-founded the National Front (FN) party and died earlier this year, drawing much support from French settlers who had to return after independence.
Apple adds new Syrian flag emoji
- New flag is part of latest iOS, macOS updates
DUBAI: Apple has added the new flag of the Syrian Arab Republic to its emoji keyboard in the latest beta update to its operating system, replacing the one used by former Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.
The new flag emoji is part of Apple’s iOS and macOS 18.4 beta 2 update and is therefore unavailable to those who have not signed up for beta updates.
Apple will roll out the new updates to users in April, according to a company statement.
The old flag featured three stripes: red at the top, black at the bottom and white in the middle with two green stars.
The new flag features green at the top, black at the bottom and white in the middle with three red stars.
For many Syrians the new flag represents freedom and independence from Assad’s dictatorial regime.
The country has a long history with the current flag, which was first adopted when Syria gained independence from France in 1946.
It was replaced in 1958 by the flag of the United Arab Republic to represent the political union between Egypt and Syria.
It was adopted again for a short time when Syria left the United Arab Republic in 1961, only to be replaced in 1963 when the Baath Party took control of the country.
Newspaper in Syrian Arab Republic resumes circulation in Damascus after fall of Assad regime
- Media organization hails ‘victory for free journalism’
DUBAI: The Syrian newspaper Enab Baladi has resumed distribution in the streets of Damascus and its suburbs after more than a decade-long ban under Bashar Assad’s regime.
The newspaper, which dubs itself as “an independent Syrian media organization,” documented the Syrian regime’s violations during the revolution when it launched in 2012.
The newspaper’s distribution was limited to opposition-controlled northern areas until 2020 after Assad’s brutal crackdown on dissent.
Its editorial stance led to the arrest of many staff members, while others were tortured to death in prisons or killed by shelling and military operations in Daraya.
The media organization said: “The first copies were printed through self-funding and the efforts of its founding staff using a home printer, distributed secretly by volunteers in the neighborhoods of Daraya and Damascus.”
The organization relied on expanding its digital and visual content to reach audiences online, or through printed copies that were smuggled within Syria.
With the fall of the Assad regime on Dec. 8 last year after a 12-day blistering campaign led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, Enab Baladi resumed distribution in Damascus after a newsroom was established in the capital.
It said the move was aimed at “ensuring freedom of expression during an ambiguous transitional phase.”
The media organization added: “The return of printing inside Syria represents a victory for free journalism and an opportunity to reconnect with the audience inside Syria.”
Israeli military creating ChatGPT-like AI tool targeting Palestinians, says investigation
- Tool being built by Israeli army’s secretive cyber warfare unit
DUBAI: Israel’s military is developing an advanced artificial intelligence tool, similar to ChatGPT, by training it on Arabic conversations obtained through the surveillance of Palestinians living under occupation.
These are the findings of a joint investigation by The Guardian, Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.
The tool is being built by the Israeli army’s secretive cyber warfare Unit 8200. The division is programming the AI tool to understand colloquial Arabic by feeding it vast amounts of phone calls and text messages between Palestinians, obtained through surveillance.
Three Israeli security sources with knowledge of the matter confirmed the existence of the AI tool to the outlets conducting the investigation.
The model was still undergoing training last year and it is unclear if it has been deployed and to what end. However, sources said that the tool’s ability to rapidly process large quantities of surveillance material in order to “answer questions” about specific individuals would be a huge benefit to the Israeli army.
During the investigation, several sources highlighted that Unit 8200 had used smaller-scale machine learning models in recent years.
One source said: “AI amplifies power; it’s not just about preventing shooting attacks. I can track human rights activists, monitor Palestinian construction in Area C (of the West Bank). I have more tools to know what every person in the West Bank is doing. When you hold so much data, you can direct it toward any purpose you choose.”
An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson declined to respond to The Guardian’s question about the new AI tool, but said the military “deploys various intelligence methods to identify and thwart terrorist activity by hostile organizations in the Middle East.”
Unit 8200’s previous AI tools, such as The Gospel and Lavender, were among those used during the war on Hamas. These tools played a key role in identifying potential targets for strikes and bombardments.
Moreover, for nearly a decade, the unit has used AI to analyze the communications it intercepts and stores, sort information into categories, learn to recognize patterns and make predictions.
When ChatGPT’s large language model was made available to the public in November 2022, the Israeli army set up a dedicated intelligence team to explore how generative AI could be adapted for military purposes, according to former intelligence officer Chaked Roger Joseph Sayedoff.
However, ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI rejected Unit 8200’s request for direct access to its LLM and refused to allow its integration into the unit’s system.
Sayedoff highlighted another problem: existing language models could only process standard Arabic, not spoken Arabic in different dialects, resulting in Unit 8200 needing to develop its own program.
One source said: “There are no transcripts of calls or WhatsApp conversations on the internet. It doesn’t exist in the quantity needed to train such a model.”
Unit 8200 started recruiting experts from private tech companies in October 2023 as reservists. Ori Goshen, co-CEO and co-founder of the Israeli tech company AI21 Labs, confirmed that his employees participated in the project during their reserve duty.
The challenge for Unit 8200 was to “collect all the (spoken Arabic) text the unit has ever had and put it into a centralized place,” a source said, adding that the model’s training data eventually consisted of about 100 billion words.
Another source familiar with the project said the communications analyzed and fed to the training model included conversations in Lebanese and Palestinian dialects.
Goshen explained the benefits of LLMs for intelligence agencies but added that “these are probabilistic models — you give them a prompt or a question, and they generate something that looks like magic, but often the answer makes no sense.”
Zach Campbell, a senior surveillance researcher at Human Rights Watch, called such AI tools “guessing machines.”
He said: “Ultimately, these guesses can end up being used to incriminate people.”
Campbell and Nadim Nashif, director and founder of the Palestinian digital rights and advocacy group 7amleh, also raised concerns about the collection of data and its use in training the AI tool.
Campbell said: “We are talking about highly personal information, taken from people who are not suspected of any crime, to train a tool that could later help establish suspicion.”
Nashif said: “Palestinians have become subjects in Israel’s laboratory to develop these techniques and weaponize AI, all for the purpose of maintaining (an) apartheid and occupation regime where these technologies are being used to dominate a people, to control their lives.
“This is a grave and continuous violation of Palestinian digital rights, which are human rights.”
IDF launches Turkish-language social media accounts
- Move comes amid rising tensions between Israel and Turkiye sparking speculation about the former’s motive
DUBAI: The Israeli army has created new Turkish-language accounts on social media platforms X and Telegram.
Israeli military official Arye Sharuz Shalicar acted as the spokesperson of the account on X welcoming Turkish users.
Israil Savunma Kuvvetleri’nin resmi X hesabına hoş geldiniz! Bu platform, ISK ile ilgili gelişmeler hakkında güvenilir ve anlık güncellemeler sağlamak amacıyla kullanılacaktır. pic.twitter.com/EknF0c6xno
— IDF Türkçe (@TurkishIDF) March 4, 2025
The account on X has drawn criticism and speculation about Israel’s motives and Shalicar’s history as a gang member in Germany.
Media reports suggest that the decision to open Turkish-language accounts comes after Turkiye’s emergence as a key player in the region, particularly in Syria.
“Israel has identified Turkiye as becoming a stronger player in the region, following the fall of the Assad regime in Syria,” said a report by The Times of Israel.
In January, the Nagel Committee, formed by the Israeli government, said that the country must prepare for a potential war with Turkiye.
It released a report saying that “the threat from Syria could evolve into something even more dangerous than the Iranian threat” and that Turkish-backed forces could act as proxies further threatening Israel’s “security,” according to Israeli media reports.
Following Israel’s attacks in southwestern Syria, Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a statement on Monday.
Although he did not name Israel, he said: “Those seeking to benefit from Syria’s instability will not succeed. We will not allow them to divide Syria as they imagine.”
