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
It’s like how there’s between someone being killed in an accident and someone being murdered. Intent is a factor.
If you target civilians and kill civilians with the goal to terrorize a population, then you’re terrorist. If you target a military asset with the goal to defeat an enemy fighting force then you’re taking a military action even if you accidentally kill civilians.
And no, wars are not supposed to fair. It’s not a sport with rules and referees to make sure everything is fair both sides. This is real life not a Call of Duty game. If you’re fighting against a superior military force you’re not being brave, you’re just getting a lot of people killed for nothing.
Non-violent resistance has a higher probability of success and fewer people die even if it fails. That’s the path to a Palestinian state the violence of Hamas has been a complete failure. That should be obvious.
Nothing Hamas has done has improved anything for Palestinians. They just killed a lot of people and got Gaza destroyed.
Terrorists are bad.
So you agree the place the protocols LARPers live should be returned to the Hamas people?
The way you apply labels to people to dehumanize them makes it difficult for me to understand what you’re even asking. Like do you call all Palestinians “Hamas people”?
Only when im talking to a protocols larper. That’s what you guys always seem to call them.
Ah so you dehumanize both Jews and Palestinians. So you’re a white supremacist type of antisemite.