[ Permissive airstrikes on non-military targets and the use of an
artificial intelligence system have enabled the Israeli army to carry
out its deadliest war on Gaza, a +972 and Local Call investigation
reveals.]
[[link removed]]

‘A MASS ASSASSINATION FACTORY’: INSIDE ISRAEL’S CALCULATED
BOMBING OF GAZA  
[[link removed]]


 

Yuval Abraham
November 30, 2023
+972 Magazine
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_ Permissive airstrikes on non-military targets and the use of an
artificial intelligence system have enabled the Israeli army to carry
out its deadliest war on Gaza, a +972 and Local Call investigation
reveals. _

Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes in several location in the Gaza
Strip, October 9, 2023., Photo: Atia Mohammed/Flash90 // +972 Magazine


 

The Israeli army’s expanded authorization for bombing non-military
targets, the loosening of constraints regarding expected civilian
casualties, and the use of an artificial intelligence system to
generate more potential targets than ever before, appear to have
contributed to the destructive nature of the initial stages of
Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip, an investigation by +972
Magazine and Local Call reveals. These factors, as described by
current and former Israeli intelligence members, have likely played a
role in producing what has been one of the deadliest military
campaigns against Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948.

The investigation by +972 and Local Call is based on conversations
with seven current and former members of Israel’s intelligence
community — including military intelligence and air force personnel
who were involved in Israeli operations in the besieged Strip — in
addition to Palestinian testimonies, data, and documentation from the
Gaza Strip, and official statements by the IDF Spokesperson and other
Israeli state institutions.

Compared to previous Israeli assaults on Gaza, the current war
[[link removed]] — which Israel has
named “Operation Iron Swords,” and which began in the wake of the
Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on October 7 — has seen the
army significantly expand its bombing of targets that are not
distinctly military in nature. These include private residences as
well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks, which
sources say the army defines as “power targets
[[link removed]]” (“_matarot
otzem_”).

The bombing of power targets, according to intelligence sources who
had first-hand experience with its application in Gaza in the past, is
mainly intended to harm Palestinian civil society: to “create a
shock” that, among other things, will reverberate powerfully and
“lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas,” as one source put it.

Several of the sources, who spoke to +972 and Local Call on the
condition of anonymity, confirmed that the Israeli army has files on
the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza — including homes —
which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in
an attack on a particular target. This number is calculated and known
in advance to the army’s intelligence units, who also know shortly
before carrying out an attack roughly how many civilians are certain
to be killed.
 

Palestinians react to the devastation caused by an Israeli airstrike
in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, November 11, 2023.  (Photo: Abed Rahim
Khatib/Flash90  //  +972 Magazine)
In one case discussed by the sources, the Israeli military command
knowingly approved the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in
an attempt to assassinate a single top Hamas military commander.
“The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as
collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in
previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral
damage,” said one source.

“Nothing happens by accident,” said another source. “When a
3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in
the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that
it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are
not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We
know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”

According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of
targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the
widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”),
which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can
“generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds
what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former
intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination
factory.”

According to the sources, the increasing use of AI-based systems like
Habsora allows the army to carry out strikes on residential homes
where a single Hamas member lives on a massive scale, even those who
are junior Hamas operatives. Yet testimonies of Palestinians in Gaza
suggest that since October 7, the army has also attacked many private
residences where there was no known or apparent member of Hamas or any
other militant group residing. Such strikes, sources confirmed to +972
and Local Call, can knowingly kill entire families in the process.

In the majority of cases, the sources added, military activity is not
conducted from these targeted homes. “I remember thinking that it
was like if [Palestinian militants] would bomb all the private
residences of our families when [Israeli soldiers] go back to sleep at
home on the weekend,” one source, who was critical of this practice,
recalled.
 

Palestinians at the rubble of a building destroyed by Israeli
airstrikes in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, November 11, 2023.  (Photo:
 Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90  //  +972 Magazine)
Another source said that a senior intelligence officer told his
officers after October 7 that the goal was to “kill as many Hamas
operatives as possible,” for which the criteria around harming
Palestinian civilians were significantly relaxed. As such, there are
“cases in which we shell based on a wide cellular pinpointing of
where the target is, killing civilians. This is often done to save
time, instead of doing a little more work to get a more accurate
pinpointing,” said the source.

The result of these policies is the staggering loss of human life in
Gaza since October 7. Over 300 families have lost 10 or more family
members in Israeli bombings in the past two months — a number that
is 15 times higher than the figure from what was previously Israel’s
deadliest war on Gaza, in 2014. At the time of writing,
around 15,000 Palestinians have been reported killed in the war, and
counting.

“All of this is happening contrary to the protocol used by the IDF
in the past,” a source explained. “There is a feeling that senior
officials in the army are aware of their failure on October 7, and are
busy with the question of how to provide the Israeli public with an
image [of victory] that will salvage their reputation.”

‘An excuse to cause destruction’

Israel launched its assault on Gaza in the aftermath of the October 7
[[link removed]] Hamas-led
offensive on southern Israel. During that attack, under a hail of
rocket fire, Palestinian militants massacred more than 840 civilians
and killed 350 soldiers and security personnel, kidnapped around 240
people — civilians and soldiers — to Gaza, and committed
widespread sexual violence, including rape, according to a report
[[link removed]] by
the NGO Physicians for Human Rights Israel.

From the first moment after the October 7 attack, decisionmakers in
Israel openly declared that the response would be of a completely
different magnitude to previous military operations in Gaza, with the
stated aim of totally eradicating Hamas. “The emphasis is on damage
and not on accuracy,” said
[[link removed]] IDF
Spokesperson Daniel Hagari on Oct. 9. The army swiftly translated
those declarations into actions.
 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav
Gallant, and Minister without Portfolio Benny Gantz hold a joint press
conference at the Defense Ministry, Tel Aviv, November 11, 2023.
 (Photo: Marc Israel Sellem  //  +972 Magazine)
According to the sources who spoke to +972 and Local Call, the targets
in Gaza that have been struck by Israeli aircraft can be divided
roughly into four categories. The first is “tactical targets,”
which include standard military targets such as armed militant cells,
weapon warehouses, rocket launchers, anti-tank missile launchers,
launch pits, mortar bombs, military headquarters, observation posts,
and so on.

The second is “underground targets” — mainly tunnels that Hamas
has dug under Gaza’s neighborhoods, including under civilian homes.
Aerial strikes on these targets could lead to the collapse of the
homes above or near the tunnels.

The third is “power targets,” which includes high-rises and
residential towers in the heart of cities, and public buildings such
as universities, banks, and government offices. The idea behind
hitting such targets, say three intelligence sources who were involved
in planning or conducting strikes on power targets in the past, is
that a deliberate attack on Palestinian society will exert “civil
pressure” on Hamas.

The final category consists of “family homes” or “operatives’
homes.” The stated purpose of these attacks is to destroy private
residences in order to assassinate a single resident suspected of
being a Hamas or Islamic Jihad operative. However, in the current war,
Palestinian testimonies assert that some of the families that were
killed did not include any operatives from these organizations.

In the early stages of the current war, the Israeli army appears to
have given particular attention to the third and fourth categories of
targets. According to statements
[[link removed]] on Oct. 11
by the IDF Spokesperson, during the first five days of fighting, half
of the targets bombed — 1,329 out of a total 2,687 — were deemed
power targets.
 

Palestinians walk next to the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli
airstrikes in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, November 28, 2023.
 (Photo: Atia Mohammed/Flash90  //  +972 Magazine)
“We are asked to look for high-rise buildings with half a floor that
can be attributed to Hamas,” said one source who took part in
previous Israeli offensives in Gaza. “Sometimes it is a militant
group’s spokesperson’s office, or a point where operatives meet. I
understood that the floor is an excuse that allows the army to cause a
lot of destruction in Gaza. That is what they told us.

“If they would tell the whole world that the [Islamic Jihad] offices
on the 10th floor are not important as a target, but that its
existence is a justification to bring down the entire high-rise with
the aim of pressuring civilian families who live in it in order to put
pressure on terrorist organizations, this would itself be seen as
terrorism. So they do not say it,” the source added.

Various sources who served in IDF intelligence units said that at
least until the current war, army protocols allowed for attacking
power targets only when the buildings were empty of residents at the
time of the strike. However, testimonies and videos from Gaza suggest
that since October 7, some of these targets have been attacked without
prior notice being given to their occupants, killing entire families
as a result.

The wide-scale targeting of residential homes can be derived from
public and official data. According to the Government Media Office in
Gaza — which has been providing death tolls since the Gaza Health
Ministry stopped doing so on Nov. 11 due to the collapse of health
services
[[link removed]] in
the Strip — by the time the temporary ceasefire took hold on Nov.
23, Israel had killed
[[link removed]] 14,800
Palestinians in Gaza; approximately 6,000 of them were children and
4,000 were women, who together constitute more than 67 percent of the
total. The figures provided by the Health Ministry and the Government
Media Office — both of which fall under the auspices of the Hamas
government — do not deviate significantly
[[link removed]] from
Israeli estimates.

The Gaza Health Ministry, furthermore, does not specify how many of
the dead belonged to the military wings of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. The
Israeli army estimates that it has killed between 1,000
[[link removed]] and 3,000
[[link removed]] armed
Palestinian militants. According to media reports in Israel, some of
the dead militants are buried under the rubble or inside Hamas’
underground tunnel system, and therefore were not tallied in official
counts.
 

Palestinians try to put out a fire after an Israeli airstrike on a
house in the Shaboura refugee camp in the city of Rafah, southern of
the Gaza Strip, on November 17, 2023.  (Photo: Abed Rahim
Khatib/Flash90  //  +972 Magazine)
UN data
[[link removed]] for
the period up until Nov. 11, by which time Israel had killed 11,078
Palestinians in Gaza, states that at least 312 families have lost 10
or more people in the current Israeli attack; for the sake of
comparison, during “Operation Protective Edge” in 2014, 20
families in Gaza lost 10 or more people. At least 189 families have
lost between six and nine people according to the UN data, while 549
families have lost between two and five people. No updated breakdowns
have yet been given for the casualty figures published since Nov. 11.

The massive attacks on power targets and private residences came at
the same time as the Israeli army, on Oct. 13, called
[[link removed]] on
the 1.1 million residents of the northern Gaza Strip — most of them
residing in Gaza City — to leave their homes and move to the south
of the Strip. By that date, a record number of power targets had
already been bombed, and more than 1,000 Palestinians had already
been killed
[[link removed]],
including hundreds of children.

In total, according to the UN, 1.7 million Palestinians, the vast
majority of the Strip’s population, have been displaced within Gaza
since October 7. The army claimed that the demand to evacuate the
Strip’s north was intended to protect civilian lives. Palestinians,
however, see this mass displacement as part of a “new Nakba” —
an attempt to ethnically cleanse part or all of the territory.

‘They knocked down a high-rise for the sake of it’

According to the Israeli army, during the first five days of fighting
it dropped 6,000 bombs
[[link removed]] on the
Strip, with a total weight of about 4,000 tons. Media outlets reported
that the army had wiped out
[[link removed]] entire
neighborhoods;
[[link removed]] according
to the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, these attacks
[[link removed]] led to “the
complete destruction of residential neighborhoods, the destruction of
infrastructure, and the mass killing of residents.” 

As documented by Al Mezan and numerous images coming out of Gaza,
Israel bombed the Islamic University of Gaza, the Palestinian Bar
Association, a UN building
[[link removed]] for
an educational program for outstanding students, a building belonging
to the Palestine Telecommunications Company, the Ministry of National
Economy, the Ministry of Culture, roads, and dozens of high-rise
buildings and homes — especially in Gaza’s northern neighborhoods.

 

The ruins of Al-Amin Muhammad Mosque which was destroyed in an Israeli
airstrike on October 20, Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza
Strip, October 31, 2023.  (Photo: Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills  //
 +972 Magazine)
On the fifth day of fighting, the IDF Spokesperson distributed to
military reporters in Israel “before and after” satellite images
[[link removed]] of
neighborhoods in the northern Strip, such as Shuja’iyya and
Al-Furqan (nicknamed after a mosque in the area) in Gaza City, which
showed dozens of destroyed homes and buildings. The Israeli army said
that it had struck 182 power targets in Shuja’iyya and 312 power
targets in Al-Furqan.

The Chief of Staff of the Israeli Air Force, Omer Tishler, told
[[link removed]] military
reporters that all of these attacks had a legitimate military target,
but also that entire neighborhoods were attacked “on a large scale
and not in a surgical manner.” Noting that half of the military
targets up until Oct. 11 were power targets, the IDF Spokesperson said
that “neighborhoods that serve as terror nests for Hamas” were
attacked and that damage was caused to “operational headquarters,”
“operational assets,” and “assets used by terrorist
organizations inside residential buildings.” On Oct. 12, the Israeli
army announced it had killed three “senior
[[link removed]] Hamas
members [[link removed]]”
— two of whom were part of the group’s political wing.

Yet despite the unbridled Israeli bombardment, the damage to Hamas’
military infrastructure in northern Gaza during the first days of the
war appears to have been very minimal. Indeed, intelligence sources
told +972 and Local Call that military targets that were part of power
targets have previously been used many times as a fig leaf for harming
the civilian population. “Hamas is everywhere in Gaza; there is no
building that does not have something of Hamas in it, so if you want
to find a way to turn a high-rise into a target, you will be able to
do so,” said one former intelligence official.

“They will never just hit a high-rise that does not have something
we can define as a military target,” said another intelligence
source, who carried out previous strikes against power targets.
“There will always be a floor in the high-rise [associated with
Hamas]. But for the most part, when it comes to power targets, it is
clear that the target doesn’t have military value that justifies an
attack that would bring down the entire empty building in the middle
of a city, with the help of six planes and bombs weighing several
tons.”

Indeed, according to sources who were involved in the compiling of
power targets in previous wars, although the target file usually
contains some kind of alleged association with Hamas or other militant
groups, striking the target functions primarily as a “means that
allows damage to civil society.” The sources understood, some
explicitly and some implicitly, that damage to civilians is the real
purpose of these attacks.
 

Palestinians survivors are brought out of the rubble of houses
destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in the city of Rafah, southern Gaza
Strip, November 20, 2023.  (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90  //
 +972 Magazine)
In May 2021, for example, Israel was heavily criticized for bombing
the Al-Jalaa Tower
[[link removed]],
which housed
[[link removed]] prominent
international media outlets such as Al Jazeera, AP, and AFP. The army
claimed that the building was a Hamas military target; sources have
told +972 and Local Call that it was in fact a power target.

“The perception is that it really hurts Hamas when high-rise
buildings are taken down, because it creates a public reaction in the
Gaza Strip and scares the population,” said one of the sources.
“They wanted to give the citizens of Gaza the feeling that Hamas is
not in control of the situation. Sometimes they toppled buildings and
sometimes postal service and government buildings.”

Although it is unprecedented for the Israeli army to attack more than
1,000 power targets in five days, the idea of causing mass devastation
to civilian areas for strategic purposes was formulated in previous
military operations in Gaza, honed by the so-called “Dahiya Doctrine
[[link removed]]”
from the Second Lebanon War of 2006.

According to the doctrine — developed by former IDF Chief of Staff
Gadi Eizenkot, who is now a Knesset member and part of the current war
cabinet — in a war against guerrilla groups such as Hamas or
Hezbollah, Israel must use disproportionate and overwhelming force
while targeting civilian and government infrastructure in order to
establish deterrence and force the civilian population to pressure the
groups to end their attacks. The concept of “power targets” seems
to have emanated from this same logic.

The first time the Israeli army publicly defined power targets in Gaza
was at the end of Operation Protective Edge in 2014. The army
bombed four buildings
[[link removed]] during
the last four days of the war — three residential multi-story
buildings in Gaza City, and a high-rise in Rafah. The security
establishment explained
[[link removed]] at
the time that the attacks were intended to convey to the Palestinians
of Gaza that “nothing is immune anymore,” and to put pressure on
Hamas to agree to a ceasefire. “The evidence we collected shows that
the massive destruction [of the buildings] was carried out
deliberately, and without any military justification,” stated an
Amnesty report
[[link removed]] in
late 2014.

 

Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike hits Al-Jalaa tower, which
houses apartments and several media outlets including the Associated
Press and Al Jazeera, Gaza City, May 15, 2021.  (Photo: Atia
Mohammed/Flash90  //  +972 Magazine)
In another violent escalation that began in November 2018, the army
once again attacked power targets. That time, Israel bombed
high-rises, shopping centers, and the building of the Hamas-affiliated
Al-Aqsa TV station. “Attacking power targets produces a very
significant effect on the other side,” one Air Force officer stated
[[link removed]] at
the time. “We did it without killing anyone and we made sure that
the building and its surroundings were evacuated.”

Previous operations have also shown how striking these targets is
meant not only to harm Palestinian morale, but also to raise the
morale inside Israel. Haaretz revealed that during Operation Guardian
of the Walls in 2021, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit conducted
a psy-op against Israeli citizens
[[link removed]] in
order to boost awareness of the IDF’s operations in Gaza and the
damage they caused to Palestinians. Soldiers, who used fake social
media accounts to conceal the campaign’s origin, uploaded images and
clips of the army’s strikes in Gaza to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,
and TikTok in order to demonstrate the army’s prowess to the Israeli
public.

During the 2021 assault, Israel struck nine targets that were defined
as power targets — all of them high-rise buildings. “The goal was
to collapse the high-rises in order to put pressure on Hamas, and also
so that the [Israeli] public would see a victory image,” one
security source told +972 and Local Call.

However, the source continued, “it didn’t work. As someone who has
followed Hamas, I heard firsthand how much they did not care about the
civilians and the buildings that were taken down. Sometimes the army
found something in a high-rise building that was related to Hamas, but
it was also possible to hit that specific target with more accurate
weaponry. The bottom line is that they knocked down a high-rise for
the sake of knocking down a high-rise.”

‘Everyone was looking for their children in these piles’

Not only has the current war seen Israel attack an unprecedented
number of power targets, it has also seen the army abandon prior
policies that aimed at avoiding harm to civilians. Whereas previously
the army’s official procedure was that it was possible to attack
power targets only after all civilians had been evacuated from them,
testimonies from Palestinian residents in Gaza indicate that, since
October 7, Israel has attacked high-rises with their residents still
inside, or without having taken significant steps to evacuate them,
leading to many civilian deaths.

 

Palestinians at the rubble of a destroyed building after an Israeli
airstrike in the central Gaza Strip, November 5, 2023.  (Photo: Atia
Mohammed/Flash90  //  +972 Magazine)
Such attacks very often result in the killing of entire families, as
experienced in previous offensives; according to an investigation
[[link removed]] by
AP conducted after the 2014 war, about 89 percent of those killed in
the aerial bombings of family homes were unarmed residents, and most
of them were children and women.

Tishler, the air force chief of staff, confirmed a shift in policy,
telling reporters that the army’s “roof knocking” policy —
whereby it would fire a small initial strike on the roof of a building
to warn residents that it is about to be struck — is no longer in
use “where there is an enemy.” Roof knocking, Tishler said, is
“a term that is relevant to rounds [of fighting] and not to war.”

The sources who have previously worked on power targets said that the
brazen strategy of the current war could be a dangerous development,
explaining that attacking power targets was originally intended to
“shock” Gaza but not necessarily to kill large numbers of
civilians. “The targets were designed with the assumption that
high-rises would be evacuated of people, so when we were working on
[compiling the targets], there was no concern whatsoever regarding how
many civilians would be harmed; the assumption was that the number
would always be zero,” said one source with deep knowledge of the
tactic.

“This would mean there would be a total evacuation [of the targeted
buildings], which takes two to three hours, during which the residents
are called [by phone to evacuate], warning missiles are fired, and we
also crosscheck with drone footage that people are indeed leaving the
high-rise,” the source added.

However, evidence from Gaza suggests that some high-rises — which we
assume to have been power targets — were toppled without prior
warning. +972 and Local Call located at least two cases during the
current war in which entire residential high-rises were bombed and
collapsed without warning, and one case in which, according to the
evidence, a high-rise building collapsed on civilians who were inside.

 

Devastation is seen in the area of Al-Rimal at the heart of Gaza City
after Israeli bombing, October 23, 2023.  (Photo: Mohammed
Zaanoun/Activestills  //  +972 Magazine)
On Oct. 10, Israel bombed the Babel Building in Gaza, according to
the testimony [[link removed]] of Bilal
Abu Hatzira, who rescued bodies from the ruins that night. Ten people
were killed in the attack on the building, including three
journalists.

On Oct. 25, the 12-story Al-Taj residential building in Gaza City was
bombed to the ground, killing the families living inside it without
warning. About 120 people were buried under the ruins of their
apartments, according to the testimonies of residents. Yousef Amar
Sharaf, a resident of Al-Taj, wrote on X
[[link removed]] that 37 of
his family members who lived in the building were killed in the
attack: “My dear father and mother, my beloved wife, my sons, and
most of my brothers and their families.” Residents stated that a lot
of bombs were dropped, damaging and destroying apartments in nearby
buildings too.

Six days later, on Oct. 31, the eight-story Al-Mohandseen residential
building was bombed
[[link removed]] without
warning. Between 30 and 45 bodies were reportedly recovered from the
ruins on the first day. One baby was found alive, without his
parents. Journalists
[[link removed]] estimated
[[link removed]] that
over 150 people were killed in the attack, as many remained buried
under the rubble.

The building used to stand in Nuseirat Refugee Camp, south of Wadi
Gaza — in the supposed “safe zone” to which Israel directed the
Palestinians who fled their homes in northern and central Gaza — and
therefore served as temporary shelter for the displaced, according
to testimonies
[[link removed]].

According to an investigation
[[link removed]] by
Amnesty International, on Oct. 9, Israel shelled at least three
multi-story buildings, as well as an open flea market on a crowded
street in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp, killing at least 69 people.
“The bodies were burned … I didn’t want to look, I was scared of
looking at Imad’s face,” said the father of a child who was
killed. “The bodies were scattered on the floor. Everyone was
looking for their children in these piles. I recognized my son only by
his trousers. I wanted to bury him immediately, so I carried my son
and got him out.”

 

An Israeli tank is seen inside Al-Shati refugee camp, northern Gaza
Strip, November 16, 2023.  (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90  //  +972
Magazine)
According to Amnesty’s investigation, the army said that the attack
on the market area was aimed at a mosque “where there were Hamas
operatives.” However, according to the same investigation, satellite
images do not show a mosque in the vicinity.

The IDF Spokesperson did not address +972’s and Local Call’s
queries about specific attacks, but stated more generally that “the
IDF provided warnings before attacks in various ways, and when the
circumstances allowed it, also delivered individual warnings through
phone calls to people who were at or near the targets (there were more
from 25,000 live conversations during the war, alongside millions of
recorded conversations, text messages and leaflets dropped from the
air for the purpose of warning the population). In general, the IDF
works to reduce harm to civilians as part of the attacks as much as
possible, despite the challenge of fighting a terrorist organization
that uses the citizens of Gaza as human shields.”

‘The machine produced 100 targets in one day’

According to the IDF Spokesperson, by Nov. 10, during the first 35
days of fighting, Israel attacked a total of 15,000 targets in Gaza.
Based on multiple sources, this is a very high figure compared to the
four previous major operations in the Strip. During Guardian of the
Walls in 2021, Israel attacked 1,500 targets in 11 days. In Protective
Edge in 2014, which lasted 51 days, Israel struck between 5,266 and
6,231 targets. During Pillar of Defense in 2012, about 1,500 targets
were attacked over eight days. In Cast Lead” in 2008, Israel struck
3,400 targets in 22 days.

Intelligence sources who served in the previous operations also told
+972 and Local Call that, for 10 days in 2021 and three weeks in 2014,
an attack rate of 100 to 200 targets per day led to a situation in
which the Israeli Air Force had no targets of military value left.
Why, then, after nearly two months, has the Israeli army not yet run
out of targets in the current war?

The answer may lie in a statement
[[link removed]] from
the IDF Spokesperson on Nov. 2, according to which it is using the AI
system Habsora (“The Gospel”), which the spokesperson says
“enables the use of automatic tools to produce targets at a fast
pace, and works by improving accurate and high-quality intelligence
material according to [operational] needs.” 

 

Israeli artillery stationed near the Gaza fence, southern Israel,
November 2, 2023.  (Photo: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90  //  +972
Magazine)
In the statement, a senior intelligence official is quoted as saying
that thanks to Habsora, targets are created for precision strikes
“while causing great damage to the enemy and minimal damage to
non-combatants. Hamas operatives are not immune — no matter where
they hide.”

According to intelligence sources, Habsora generates, among other
things, automatic recommendations for attacking private residences
where people suspected of being Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives
live. Israel then carries out large-scale assassination operations
through the heavy shelling of these residential homes.

Habsora, explained one of the sources, processes enormous amounts of
data that “tens of thousands of intelligence officers could not
process,” and recommends bombing sites in real time. Because most
senior Hamas officials head into underground tunnels with the start of
any military operation, the sources say, the use of a system like
Habsora makes it possible to locate and attack the homes of relatively
junior operatives.

One former intelligence officer explained that the Habsora system
enables the army to run a “mass assassination factory,” in which
the “emphasis is on quantity and not on quality.” A human eye
“will go over the targets before each attack, but it need not spend
a lot of time on them.” Since Israel estimates that there are
approximately 30,000 Hamas members in Gaza, and they are all marked
for death, the number of potential targets is enormous.

In 2019, the Israeli army created a new center aimed at using AI to
accelerate target generation. “The Targets Administrative Division
is a unit that includes hundreds of officers and soldiers, and is
based on AI capabilities,” said former IDF Chief of Staff Aviv
Kochavi in an in-depth interview
[[link removed]] with Ynet earlier
this year.

 

Palestinians search for the wounded after an Israeli airstrike on a
house in the Shaboura refugee camp in the city of Rafah, southern Gaza
Strip, November 17, 2023.  (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90  //
 +972 Magazine)
“This is a machine that, with the help of AI, processes a lot of
data better and faster than any human, and translates it into targets
for attack,” Kochavi went on. “The result was that in Operation
Guardian of the Walls [in 2021], from the moment this machine was
activated, it generated 100 new targets every day. You see, in the
past there were times in Gaza when we would create 50 targets per
year. And here the machine produced 100 targets in one day.”

“We prepare the targets automatically and work according to a
checklist,” one of the sources who worked in the new Targets
Administrative Division told +972 and Local Call. “It really is like
a factory. We work quickly and there is no time to delve deep into the
target. The view is that we are judged according to how many targets
we manage to generate.”

A senior military official in charge of the target bank told
[[link removed]] the
Jerusalem Post earlier this year that, thanks to the army’s AI
systems, for the first time the military can generate new targets at a
faster rate than it attacks. Another source said the drive to
automatically generate large numbers of targets is a realization of
the Dahiya Doctrine.

Automated systems like Habsora have thus greatly facilitated the work
of Israeli intelligence officers in making decisions during military
operations, including calculating potential casualties. Five different
sources confirmed that the number of civilians who may be killed in
attacks on private residences is known in advance to Israeli
intelligence, and appears clearly in the target file under the
category of “collateral damage.” 

According to these sources, there are degrees of collateral damage,
according to which the army determines whether it is possible to
attack a target inside a private residence. “When the general
directive becomes ‘Collateral Damage 5,’ that means we are
authorized to strike all targets that will kill five or less civilians
— we can act on all target files that are five or less,” said one
of the sources.

 

Palestinians gather around the remains of a tower building housing
offices which witnesses said was destroyed by an Israeli air strike in
Gaza City, August 26, 2014.  (Photo: Emad Nassar/Flash90  //  +972
Magazine)
“In the past, we did not regularly mark the homes of junior Hamas
members for bombing,” said a security official who participated in
attacking targets during previous operations. “In my time, if the
house I was working on was marked Collateral Damage 5, it would not
always be approved [for attack].” Such approval, he said, would only
be received if a senior Hamas commander was known to be living in the
home.

“To my understanding, today they can mark all the houses of [any
Hamas military operative regardless of rank],” the source continued.
“That is a lot of houses. Hamas members who don’t really matter
for anything live in homes across Gaza. So they mark the home and bomb
the house and kill everyone there.”

A concerted policy to bomb family homes

On Oct. 22, the Israeli Air Force bombed the home of the Palestinian
journalist Ahmed Alnaouq in the city of Deir al-Balah. Ahmed is a
close friend and colleague of mine; four years ago, we founded a
Hebrew Facebook page called “Across the Wall,”
[[link removed]] with
the aim of bringing Palestinian voices from Gaza to the Israeli
public.

The strike on Oct. 22 collapsed blocks of concrete onto Ahmed’s
entire family, killing his father, brothers, sisters, and all of their
children, including babies. Only his 12-year-old niece, Malak,
survived and remained in a critical condition, her body covered in
burns. A few days later, Malak died.

Twenty-one members of Ahmed’s family were killed in total, buried
under their home. None of them were militants. The youngest was 2
years old; the oldest, his father, was 75. Ahmed, who is currently
living in the UK, is now alone out of his entire family.

 

Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis overflows with the bodies of
Palestinians killed and wounded overnight in Israeli airstrikes, Gaza
Strip, October 25, 2023.  (Photo: Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills  //
 +872 Magazine)
Ahmed’s family WhatsApp group is titled “Better Together.” The
last message that appears there was sent by him, a little after
midnight on the night he lost his family. “Someone let me know that
everything is fine,” he wrote. No one answered. He fell asleep, but
woke up in a panic at 4 a.m. Drenched in sweat, he checked his phone
again. Silence. Then he received a message from a friend with the
terrible news.

Ahmed’s case is common in Gaza these days. In interviews to the
press, heads of Gaza hospitals have been echoing the same description:
families enter hospitals as a succession of corpses, a child followed
by his father followed by his grandfather. The bodies are all covered
in dirt and blood.

According to former Israeli intelligence officers, in many cases in
which a private residence is bombed, the goal is the “assassination
of Hamas or Jihad operatives,” and such targets are attacked when
the operative enters the home. Intelligence researchers know if the
operative’s family members or neighbors may also die in an attack,
and they know how to calculate how many of them may die. Each of the
sources said that these are private homes, where in the majority of
cases, no military activity is carried out.

+972 and Local Call do not have data regarding the number of military
operatives who were indeed killed or wounded by aerial strikes on
private residences in the current war, but there is ample evidence
that, in many cases, none were military or political operatives
belonging to Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

On Oct. 10, the Israeli Air Force bombed an apartment building in
Gaza’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, killing 40 people, most of them
women and children. In one of the shocking videos
[[link removed]] taken
following the attack, people are seen screaming, holding what appears
to be a doll pulled from the ruins of the house, and passing it from
hand to hand. When the camera zooms in, one can see that it is not a
doll, but the body of a baby.
 

Palestinian rescue services remove the bodies of members of the
Shaaban family, all six of whom were killed in an Israeli airstrike on
the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, western Gaza, October 9, 2023.
 (Photo: Mohammed Zaanoun  //  +972 Magazine)
One of the residents said that 19 members of his family were killed in
the strike. Another survivor wrote on Facebook that he only found his
son’s shoulder in the rubble. Amnesty investigated
[[link removed]] the
attack and discovered that a Hamas member lived on one of the upper
floors of the building, but was not present at the time of the attack.

The bombing of family homes where Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives
supposedly live likely became a more concerted IDF policy during
Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Back then, 606 Palestinians —
about a quarter of the civilian deaths
[[link removed]] during
the 51 days of fighting — were members of families whose homes were
bombed. A UN report
[[link removed]] defined
it in 2015 as both a potential war crime and “a new pattern” of
action that “led to the death of entire families.”

In 2014, 93 babies were killed as a result of Israeli bombings of
family homes, of which 13 were under 1 year old
[[link removed]]. A month
ago, 286 babies aged 1 or under were already identified as having been
killed in Gaza, according to a detailed ID list
[[link removed]] with
the ages of victims published by the Gaza Health Ministry on Oct. 26.
The number has since likely doubled or tripled.

However, in many cases, and especially
[[link removed]] during
the current attacks
[[link removed]] on
Gaza, the Israeli army has carried out attacks that struck private
residences even when there is no known or clear military target. For
example, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, by Nov.
29, Israel had killed 50 Palestinian journalists in Gaza, some of them
in their homes with their families.

Roshdi Sarraj, 31, a journalist from Gaza who was born in Britain,
founded a media outlet in Gaza called “Ain Media.” On Oct. 22, an
Israeli bomb struck his parents’ home where he was
sleeping, killing him
[[link removed]].
The journalist Salam Mema similarly died under the ruins of her home
after it was bombed; of her three young children, Hadi, 7, died, while
Sham, 3, has not yet been found under the rubble. Two other
journalists, Duaa Sharaf
[[link removed]] and Salma
Makhaimer
[[link removed]],
were killed together with their children in their homes.

 

An Israeli warplane is seen flying above the Gaza Strip, November 13,
2023.  (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90  //  +972 Magazine)
Israeli analysts have admitted that the military effectiveness of
these kinds of disproportionate aerial attacks is limited. Two weeks
after the start of the bombings in Gaza (and before the ground
invasion) — after the bodies of 1,903 children, approximately 1,000
women, and 187 elderly men were counted in the Gaza Strip — Israeli
commentator Avi Issacharoff tweeted
[[link removed]]: “As
hard as it is to hear, on the 14th day of fighting, it does not appear
that the military arm of Hamas has been significantly harmed. The most
significant damage to the military leadership is the assassination of
[Hamas commander] Ayman Nofal.”

‘Fighting human animals’

Hamas militants regularly operate out of an intricate network of
tunnels built under large stretches of the Gaza Strip. These tunnels,
as confirmed by the former Israeli intelligence officers we spoke to,
also pass under homes and roads. Therefore, Israeli attempts to
destroy them with aerial strikes are in many cases likely to lead to
the killing of civilians. This may be another reason for the high
number of Palestinian families wiped out in the current offensive.

The intelligence officers interviewed for this article said that the
way Hamas designed the tunnel network in Gaza knowingly exploits the
civilian population and infrastructure above ground. These claims were
also the basis of the media campaign that Israel conducted vis-a-vis
the attacks and raids on Al-Shifa Hospital and the tunnels that were
discovered under it.

Israel has also attacked a large number of military targets: armed
Hamas operatives, rocket launcher sites, snipers, anti-tank squads,
military headquarters, bases, observation posts, and more. From the
beginning of the ground invasion, aerial bombardment and heavy
artillery fire have been used to provide backup to Israeli troops on
the ground. Experts in international law say these targets are
legitimate, as long as the strikes comply with the principle of
proportionality.

In response to an enquiry from +972 and Local Call for this article,
the IDF Spokesperson stated: “The IDF is committed to international
law and acts according to it, and in doing so attacks military targets
and does not attack civilians. The terrorist organization Hamas places
its operatives and military assets in the heart of the civilian
population. Hamas systematically uses the civilian population as a
human shield, and conducts combat from civilian buildings, including
sensitive sites such as hospitals, mosques, schools, and UN
facilities.”

Intelligence sources who spoke to +972 and Local Call similarly
claimed that in many cases Hamas “deliberately endangers the
civilian population in Gaza and tries to forcefully prevent civilians
from evacuating.” Two sources said that Hamas leaders “understand
that Israeli harm to civilians gives them legitimacy in fighting.”

 

Destruction caused by Israeli bombings is seen inside Al-Shati refugee
camp, northern Gaza Strip, November 16, 2023.  (Photo: Yonatan
Sindel/Flash90  //  +972 Magazine)
At the same time, while it’s hard to imagine now, the idea of
dropping a one-ton bomb aimed at killing a Hamas operative yet ending
up killing an entire family as “collateral damage” was not always
so readily accepted by large swathes of Israeli society. In 2002, for
example, the Israeli Air Force bombed the home of Salah Mustafa
Muhammad Shehade, then the head of the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’
military wing. The bomb killed him, his wife Eman, his 14-year-old
daughter Laila, and 14 other civilians, including 11 children. The
killing caused a public uproar in both Israel and the world, and
Israel was accused of committing war crimes.

That criticism led to a decision by the Israeli army in 2003 to drop a
smaller, quarter-ton bomb on a meeting of top Hamas officials —
including the elusive leader of Al-Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Deif —
taking place in a residential building in Gaza, despite the fear that
it would not be powerful enough to kill them. In his book “To Know
Hamas,” veteran Israeli journalist Shlomi Eldar wrote that the
decision to use a relatively small bomb was due to the Shehade
precedent, and the fear that a one-ton bomb would kill the civilians
in the building as well. The attack failed, and the senior military
wing officers fled the scene.

In December 2008, in the first major war that Israel waged against
Hamas after it seized power in Gaza, Yoav Gallant, who at the time
headed the IDF Southern Command, said that for the first time Israel
was “hitting the family homes” of senior Hamas officials with the
aim of destroying them, but not harming their families. Gallant
emphasized that the homes were attacked after the families were warned
by a “knock on the roof,” as well as by phone call, after it was
clear that Hamas military activity was taking place inside the house.

After 2014’s Protective Edge, during which Israel began to
systematically strike family homes from the air, human rights groups
like B’Tselem
[[link removed]] collected
testimonies from Palestinians who survived these attacks. The
survivors said the homes collapsed in on themselves, glass shards cut
the bodies of those inside, the debris “smells of blood,” and
people were buried alive.

This deadly policy continues today — thanks in part to the use of
destructive weaponry and sophisticated technology like Habsora, but
also to a political and security establishment that has loosened the
reins on Israel’s military machinery. Fifteen years after insisting
that the army was taking pains to minimize civilian harm, Gallant, now
Defense Minister, has clearly changed his tune. “We are fighting
human animals and we act accordingly,” he said after October 7.

_[YUVAL ABRAHAM is a journalist and activist based in Jerusalem.]_

_OUR TEAM HAS BEEN DEVASTATED BY THE HORRIFIC EVENTS OF THIS LATEST
WAR – THE ATROCITIES COMMITTED BY HAMAS IN ISRAEL AND THE MASSIVE
RETALIATORY ISRAELI ATTACKS ON GAZA. OUR HEARTS ARE WITH ALL THE
PEOPLE AND COMMUNITIES FACING VIOLENCE._

_We are in an extraordinarily dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The
bloodshed unleashed by these events has reached extreme levels of
brutality and threatens to engulf the entire region. Hamas’
murderous assault in southern Israel has devastated and shocked the
country to its core. Israel’s retaliatory bombing of Gaza is
wreaking destruction on the already besieged strip and killing a
ballooning number of civilians. Emboldened settlers in the West Bank,
backed by the army, are seizing the opportunity to escalate their
attacks on Palestinians._

_This escalation has a very clear context, one that +972 has spent the
past 13 years covering: Israeli society’s growing racism and
militarism, the entrenched occupation, and an increasingly normalized
siege on Gaza._

_We are well positioned to cover this perilous moment – but we need
your help to do it. This terrible period will challenge the humanity
of all of those working for a better future in this land. Palestinians
and Israelis are already organizing and strategizing to put up the
fight of their lives._

_CAN WE COUNT ON YOUR SUPPORT? +972 MAGAZINE IS THE LEADING MEDIA
VOICE OF THIS MOVEMENT, A DESPERATELY NEEDED PLATFORM WHERE
PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI JOURNALISTS AND ACTIVISTS CAN REPORT ON AND
ANALYZE WHAT IS HAPPENING, GUIDED BY HUMANISM, EQUALITY, AND JUSTICE.
JOIN US. [[link removed]]_

* Israel
[[link removed]]
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[[link removed]]
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[[link removed]]
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[[link removed]]
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[[link removed]]
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[[link removed]]
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[[link removed]]
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