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Israel using AI to deliberately target more civilians in Gaza
Israel is using artificial intelligence to deliberately target more civilians in the Gaza Strip in order to “harm Palestinian civil society and create a shock” that would force civilians to put pressure on Hamas resistance movement, a new investigation has revealed.
Since October 7, the Israeli military has killed more than 16,000 people – mostly women and children – in Gaza after it launched a brutal onslaught on the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas’s operation in the occupied territories.
The number of civilian casualties in Israel’s renewed aggression on the Gaza Strip is much higher than the numbers registered in previous Israeli assaults on Gaza.
Although the Israeli regime has never cared about civilian lives in conflicts, the large number of such casualties in the ongoing aggression has raised questions about Israel’s new military tactics in its confrontations with the Palestinian fighters.
During the current aggression on Gaza, the Israeli Army has significantly expanded its bombing of targets that are not distinctly military in nature. The targets include private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks, which sources say the army defines as “power targets”.
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 said.
According to sources who talked to +972 Magazine and Local Call, the main goal of the Israeli aggression was to kill as many Hamas fighters as possible.
Habsora
For this goal, the Israeli Army has used a system called “Habsora,” which is largely built on artificial intelligence.
The system 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. According to the investigation, such attacks can knowingly kill entire families in the process.
The sources added that in the majority of cases military activity is not conducted from these targeted homes.
In one case, the Israeli military command knowingly approved the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in an attempt to assassinate a single top Hamas commander.
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 resistance group.
'Nothing happens by
accident'
“Nothing happens by accident,” said a source. “When a three-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.”
The investigation says the Israeli Army has files 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.
According to sources, the Israeli Army has significantly relaxed rules over harming Palestinian civilians.
Saving time
Therefore, 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,” a source said.
Various sources who served in the Israeli Army’s intelligence units said that 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.
According to the Israeli Army, during the first five days of the conflict it dropped 6,000 bombs on the Palestinian territory, with a total weight of about 4,000 tons. Media outlets reported that the army had wiped out entire neighborhoods; according to the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, these attacks led to “the complete destruction of residential neighborhoods, the destruction of infrastructure, and the mass killing of residents.”
According to the reports, Israel bombed the Islamic University of Gaza, the Palestinian Bar Association, a UN building 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.
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 resistance groups, attacking the target functions primarily as a “means that allows damage to civil society.” The sources understood that damage to civilians is the real purpose of these attacks.
For example, Israel attacked the Al-Jalaa Tower in May 2021, which housed prominent international media outlets such as Al Jazeera, AP, and AFP. The Israeli Army claimed that the building was a Hamas military target but sources said 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.”