"dropping a one-ton bomb aimed at killing a Hamas operative [&] killing an entire family ...was not always so readily accepted"
In 2002, the IDF "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, & 14 other civilians, including 11 children. The killing caused a public uproar in both Israel & the world, & Israel was accused of committing war crimes"
"After 2014’s Protective Edge, during which Israel began to systematically strike family homes from the air, human rights groups like B’Tselem 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."
Operation Iron Swords "has seen the army significantly expand its bombing of [non-military targets] like private residences...public buildings, infrastructure, & high-rise blocks, which sources say the army defines as “power targets”
Bombing "power targets," said intel sources w/"first-hand experience with its application in Gaza in the past, is mainly intended to harm Palestinian civil society: to “create a shock” that...will reverberate powerfully & “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas” "
"Several of the sources...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 & 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."
"during the current attacks on Gaza, the Israeli army has...struck private residences even when there is no known...military target. [E.g.], 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...On Oct. 22, an Israeli bomb struck his parents’ home where he was sleeping, killing him."
"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 & Salma Makhaimer, were killed together with their children in their homes."
[There are more cases of journalists' families being targeted & killed in their homes.]
Israeli analysts have admitted they know "Israeli harm to civilians gives [Hamas] legitimacy in fighting”
@LALegault@chargrille some of them did, but they’re buried under the rubble of their own homes now.
Netanyahu’s tactics seem eerily similar to Purim’s, and I’m surprised there isn’t more outrage. You don’t see people changing their profile pictures to Palestinian flags… and while I get that Hamas triggered all of this (which differs from Russia’s invasion), bombing civilians because they’re trapped in the same region as terrorists just seems vile.
“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.”
"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."
"According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, & the extensive harm to civilian life in #Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on #artificialintelligence & 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.” "
Sources confirmed "the increasing use of AI-based systems...allows the army to carry out strikes on residential homes...on a massive scale [&] knowingly kill entire families"
"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...recalled."
"Another source said that a senior intelligence officer told his officers...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."
"Over 300 families have lost 10 or more family members in Israeli bombings in the past 2 months...15 times higher than previous most deadly attacks on [#Gaza] 2014...
“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.”
"Israel launched its assault on Gaza in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas-led offensive on southern Israel. During that attack, under a hail of rocket fire, Palestinian militants massacred more than 840 civilians & killed 350 soldiers & security personnel, kidnapped around 240 people — civilians & soldiers — to Gaza, & committed widespread sexual violence, including rape, according to a report by the NGO Physicians for Human Rights Israel."
"According to the sources [targets of] Israeli aircraft can be divided roughly into four categories:" tactical, underground, "power targets" & family homes.
Power targets include "high-rises & residential towers...& public buildings such as universities, banks, & government offices. The idea...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.
[NB: list does not mention schools, hospitals & refugee camps, 100s of which have been targeted by a program of IDF airstrikes]
"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"
"Oct. 22, [IDF] bombed the home of the Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq...4 years ago, we founded a Hebrew Facebook page called “Across the Wall,” [to bring] voices from Gaza to the Israeli public.
The strike...collapsed blocks of concrete onto Ahmed’s entire family, killing his father, brothers, sisters, & all of their children, including babies. Only his 12yo niece, Malak, survived ...her body covered in burns. A few days later, Malak died."
"21 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.
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."
" “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."
@chargrille It is so obvious that destroying whole buildings to displace Palestinians is what the IDF is doing. You can'r explain the wide scale destruction any other way.
"the Israeli army appears to have given particular attention to [power targets & family homes]. According to statements 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.
...
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.”
"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."
"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 that 37 of his family members who lived in the building were killed in the attack: “My dear father & mother, my beloved wife, my sons, & most of my brothers & their families.”
"striking these [civil] targets is meant...also to raise the morale inside Israel. Haaretz revealed that...in 2021, the #IDF Spokesperson’s Unit conducted a psy-op against Israeli citizens in order to boost awareness of...damage they caused to Palestinians. Soldiers, who used fake social media accounts to conceal the campaign’s origin, uploaded images & clips of the army’s strikes in Gaza to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, & TikTok in order to demonstrate the army’s prowess to the Israeli public."
"According to the Israeli army, during the first five days of fighting it dropped 6,000 bombs on the Strip...4,000 tons."
"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, & dozens of high-rise buildings & homes [especially in] Gaza’s northern neighborhoods."
"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."
"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."
"According to an investigation by Amnesty Int'l, on Oct. 9, Israel shelled at least 3 multi-story buildings [&] 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. “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...out”
"The Chief of Staff of the Israeli Air Force, Omer Tishler, told military reporters that all of these attacks had a legitimate military target, but also that entire neighborhoods were attacked “on a large scale & not in a surgical manner.”
Over 1/2 of "targets up until Oct. 11 were power targets...On Oct. 12, the Israeli army announced it had killed [just] three “senior Hamas members” — two of whom were part of the group’s political wing."
"According to Amnesty’s investigation, the army said that the attack on the market area [in Jabaliya Refugee Camp] 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."
“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 [assoc. 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 [by] six planes & bombs weighing several tons.”
Not only has IDF exponentially increased attacks on residential structures, it has abandoned "prior policies that aimed at avoiding harm to civilians...the army’s [prior] official procedure was that it was possible to attack power targets only after all civilians had been evacuated from them, [but] 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."
"sources who...previously worked on power targets said [these attacks were] 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"
"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...is no longer in use"
Previously, source said “there would be a total evacuation...which takes 2-3 hours, during which the residents are called [by phone to evacuate], warning missiles are fired, & we also crosscheck with drone footage that people are indeed leaving the high-rise"
On Oct. 31, "the 8-story Al-Mohandseen residential building was bombed w/o warning. It "used to stand in Nuseirat Refugee Camp" & housed displaced families who had "fled their homes in northern & central Gaza," as Israel directed, to this supposed "safe zone"
"Between 30-45 bodies were reportedly recovered from the ruins on the first day. One baby was found alive, without his parents. Journalists estimated that over 150 people were killed in the attack, as many remained buried under the rubble"
"the Israeli army publicly defined power targets in Gaza...in 2014. The army bombed four [multi-story residential] buildings during the last four days of the war...The security establishment explained at the time that the attacks were intended to convey to the Palestinians of Gaza that “nothing is immune anymore"
“The evidence we collected shows that the massive destruction...was carried out deliberately, & without any military justification" (Amnesty International report in 2014)
"On the fifth day of fighting, [IDF] distributed to military reporters in Israel “before & after” satellite images of neighborhoods in the northern Strip, [showing] dozens of destroyed homes & buildings [& stated] it had struck 182 power targets in Shuja’iyya & 312 power targets in Al-Furqan" (Gaza City neighborhoods)
"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"
While it's "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” from the Second Lebanon War of 2006 [&] developed by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, who is now...part of the current war cabinet."
Under Dahiya, "against guerrilla groups such as #Hamas or Hezbollah, Israel must use disproportionate & overwhelming force while targeting civilian & government infrastructure in order to...force the civilian population to pressure the groups to end their attacks."
The euphemism of "power targets" extends this policy of state terrorism against the civilian population & now, [#IDF is using #AI to maximize civilian casualties in #Gaza beyond what human intelligence officers could accomplish.]
" “Attacking power targets produces a very significant effect on the other side,” one Air Force officer stated [in Nov 2018]. “We did it without killing anyone & we made sure that the building & its surroundings were evacuated.”
...
Such attacks very often result in the killing of entire families...according to an investigation by AP conducted after the 2014 war, about 89% of those killed in the aerial bombings of family homes were unarmed residents, & most of them were children & women."
Acc to the IDF "during the first 35 days of fighting, Israel attacked...15,000 targets in Gaza. Based on multiple sources, this is a very high figure compared to the 4 previous major operations in the Strip...sources who served in the previous operations also [said] for 10 days in 2021 & 3 weeks in 2014, an attack rate of 100-200 targets per day led to a situation in which the Israeli Air Force had no targets of military value left."
Q: Why has IDF not run out of targets in 2 months?
A: #AI
On Nov. 2, IDF stated it is using the #AI system Habsora (“The Gospel”) which "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"
"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 & soldiers" [former IDF COS Kochavi said] earlier this year. “This is a machine that, with the help of AI, processes a lot of data...& translates it into targets for attack...100 new targets every day...there were times in Gaza when we would create 50 targets/year. And here the machine produced 100 targets in 1 day”
A former intel officer explained The Gospel #AI enables IDF to run a “mass assassination factory" & “emphasis is on quantity & 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.”
“We prepare the targets automatically & work according to a checklist...It really is like a factory. We work quickly & 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”
“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. Such approval would only be received if a senior Hamas commander was known to live there.
“To my understanding, today they can mark all the houses. 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 & bomb the house & kill everyone there.”
"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 [targets] the homes of relatively junior operatives."
"A senior military official in charge of the target bank told 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 described it as an acme of the Dahiya Doctrine.
"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."
@chargrille Even that admission, outrageous and blatantly in violation of international law, is a whitewash, given that the number of homes destroyed vastly exceeds their own estimate of the number of Hamas militants (and for them to all have housed tunnel entrances would mean an entrance every few metres).
@chargrille What they've done is manage to obliterate their reputation, create a recognizable reputation as fascists happy to commit genocide and destroyed world support for Israel, AIPAC, ADL and other right wing fascists with horrific concomitant consequences for Jewish people everywhere. While butchering CHILDREN.
Add comment