Between 22 and 24 August, Festival Grounded took place in Ljubljana. This year, the topic of the festival concerned racism, and amongst the speakers in the critical discussions regarding this issue was also our junior researcher Iva Ramuš Cvetkovič.
In the first panel, she spoke about the role of Germany in perpetrating the crime of genocide in Gaza and the rising issues of antisemitism and islamophobia in Germany, together with two members of the minorities living there – an Israeli Jew Udi Raz, and a German Palestinian Salah Said. The whole conversation can be accessed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jezymH7TJVE&t=3s
In the second panel, together with dr. Lior Volinz and a Palestinian researcher, she debated on the new technologies, which are being developed for military purposes by Israeli army, including the mass surveillance technologies (for example, Red Wolf and Blue Wolf) and AI algorithmic weapons (Lavender, Where is Daddy? and Gospel) used for the bombing of Gaza. They highlighted and problematized numerous legal, technical and societal aspects of these technologies, which are being tested on Palestinian civilians and then later on exported to other countries, which expands and normalizes their use.
