War is complicated. You don’t shoot anywhere, any way and with any weapon. A fortiori when the enemy is an armed terrorist group which has chosen to blend into the civilian population. Since the start of the Israeli offensive in Gaza, following the barbaric attack on
Hamas in Israel on October 7, the Jerusalem authorities have always claimed to attack in order to reduce civilian losses, going so far as to warn the populations, by leaflets and text messages, of an imminent bombardment. The scale of the destruction of Gaza alone seemed until now to refute this claim.
An investigation of +972 Magazinemade up of Israeli and Palestinian journalists and whose credibility is strong, lifted the veil on the extent of the changes made by the Israeli army to expand the number of its targets – and collateral victims – thanks to a new ally, too. powerful and relentless, is artificial intelligence (AI).
The Israeli intelligence services are among the most effective in the world and, except for the gigantic blunder of not having foreseen the attack of October 7, they accumulate massive precise information on the Palestinians poured into a software called Lavender (“lavender”). ” in French). Most of the 2.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are thus registered. Lavender gives each person a score from 1 to 100 on how likely they are to be a militarily active activist. Among the variables: being part of a WhatsApp group with a known Hamas activist, changing cell phones or addresses regularly, identification during demonstrations, etc. An individual with several of these characteristics will achieve a high rating and become a potential assassination target.
“We cannot process so much information,” the Israeli officer who designed Lavender wrote in 2021. No matter how many people you have tasked with flushing out target people during the war: you won’t be able to identify them all in time. »
Now it’s done. In total, approximately 37,000 people were considered close to or members of Hamas at the time of October 7. Lavender can also indicate the location of targets to be taken down, through constant surveillance.
According to six intelligence officers, about two weeks after the October 7 attack, the military began bombing targets suggested by Lavender. The decision was methodical. Intelligence removed a sample of several hundred targeted individuals from Lavender to cross-check its accuracy. The AI was right 90% of the time. So wrong one time out of 10. “From this moment on, written +972, sources assure that if Lavender decided that an individual was a Hamas militant, it was essentially taken as an order. »
“Allow us to attack automatically [les agents juniors], it’s the Holy Grail, says one of the sources. Once you accept their automatic designation, target generation goes crazy. » A single human maneuver, lasting 20 seconds, was necessary to do a final sorting: choosing only the men.
The “Where’s Dad?” system. »
“Rules of engagement” govern all professional military action. This concerns in particular the level of civilian casualties that we are prepared to tolerate. Before October 7, the Israelis targeted targets in combat, transport or assembly situations. It is obviously easier to locate them when they are sleeping, at home, with women and children. After October 7, the rule was changed to attack them at their homes. An automated system was designed, coldly titled “Where’s Dad?” “.
Lavender distinguishes between Hamas leaders, the prime targets, and less important junior militants. For leaders, the army sends its intelligent, precise bombs capable of destroying entire buildings. For junior activists, so-called “stupid” bombs are thrown at their buildings. “You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it costs the country a lot of money and there is a shortage [de ces bombes] “, said one of the officers.
Another testifies: “It was very surprising that we were asked to bomb a house to kill a Hamas infantryman whose importance in the fighting was low. ” It was still, he adds, “more ethical than the targets we bomb for simple ‘deterrence’ purposes — buildings that are evacuated and overturned just to provoke
destruction. »
Each of these changes requires determining how many civilian lives the military is willing to sacrifice to mow down a junior militant. Before October 7, the answer was: none. After: up to 15 or 20. For a commander, this now goes up to 100 civilians sacrificed. An American general, Peter Gersten, has already indicated that, in the war against the Islamic State group, if the American army judges that a strike against a target will kill 15 people, it must have authorization from the head of central command , as it was
unusual.
The Israeli army categorically denies this information and assures that, “in all cases, an independent examination by an analyst [du renseignement] is required, which verifies that the identified targets are legitimate targets.” The sources cited by +972in collaboration with Local Call, are not the only ones to question this assertion. The Biden administration has repeatedly reiterated that, in its view, Israel is not taking all necessary measures to avoid civilian casualties.
A source explains that, when the pool of targets was too small, the criteria were sometimes relaxed. “We were constantly under pressure: ‘Bring us more goals.’ » She adds: “There were times when a Hamas operative was defined more broadly. The machine began to point out all kinds of civil protection personnel, police officers, on whom it would be a shame to waste bombs. »
Then there is the fact that the targets move more than their families. “There were several times when I attacked a house, but the person wasn’t even home,” a source said. The result is that you killed a family for no reason. »
The legitimate military objective — destroying Hamas’s military capability — is one thing, the feeling of revenge is another. All sources interviewed by +972 claim that the Hamas massacres of October 7 and the hostage taking greatly influenced the shooting policy and the extent of collateral damage. “At the beginning,” testifies one of these sources, “the atmosphere was painful and vindictive. » She served in a targeted operating room. “The rules were very lenient. They demolished four buildings despite knowing the target was in one of them. It was crazy. »