Israel is scrambling GPS signals over most of its northern airspace to protect itself from Hezbollah missile strikes — potentially endangering Israeli civilians and commercial aircraft in the process.

A group of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin who have tracked GPS signals in the region for years noticed a strange pattern emerging after the Hamas militant group’s surprise attack on Oct. 7: Planes flying near the Mediterranean sea briefly disappeared from sight over many parts of Israel.

That’s a sign of “GPS spoofing,” a technique in which the location of an airplane — or precision-guided missile — or any object that uses GPS is rendered inaccurate.

“This is the most sustained and clear indication of spoofing I’ve ever seen” and affects potentially hundreds of large commercial airplanes, said Todd Humphreys, a professor at UTexas. His graduate student, Zach Clements, first discovered the spoofing pattern.

Pilots on those planes use GPS as one of their key navigation tools, optimizing flight routes, reducing fuel usage and helping with landing among other important functions. A spoofing incident over Iraq and Iran in September almost caused a business jet to fly into Iranian airspace without clearance.

Missiles that use GPS could also be thrown off their trajectory, making it hard to predict where in Israeli territory they would land. That could pose additional risk to civilians from missiles meant for military targets.

The Israel Defense Forces announced on Oct. 15 that GPS had been “restricted in active combat zones in accordance with various operational needs,” but did not note the extent of the signal disruptions.

Citizens near Israel’s border should stay near protected zones, the statement said, and Israelis should also expect “temporary glitches in location-based applications” like Google Maps.

Clements said Israel also issued a warning to pilots landing in the country that they shouldn’t rely on GPS to land, instead relying on other methods onboard to do so. The IDF didn’t respond to questions about the matter aside from pointing to previous statements.

The danger of missile strikes is a real one. Lebanon-based military group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and sympathetic to Hamas, has a massive arsenal of rockets, including precision-guided missiles. The group has already attacked Israeli forces near the border with rockets, but fighting in the area has remained relatively small-scale. The militant group has yet to fire its long-range missiles at Israeli targets, which could escalate the conflict.

The Biden administration has discussed options it could take if Hezbollah becomes more entrenched in the war, including using U.S. military force against the group.

But Hezbollah’s recent actions suggest that the group, at least for now, doesn’t want to escalate.

The group has been “lobbing unguided rockets — yes, those cause destruction, they may hit residential areas,” said Shaan Shaikh, associate director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But they’re “not being used to strike certain critical military assets or infrastructure or very high civilian territories.”

Hezbollah has the capabilities to conduct strikes deep inside Israel, but “they know that if they start launching larger, more accurate missiles at critical targets, that Israel will increase its retaliation,” Shaikh said.

Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah continued on Saturday, with Israel killing six of the Iran-backed group’s fighters, Reuters reported. One IDF soldier was killed after being struck by an anti-tank missile.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hezbollah that it would be making “the mistake of its life” if it chooses to become more involved in the conflict: “We will cripple it with unimaginable force,” he said during a visit to soldiers in northern Israel over the weekend.

It’s “certainly possible” that Israel could be tampering with GPS both to throw the missiles off course and disrupt Hamas’ ability to navigate and launch ground attacks, said Brian Weeden, who served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force for nine years with a focus on space and intercontinental ballistic missile operations. He’s now director of program planning at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Secure World Foundation.

The researchers found the GPS spoofing using an open-source commercial airline tracker ADS-B Exchange. They said they’ve regularly tracked data from there over the past five years, and it’s clear that such high levels of spoofing wasn’t happening before the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

The U.S. and other Western countries have conducted large-scale spoofing exercises before, but not in times of war, Weeden said. Ukraine and Russia have both used extensive GPS spoofing in their current conflict, and China has also used it in recent years.

It’s possible that spoofing may not be particularly effective defending against precision-guided missiles, since Hezbollah could have technology that relies on a navigation system other than GPS that it hasn’t revealed.

Vera Tavares, a spokesperson for the European Union Aviation Safety Agency — which is responsible for the EU’s civil aviation safety — said its data shows that current GPS jamming and spoofing in areas surrounding conflict zones, in the eastern Mediterranean, and around the Baltic Sea and Arctic.

Israel’s spoofer appears to reach into the Mediterranean Sea, but nowhere near the Baltic Sea and Arctic areas, according to data provided by the UT Austin researchers.

The situation around Israel is being “closely monitored” by EASA, and flight recommendations for airlines will be revised if needed, Tavares said.

Oriana Pawlyk and Maggie Miller contributed to this report.

An off-duty pilot attempted to shut down the engines of a Horizon Airlines flight on Sunday night and was charged with 83 counts of attempted murder after the flight was diverted and landed without incident.

Joseph David Emerson, an Alaska Airlines pilot from California, was arrested by Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office in Portland, Ore., after Alaska Airlines Flight 2059 from Everett, Wash., to San Francisco was diverted to Portland International Airport. In a statement, Alaska Airlines said there was “a credible security threat related to an authorized occupant in the flight deck jump seat” and that the flight crew eventually secured the aircraft.

Horizon is a regional airline that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Alaska Airlines.

Emerson was charged with 83 counts of attempted murder and 83 counts of reckless endangerment, along with endangering an aircraft.

“We’ve got the guy that tried to shut the engines down out of the cockpit, and he doesn’t sound like he’s causing any issue in the back right now, I think he’s subdued,” a pilot told air traffic controllers, according to publicly available audio recorded by Live ATC. “We want law enforcement as soon as we get on the ground and parked.”

In a statement to commercial airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration said the incident “is not connected in any way shape or form to current world events.”

Off-duty pilots are often able to commute between airports while sitting in the cockpit jump seat and are cleared to sit in the secure area. Alaska confirmed that the threat was related to “an off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot who was traveling in the flight deck jump seat.”

“The jump seat occupant unsuccessfully attempted to disrupt the operation of the engines,” the airline said. “The Horizon Captain and First Officer quickly responded, engine power was not lost and the crew secured the aircraft without incident.”

Alaska said all passengers on board were able to travel on a later flight. The airline said the FBI and Portland Police Department are investigating.

“We are grateful for the professional handling of the situation by the Horizon flight crew and appreciate our guests’ calm and patience throughout this event,” the airline said in a statement.

Oriana Pawlyk contributed to this report.

Jireh Deng | Los Angeles Times (TNS)

On Ziwe’s eponymous late-night talk show, which Showtime tragically canceled earlier this year, everything was carefully curated: the cartoonish graphics, the confrontational style, the contrast of the gaudy pink set with Ziwe Fumudoh’s knack for leaping into cringe and controversy with questions like: How many Black friends do you have?

But in her first book of essays, “ Black Friend,” out this week, the writer-comedian plays Bad Cop with herself on topics ranging from her Nigerian immigrant upbringing to the impact of fame on body image, and the result feels unrehearsed. Though her terse acknowledgments section (in its entirety: “Thank you”) feels very Ziwe, an essay titled “ Wikifeet” veers from jokes about foot fetishists to memories of growing up “an ugly duckling.” Throughout, Ziwe toggles between sincerity and absurdity, personal anecdotes and ample footnotes, in search of a subject much harder to pin down than dumbfounded Chet Hanks or blasé Julia Fox.

“It’s not in my impulse to share things with strangers,” she told The Times during a Zoom interview from New York earlier this month. “The editing process for me was excavating where I personally stood and what my perspective was.”

The title of her book is a nod to the viral Instagram Live interviews that inspired her talk show, in which her “Black friends” question played on the clichéd defense of white people called out for racism. But it’s also a reclamation of her own centrality in the narrative, as she tells the story of how she went from sidekick to star.

“Black Friend: Essays,” by Ziwe (Abrams Books/TNS)

Our conversation — about her foray into books, how she differs from her persona and what it means to be a “Black friend” — has been edited for clarity and length.

A lot of celebrities turn to memoirs to shape their public narrative. What makes your book of essays different?

I’ve been a professional writer for most of my career. I started in college when I was freelancing at the Onion, and I’ve been doing that still to this day. So I don’t know if I am necessarily your typical celebrity essayist. As far as my audience is concerned, I can’t control what people take away from my writing. I hope that they find it funny, I hope that they get a sense of the the work I put into the stories. Really, all I can do as a writer is sit down and bleed out on the text, and hope my vulnerability is enough to move my audience.

How did you decide on the title of your book?

I think there are many essays that circle around being a Black friend, and Black friendship, and [also] being part of like a community of Black friends. … [And] in the introduction, I write about the Black friend being the omnipresent figure in American media who never has a chance to explore their own journey. In this Black friend’s world they are the protagonists, but they always appear like a sidekick.

There is obviously a connection to the question I asked on Instagram Live. I had no idea that that would be the breakout question of the show. I don’t even think that was the funniest question. But it somehow became a calling card, which I found to be very interesting. Like, nobody knows my name. I am the Black friend brought to this WNBA game being misidentified, and the Black friend being [briefly] barred from a screening of “ If Beale Street Could Talk.”

You — or your character — ask some hilariously inappropriate personal questions in the show. What was it like to ask yourself the uncomfortable questions?

I didn’t want to share one iota about myself. I don’t want people to know where I live, what I eat, that I have a pet. That is not my instinct from a cultural perspective. And also from an artistic perspective, I find that there is more freedom and being able to hide behind a character — and then they have a really clear point of view. When you’re just yourself, you don’t want to offend anyone. I don’t want to misspeak. But comedy lives on that dangerous ledge.

In your book, you compare your performance on your show to drag. Can you talk more about how you craft your persona?

The space of late-night television and broadcast news is really masculine. It’s a lot of suits. And I was thinking, what is the antithetical to that? Mind you, women’s talk shows are packaged so differently: they’re daytime, there’s a cooking segment and there’s fashion shows at lunch. So I pulled from the daytime world. I also played with Barbies and Bratz dolls as a kid. I was attracted to that world as a child because that’s what I saw as the emblem of femininity. I wanted to have this plastic toy in my hand even, though it couldn’t breath and it didn’t have any genitals.

I wonder about that persona and how much it’s bled into your personal life. You’ve said that when strangers meet you, they expect you to be aggressive and mean.

I think people are terrified of me. That’s just the truth. I hate it. I was about to say that nobody wants people to be afraid of them. But there’s obviously that famous quote, “it’s better to be feared than loved.” But I would rather be loved. I don’t love that at all.

You insert a lot of sidebars and footnotes to add context to the narrative. Why did you choose that format?

I think my mind is sort of manic the way that I wrote my book. And so in “ The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, which is probably my biggest influence as far as the footnotes go,, [Junot Diaz] told multiple stories concurrently over the course of his book. And similarly, I was interested in having people follow my train of thought, but also including like, Okay, this is the historical context as I talk about how I’m the Rosa Parks of a free screening of a movie. So it was just part of it was just like, yeah, it was an artistic choice that I, that reflects how my mind works.

You’ve been characterized before as an agent of chaos, do you identify with that?

No, I don’t have it on my CV, although maybe I should add it. Honestly, I thrive much like Bane. I thrive in the chaos. It’s something that I am really comfortable with. I did an episode of [Andy Cohen’s] “ Watch What Happens Live” yesterday with Mary Cosby, this famously chaotic character in “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.” And unfortunately, or fortunately, I found myself really at peace. So I just take chaos — better than the average duck. But I wouldn’t say that’s my job.

What do you consider the responsibility of your platform then? In your book you cite the work of a lot of thinkers, including James Baldwin and W.E.B. Du Bois. But of yourself you write, “I am a well-spoken, attractive person so my job is to be hot and loudly repeat things that smarter people say.”

I think my only responsibility is to be funny. That’s my job. I’m a comedian and the reaction I’m supposed to get is, “Ha ha ha, ha ha, ha.” Everything else is gravy, it is an elective surgery. I’m not an activist, I cannot speak to the proper ways to mobilize. I create entertaining content that makes people think. My impact is Ziwe. My title is Ziwe. My job is Ziwe and I’m really good at it.

____

Black Friend: Essays

By Ziwe

Abrams: 192 pages, $26

©2023 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.