American killed in West Bank was longtime activist ‘bearing witness to oppression’, friends say

Ayşenur Eygi ‘was not a naive traveler – This experience was the culmination of all her years of activism’, says professor

by Sam Levin in Los Angeles Sat 7 Sep 2024 00.48 BST

| [!Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, at her graduation from the University of Washington earlier this year (Eygi family/International Solidarity Movement/AP)](https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/06/aysenur-eygi-american-killed-west-bank) | |:--:| | Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, at her graduation from the University of Washington earlier this year (Eygi family/International Solidarity Movement/AP) |

Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old American activist killed while protesting in the occupied West Bank, was remembered by friends and former professors as a dedicated organizer who felt a strong moral obligation to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians.

"I begged her not to go, but she had this deep conviction that she wanted to participate in the tradition of bearing witness to the oppression of people and their dignified resilience," said Aria Fani, a professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, which Eygi attended. "She fought injustice truly wherever it was."

Fani, who had become close with Eygi over the last year, spoke to the Guardian on Friday afternoon, hours after news of her death sparked international outrage. Eygi was volunteering with the anti-occupation International Solidarity Movement when Israeli soldiers fatally shot her, according to Palestinian officials and two witnesses who spoke to the Associated Press. Two doctors told the AP she was shot in the head. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said it was investigating a report that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an "instigator of violent activity", and the White House has said it was "deeply disturbed" by the killing and called for an inquiry.

Eygi, who is also a Turkish citizen and leaves behind her husband, graduated from UW earlier this year with a major in psychology and minor in Middle Eastern languages and culture, Fani said. She walked the stage with a large "Free Palestine" flag during the ceremony, Fani said.

| [!A stage with purple accents, and a woman holding a large Palestinian flag that say ‘Free Palestine.](https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/06/aysenur-eygi-american-killed-west-bank) | |:--:| | Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi (top) at her graduation (Courtesy of Aria Fani) |

The professor said the two met when he was giving a guest lecture in a course on feminist cinema of the Middle East and he spoke of his own experience protesting in the West Bank in 2013.

"I had no idea she would then be inspired to take on a similar experience," he said, recounting how she reached out to him for advice as she prepared to join the International Solidarity Movement. "I tried to discourage her, but from a very weak position, since I'd already done it myself. She was very, very principled in her activism in this short life that she lived."

In her final academic year, she devoted significant time "researching and speaking to Palestinians and talking about their historical trauma", Fani said. "She was incredibly well-informed of what life was like in the West Bank. She was not a naive traveler. This experience was the culmination of all her years of activism."

> She fought injustice truly wherever it was

Aria Fani, University of Washington in Seattle

Eygi was an organizer with the Popular University for Gaza Liberated Zone on UW's campus, one of dozens of pro-Palestinian encampments established during protests in the spring, he said. "She was an instrumental part of ... protesting the university's ties to Boeing and Israel and spearheading negotiations with the UW administration," Fani said. "It mattered to her so much. I'd see her sometimes after she'd only slept for an hour or two. I'd tell her to take a nap. And she'd say: 'Nope, I have other things to do.' She dedicated so much, and managed to graduate on top of it, which is just astounding."

He warned her of the violence he had faced in the West Bank, including teargas, and he feared deeply for her safety: "I thought, worst-case scenario, she'd come back losing a limb. I had no idea she'd be coming back wrapped in a shroud," he said.

Eygi had also previously protested the oil pipeline on the Standing Rock reservation, and was critical of Turkish nationalism and violence against Kurdish minorities, Fani said: "She was very critical of US foreign policy and white supremacy in the US, and Israel was no exception."

Carrie Perrin, academic services director of UW's psychology department, told the Seattle Times in an email that Eygi was a friend and a "bright light who carried with her warmth and compassion", adding: "Her communities were made better by her life and her death leaves hearts breaking around the world today."

Ana Mari Cauce, the UW president, said Eygi had been a peer mentor in psychology who "helped welcome new students to the department and provided a positive influence in their lives".

Fani said Eygi had been deeply dismayed by the UW administration's handling of campus protests, and that he hoped her killing would encourage campus administrators across the country to end their crackdowns on pro-Palestinian activism.

Eygi's killing drew immediate comparisons to the 2003 killing of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American, also from Washington state, who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer while protesting the military's destruction of homes in Rafah with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

ISM said in a statement that the group had been engaged in a peaceful, weekly demonstration before Israeli forces shot Eygi: "The demonstration, which primarily involved men and children praying, was met with force from the Israeli army stationed on a hill."

Eygi's family released a statement on Saturday through the ISM, calling for an independent investigation to "ensure full accountability for the guilty parties", and remembering Eygi as a "loving daughter, sister, partner, and aunt".

"She was gentle, brave, silly, supportive, and a ray of sunshine," her family said. "She wore her heart on her sleeves. She felt a deep responsibility to serve others and lived a life of caring for those in need with action. She was a fiercely passionate human rights activist her whole life -- a steadfast and staunch advocate of justice."

Fani and a colleague spoke earlier about the irony of her killing garnering an international response, he said: "She wanted to bring attention to the suffering of Palestinians. And if she were alive right now, she'd say: 'I got that attention because I'm an American citizen, because Palestinians have become a number. The human cost has been strategically hidden from the American public and certainly from the Israeli public.' ... Obviously this is not the outcome she would have wanted, but it is just so poetic, in such a twisted, stomach-churning way, that she went this way."

The professor recounted the musicality in the way Eygi spoke, and said he used to joke that he wanted to study her voice: "She was so easy to talk to and truly an embodiment of the meaning of her name, Ayşenur, which is 'life and light'. She was just an incredibly beautiful person and good friend and the world is a worse place without her."

ארכיון

> > > מעסקת ג'יבריל ועד שחרור שליט, הלקח ההיסטורי ברור: ככל שישראל מתייחסת לחטיפות כאירוע אסטרטגי ומוכנה לשלם מחירים גבוהים, כך אויבינו מגבירים את המאמצים לחטוף > >

> > > ב־1 בינואר 2020 שוחררו ממאסר סודקי אלמקת ואמל אבו־סלאח ("זקן האסירים הסורים"), שריגלו בישראל לטובת סוריה, בתמורה להגעת גופתו של זכריה באומל, שנפל בקרב סולטן־יעקוב ב־1982. אף שהשניים זכו – כמו משוחררי עסקאות אחרות – לכבוד ויקר מצד שונאינו, האירוע לא עורר ביקורת ציבורית משמעותית, ובצדק. העסקה הייתה סבירה: שני מרגלים מזדקנים וזוטרים תמורת הבאה לקבר ישראל של חלל צה"ל, וסיום סאגה ארוכה של סבל למשפחה ולעם. > >

> > > עסקאות שכאלה, קטנות יחסית, עם רציונל ברור ותמורת מחיר סביר, נעשו לא מעט בהיסטוריה של מדינת ישראל. חלקן אפילו אחרי מבצעים שבהם צה"ל חטף בעצמו חיילי אויב כדי להגיע לעסקה, כמו ב"מבצע ארגז" של סיירת מטכ"ל ב־1972, שבו נחטפו קצינים סורים בכירים כדי לשחרר שני טייסים ונווט שנפלו בשבי שנתיים לפני כן. > >

> > > עסקאות מסוג שני הן חילופי שבויים אחרי מלחמות. חילופים כאלה התאפיינו בפערים מספריים ניכרים. שתי הדוגמאות הקיצוניות הן מלחמת ששת הימים, עם יחס של 1 ל־447, ומבצע סיני עם 1 ל־1,375. ישראל תמיד שחררה יותר מאשר קיבלה, אבל ההיגיון היה ברור. במקרה הזה לא מדובר בהחלטה ערכית, אלא בתוצאת ההצלחה של צה"ל. לקחנו בשבי הרבה יותר חיילי אויב, והכלל הוא שאחרי המלחמה משחררים את כולם, בלי קשר ליחס המספרי. > >

> > > מכאן לסוג שלישי של עסקאות חילופים, בעלות פרופיל ציבורי שונה, מחירים גבוהים והשלכות מרחיקות לכת. לא פעם הן שנויות במחלוקת פוליטית וציבורית, ומפירות עקרונות מדיניוּת שממשלות קודמות עמדו עליהם. > >

> > > כדי להבין את המגמה ההיסטורית ביחס לעסקאות הללו, נשוב אחורה בזמן. נפתח ב־1968, כאשר מטוס אל־על נחטף לאלג'יר על ידי ארגון "החזית העממית" של ג'ורג' חבש. ישראל ויתרה על קו אדום ראשון, שלא לשאת ולתת עם הטרור, ושחררה כ־20 מחבלים "בלי דם על הידיים". אירוע דומה התרחש בשנה שלאחר מכן, עם מטוס שנחטף על ידי אש"ף לדמשק. ישראל הגבירה את אבטחת המטוסים, וב־1976 אף שחררה חטופים במבצע אנטבה הנועז. > >

> > > בתקופה זו ישראל עמדה עדיין על שני "קווים אדומים": משחררים רק מחבלים בלי דם על הידיים, והם לא משוחררים בישראל. כך היה עד לשלטון מנחם בגין. ב־1978 נחטף בלבנון חייל המילואים אברהם עמרם בידי ארגונו של אחמד ג'יבריל. בגין, מגדולי המטיפים ליד קשה נגד הטרור, לא עמד בלחץ המשפחה, וב־1979 שחרר תמורתו 76 מחבלים – בהם כאלה עם דם על הידיים, שאף נשפטו למאסרי עולם. > >

> > > ההתנגדות משמאל לעסקה הייתה נחרצת, ונגד הממשלה הוגשה הצעת אי־אמון. גם רבין התנגד, ויגאל אלון מתח בכנסת ביקורת: > >

> > > "מצוות פדיון שבויים מקובלת על כולם… אף על פי כן, בצדק, בצדק גמור, דבקו כל ממשלות ישראל עד כה בעיקרון של אי־כניעה לניסיונות סחיטה של המחבלים. בצדק, בצדק גמור, סוכנו חיי חיילים ואזרחים כדי לשמור על עיקרון זה… בזה היה העם מלוכד כולו למרות הכאב על הנופלים ועל אף ייסוריהן של משפחות בני הערובה… הטפנו וחזרנו והטפנו לכל ממשלות העולם שאסור להיכנע לסחיטות המחבלים. גינינו את אלה שנכנעו ושיבחנו את אלה שעמדו בפני הסחיטה. שכן כניעה למחבלים פירושה אחד ויחיד: ניצחון לטרור והזמנת מעשי סחטנות טרוריסטית נוספים… לא חיסכון בדם יש בכניעה לטרור, אלא סיכון ממשי מאוד של הגברת שפיכות הדמים בעתיד". > >

> > > שר הביטחון דאז עזר ויצמן תמך בעסקה, בנימוק שכך יֵדע כל חייל "כי המדינה כולה עומדת לימינו ונחלצת להגנתו", ושבמקרה הזה "פעולה צבאית הייתה חסרת אפשרות", ולכן הדילמה הייתה להפקיר את אברהם עמרם או לפדות אותו במחיר הנדרש. > >

> > > הדיונים שליוו את ההחלטות הללו מעלים כמה מכנים משותפים. ראשית, פדיון שבויים הוא תמיד דילמה אמיתית. לכל צד יש נימוקים רגשיים וענייניים. שנית, מכיוון שמבַצעי העסקאות נמצאים תחת לחץ ציבורי ופוליטי, כמעט תמיד הם מסתירים מידע רלוונטי מהציבור ומהאופוזיציה. ואחרון, למרבה האירוניה, לא אחת קרה שנציגי הציבור שביקרו את הממשלה שחתמה על העסקה והשמיעו טיעונים כבדי משקל, שחררו בתורם המוני מחבלים תוך נזק אסטרטגי ניכר. > >

> > > נשוב להיסטוריה. הסכר נפרץ כאמור אצל בגין, וכפי שקורה כשנורמות קורסות, הזרזיף הפך לשיטפון. ב־1982 נשבו בלבנון שמונה חיילי נח"ל, בנסיבות לא מחמיאות. ב־1983 שוחררו שישה מהם, שהוחזקו על ידי הפת"ח, בעסקה תקדימית. 4,700 מחבלים שהוחזקו במחנה אנצאר שוחררו – רבים מהם היו חלק משמעותי מהתשתית שנגדה נלחמנו בלבנון – ובנוסף שוחררו וגורשו עוד כמעט מאה אסירים ביטחוניים, חלקם עם דם על הידיים. זה היה הישג עצום לפת"ח, שקיבל חיזוק משמעותי תוך כדי המלחמה. > >

> > > בסוף אוגוסט הפתיע בגין בהודעת פרישה, ועל העסקה חתמו יצחק שמיר כראש ממשלה ושר הביטחון משה ארנס. בשנה שלאחר מכן הם השיגו עסקה טובה יותר מול הסורים: שישה ישראלים וחמש גופות חיילים, תמורת 291 חיילים סורים שבויים, 73 גופות חיילים סורים, ו־21 אסירים. ממילא העסקה הזו השתייכה יותר להגדרה של חילופי שבויים, ולכן הייתה פחות שנויה במחלוקת. > >

> > > האירוע הדרמטי ביותר עד אז התרחש ב־1985, תחת ממשלת אחדות לאומית, עם פרס כראש ממשלה ורבין כשר ביטחון: "עסקת ג'יבריל". שני החיילים שנותרו בשבי מתקרית הנח"ל, ועוד חייל שנשבה בקרב סולטן־יעקוב, שוחררו תמורת 1,150 מחבלים, בהם אחמד יאסין וג'יבריל רג'וב, ומבצעי פיגועים רצחניים. > >

> > > נציין ארבע נקודות חשובות ביחס לעסקת ג'יבריל. ראשית, השמאל שהתנגד ב־1979, תמך הפעם בעסקה (למעט יצחק נבון). שנית, העסקה החייתה את תשתית הטרור בדרום לבנון ובתוניס. שלישית, לא רק ששוחררו מחבלים בולטים, אלא קו אדום נוסף קרס: מאות שוחררו לעזה וליו"ש. ואחרונה, אנשי ביטחון רבים משוכנעים שהעסקה הייתה סיבה מרכזית לפריצת האינתיפאדה הראשונה ב־1987. כלומר, לעסקה היו השלכות אסטרטגיות. > >

> > > נדלג כעת על כמה מאורעות פחות חשובים, כמו חטיפת מטוס TWA חודש אחרי עסקת ג'יבריל ושחרור 700 מחבלים שיעים – עסקה שקיומה הוכחש על ידי הממשלה, וחטיפתו ורציחתו של נחשון וקסמן ב־1994. נקודת הציון הבאה היא הבריחה מלבנון במאי 2000, תחת ממשלת אהוד ברק. בעקבותיה נשא נסראללה את נאום קורי העכביש, והתרחשו שני אירועים דרמטיים: בספטמבר 2000 פרצה האינתיפאדה השנייה (תוצאה מובהקת של אותה "נסיגה"), ובאוקטובר 2000 ביצע חיזבאללה פיגוע בגבול וחטף שלושה חיילים, שבדיעבד התברר שנהרגו: בני אברהם, עדי אביטן ועומר סואעד. בנוסף נחטף אלחנן טננבוים. > >

> > > ב־2004 הוחזרו טננבוים וגופות החיילים תמורת 60 גופות מחבלים, 401 אסירים פלסטינים, ועוד 29 לא פלסטינים. בין המשוחררים גם מוסטפא דיראני ושייח' עבד אל־כרים עובייד, שהוחזקו כדי להשיג מידע על רון ארד, וארבעה מחבלים לבנונים שהרגו חיילי צה"ל. הם התקבלו בטקסי ראווה, ונסראללה הוסיף איום: "ישראל עוד תצטער על כך שלא שיחררה היום את סמיר קונטאר" (הרוצח הנתעב של משפחת הרן בנהריה, ב־1979). > >

> > > אם כן, בתחילת שנות האלפיים חזרו החטיפות להיות נשק אסטרטגי מובהק של ארגוני הטרור, כולל מבצע מתוכנן ומושקע של פיגוע וחטיפה משטח ישראל לשטח האויב. המוכנות של ישראל לשלם מחירים גבוהים על שחרור חטופים, כולל הרוגים, וקריסת כל הקווים האדומים, הפכה אותן למשתלמות. ואומנם, ב־25 ביוני 2006 נחטף לעזה גלעד שליט מאזור כרם־שלום, וב־12 ביולי 2006 ביצע חיזבאללה פיגוע דומה לזה שביצע בשנת 2000, וחטף ללבנון את גופותיהם של אלדד רגב ואהוד גולדווסר. > >

> > > גם שני אירועי החטיפה הללו הפכו לאסטרטגיים. נתחיל בחיזבאללה, שאירוע החטיפה שלו התפתח למלחמת לבנון השנייה. חיזבאללה ספג מהלומה שלא ציפה לה, וייתכן שמשום כך עסקאות חילופי השבויים שאחריה היו סבירות יותר. ביולי 2008, תמורת גופות רגב וגולדווסר, שוחרר סמיר קונטאר עם עוד 4 אנשי חיזבאללה, 5 פלסטינים, וקרוב ל־200 גופות מחבלים. קונטאר, ששב כמובן לטרור, היה סמל מבחינת נסראללה ושחרורו שנוי במחלוקת, אבל כעסקה הפרמטרים הללו סבירים יותר מעסקאות אחרות. > >

> > > מול חמאס וגלעד שליט בעזה הסיפור היה שונה בתכלית. ב־2011 החליט ראש הממשלה נתניהו, שביקר לפני כן בתוקף עסקאות שחרור מחבלים, לשחרר את שליט תמורת 1,027 אסירים ביטחוניים, 280 מהם מפגעים ורוצחים, ובהם כידוע גם יחיא סינוואר. ח'אלד משעל ואיסמעיל הנייה התגאו בהישג והבטיחו חטיפות נוספות "כל עוד יש אסירים פלסטינים". > >

> > > כצפוי, רבים מהאסירים ששוחררו שבו לפעילות טרור, ועוד לפני 7 באוקטובר חלקם היו קשורים לרצח ישראלים. האירוע הקשה ביותר היה החטיפה והרצח בגוש עציון של שלושת הנערים, יעקב נפתלי פרנקל, גיל־עד שער ואייל יפרח, שיזם וניהל מחמוד קוואסמה, משוחרר העסקה. החטיפה התגלגלה למבצע צוק איתן, שבו נחשפה רשת של מנהרות חוצות גדר, שבין השאר נועדה לפיגועי חטיפה במתווה דומה לחטיפת שליט. כל זה עוד לפני מתקפת 7 באוקטובר, שכללה מתווה חטיפות שעליו אנו משלמים עד היום. > >

> > > נסכם. המשוואה הזו אולי קשה לעיכול, אבל ההיסטוריה ברורה מאוד: ככל שישראל מתייחסת לחטיפות כאירוע אסטרטגי, ככל שהיא מוכנה לשלם מחירים יותר גבוהים, ככל שהיא מבטלת כל קו אדום – כך אויבינו רואים בחטיפות נשק אסטרטגי יותר, ומגבירים את המאמצים לחטוף. > >

> > > ישראל יצרה מערכת תמריצים לטרור, שבשיאה חטיפת ישראלים היא פעולת הטרור המתגמלת ביותר. את האמת הזו אמרו פעם בבירור ובאומץ מנהיגים לאומיים בשמאל ובימין: כניעה לטרור החטיפות תוביל רק ליותר הרוגים ויותר חטופים. האינטואיציה הזו מבוססת – את ההסלמה הזו חווינו על בשרנו. במונחי מדיניות זו טענה פשוטה ומוכחת; הצרה היא שבמונחים ציבוריים נראה שקשה לשמר אותה לאורך זמן, לפחות במדינת היהודים. > >

> > > מכיוון שכל הקווים האדומים קרסו, גם הדרישות מאיתנו עלו בהתאם. אם בעבר הדרישה הייתה שתמורת חטופים ישוחררו מחבלים בכמות ובאיכות שתהיה להן משמעות אסטרטגית, היום הדרישה היא שישראל תוותר על היעדים האסטרטגיים של המלחמה בעזה. חטופים תמורת כניעה, זו העסקה. זה כבר לא קו אדום, זה קו שאין ממנו חזרה. > >

> > > צריך לעשות כל מאמץ להשבת החטופים, וכך היה מוסכם תמיד על כולם. אבל יש הבדל בין "לעשות כל מאמץ" ובין "לשלם כל מחיר". את ההבדל הזה הבינו ממשלות ישראל היטב – עד שהסכר נפרץ, ומה שהתחיל בטפטוף של מחבלים משוחררים, נגמר בשטף של דם בעוטף עזה. כמו במקרי הבריחות והנסיגות, האזהרות נגד העסקאות השנויות במחלוקת התממשו; הן אכן גרמו לעוד הרוגים וחטופים רבים. זו המציאות, ולכן את התהליך הזה חייבים לעצור. > >

‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza

The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.

By Yuval Abraham | April 3, 2024

In 2021, a book titled "The Human-Machine Team: How to Create Synergy Between Human and Artificial Intelligence That Will Revolutionize Our World" was released in English under the pen name "Brigadier General Y.S." In it, the author --- a man who we confirmed to be the current commander of the elite Israeli intelligence unit 8200 --- makes the case for designing a special machine that could rapidly process massive amounts of data to generate thousands of potential "targets" for military strikes in the heat of a war. Such technology, he writes, would resolve what he described as a "human bottleneck for both locating the new targets and decision-making to approve the targets."

Such a machine, it turns out, actually exists. A new investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals that the Israeli army has developed an artificial intelligence-based program known as "Lavender," unveiled here for the first time. According to six Israeli intelligence officers, who have all served in the army during the current war on the Gaza Strip and had first-hand involvement with the use of AI to generate targets for assassination, Lavender has played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war. In fact, according to the sources, its influence on the military's operations was such that they essentially treated the outputs of the AI machine "as if it were a human decision."

Formally, the Lavender system is designed to mark all suspected operatives in the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), including low-ranking ones, as potential bombing targets. The sources told +972 and Local Call that, during the first weeks of the war, the army almost completely relied on Lavender, which clocked as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants --- and their homes --- for possible air strikes.

During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender's kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a "rubber stamp" for the machine's decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about "20 seconds" to each target before authorizing a bombing --- just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as "errors" in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.

Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes --- usually at night while their whole families were present --- rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called "Where's Daddy?" also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family's residences.

| [!Palestinians transport the wounded and try to put out a fire after an Israeli airstrike on a house in the Shaboura refugee camp in the city of Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, November 17, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) | |:--:| | Palestinians transport the wounded and try to put out a fire after an Israeli airstrike on a house in the Shaboura refugee camp in the city of Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, November 17, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90) |

The result, as the sources testified, is that thousands of Palestinians --- most of them women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting --- were wiped out by Israeli airstrikes, especially during the first weeks of the war, because of the AI program's decisions.

"We were not interested in killing \[Hamas\] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity," A., an intelligence officer, told +972 and Local Call. "On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It's much easier to bomb a family's home. The system is built to look for them in these situations."

The Lavender machine joins another AI system, "The Gospel," about which information was revealed in a previous investigation by +972 and Local Call in November 2023, as well as in the Israeli military's own publications. A fundamental difference between the two systems is in the definition of the target: whereas The Gospel marks buildings and structures that the army claims militants operate from, Lavender marks people --- and puts them on a kill list.

In addition, according to the sources, when it came to targeting alleged junior militants marked by Lavender, the army preferred to only use unguided missiles, commonly known as "dumb" bombs (in contrast to "smart" precision bombs), which can destroy entire buildings on top of their occupants and cause significant casualties. "You don't want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people --- it's very expensive for the country and there's a shortage \[of those bombs\]," said C., one of the intelligence officers. Another source said that they had personally authorized the bombing of "hundreds" of private homes of alleged junior operatives marked by Lavender, with many of these attacks killing civilians and entire families as "collateral damage."

In an unprecedented move, according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians; in the past, the military did not authorize any "collateral damage" during assassinations of low-ranking militants. The sources added that, in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander.

| [!Palestinians wait to receive the bodies of their relatives who were killed in an Israeli airstrike, at Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, October 24, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) | |:--:| | Palestinians wait to receive the bodies of their relatives who were killed in an Israeli airstrike, at Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, October 24, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90) |

The following investigation is organized according to the six chronological stages of the Israeli army's highly automated target production in the early weeks of the Gaza war. First, we explain the Lavender machine itself, which marked tens of thousands of Palestinians using AI. Second, we reveal the "Where's Daddy?" system, which tracked these targets and signaled to the army when they entered their family homes. Third, we describe how "dumb" bombs were chosen to strike these homes.

Fourth, we explain how the army loosened the permitted number of civilians who could be killed during the bombing of a target. Fifth, we note how automated software inaccurately calculated the amount of non-combatants in each household. And sixth, we show how on several occasions, when a home was struck, usually at night, the individual target was sometimes not inside at all, because military officers did not verify the information in real time.

STEP 1: GENERATING TARGETS

'Once you go automatic, target generation goes crazy'

In the Israeli army, the term "human target" referred in the past to a senior military operative who, according to the rules of the military's International Law Department, can be killed in their private home even if there are civilians around. Intelligence sources told +972 and Local Call that during Israel's previous wars, since this was an "especially brutal" way to kill someone --- often by killing an entire family alongside the target --- such human targets were marked very carefully and only senior military commanders were bombed in their homes, to maintain the principle of proportionality under international law.

But after October 7 --- when Hamas-led militants launched a deadly assault on southern Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and abducting 240 --- the army, the sources said, took a dramatically different approach. Under "Operation Iron Swords," the army decided to designate all operatives of Hamas' military wing as human targets, regardless of their rank or military importance. And that changed everything.

The new policy also posed a technical problem for Israeli intelligence. In previous wars, in order to authorize the assassination of a single human target, an officer had to go through a complex and lengthy "incrimination" process: cross-check evidence that the person was indeed a senior member of Hamas' military wing, find out where he lived, his contact information, and finally know when he was home in real time. When the list of targets numbered only a few dozen senior operatives, intelligence personnel could individually handle the work involved in incriminating and locating them. | [!Palestinians try to rescue survivors and pull bodies from the rubble after Israeli airstrikes hit buildings near Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, October 22, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun)](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) | |:--:| | Palestinians try to rescue survivors and pull bodies from the rubble after Israeli airstrikes hit buildings near Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, October 22, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun) |

However, once the list was expanded to include tens of thousands of lower-ranking operatives, the Israeli army figured it had to rely on automated software and artificial intelligence. The result, the sources testify, was that the role of human personnel in incriminating Palestinians as military operatives was pushed aside, and AI did most of the work instead. According to four of the sources who spoke to +972 and Local Call, Lavender --- which was developed to create human targets in the current war --- has marked some 37,000 Palestinians as suspected "Hamas militants," most of them junior, for assassination (the IDF Spokesperson denied the existence of such a kill list in a statement to +972 and Local Call).

"We didn't know who the junior operatives were, because Israel didn't track them routinely \[before the war\]," explained senior officer B. to +972 and Local Call, illuminating the reason behind the development of this particular target machine for the current war. "They wanted to allow us to attack \[the junior operatives\] automatically. That's the Holy Grail. Once you go automatic, target generation goes crazy."

The sources said that the approval to automatically adopt Lavender's kill lists, which had previously been used only as an auxiliary tool, was granted about two weeks into the war, after intelligence personnel "manually" checked the accuracy of a random sample of several hundred targets selected by the AI system. When that sample found that Lavender's results had reached 90 percent accuracy in identifying an individual's affiliation with Hamas, the army authorized the sweeping use of the system. From that moment, sources said that if Lavender decided an individual was a militant in Hamas, they were essentially asked to treat that as an order, with no requirement to independently check why the machine made that choice or to examine the raw intelligence data on which it is based.

"At 5 a.m., ][\[the air force\]][ would come and bomb all the houses that we had marked," B. said. "We took out thousands of people. We didn't go through them one by one --- we put everything into automated systems, and as soon as one of \[the marked individuals\] was at home, he immediately became a target. We bombed him and his house."

"It was very surprising for me that we were asked to bomb a house to kill a ground soldier, whose importance in the fighting was so low," said one source about the use of AI to mark alleged low-ranking militants. "I nicknamed those targets 'garbage targets.' Still, I found them more ethical than the targets that we bombed just for 'deterrence' --- highrises that are evacuated and toppled just to cause destruction."

The deadly results of this loosening of restrictions in the early stage of the war were staggering. According to data from the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, on which the Israeli army has relied almost exclusively since the beginning of the war, Israel killed some 15,000 Palestinians --- almost half of the death toll so far --- in the first six weeks of the war, up until a week-long ceasefire was agreed on Nov. 24.

| [!Massive destruction is seen in Al-Rimal popular district of Gaza City after it was targeted by airstrikes carried out by Israeli colonial, October 10, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun)](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) | |:--:| | Massive destruction is seen in Al-Rimal popular district of Gaza City after it was targeted by airstrikes carried out by Israeli colonial, October 10, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun) |

'The more information and variety, the better'

The Lavender software analyzes information collected on most of the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip through a system of mass surveillance, then assesses and ranks the likelihood that each particular person is active in the military wing of Hamas or PIJ. According to sources, the machine gives almost every single person in Gaza a rating from 1 to 100, expressing how likely it is that they are a militant.

Lavender learns to identify characteristics of known Hamas and PIJ operatives, whose information was fed to the machine as training data, and then to locate these same characteristics --- also called "features" --- among the general population, the sources explained. An individual found to have several different incriminating features will reach a high rating, and thus automatically becomes a potential target for assassination.

In "The Human-Machine Team," the book referenced at the beginning of this article, the current commander of Unit 8200 advocates for such a system without referencing Lavender by name. (The commander himself also isn't named, but five sources in 8200 confirmed that the commander is the author, as reported also by Haaretz.) Describing human personnel as a "bottleneck" that limits the army's capacity during a military operation, the commander laments: "We \[humans\] cannot process so much information. It doesn't matter how many people you have tasked to produce targets during the war --- you still cannot produce enough targets per day."

The solution to this problem, he says, is artificial intelligence. The book offers a short guide to building a "target machine," similar in description to Lavender, based on AI and machine-learning algorithms. Included in this guide are several examples of the "hundreds and thousands" of features that can increase an individual's rating, such as being in a Whatsapp group with a known militant, changing cell phone every few months, and changing addresses frequently.

"The more information, and the more variety, the better," the commander writes. "Visual information, cellular information, social media connections, battlefield information, phone contacts, photos." While humans select these features at first, the commander continues, over time the machine will come to identify features on its own. This, he says, can enable militaries to create "tens of thousands of targets," while the actual decision as to whether or not to attack them will remain a human one.

The book isn't the only time a senior Israeli commander hinted at the existence of human target machines like Lavender. +972 and Local Call have obtained footage of a private lecture given by the commander of Unit 8200's secretive Data Science and AI center, "Col. Yoav," at Tel Aviv University's AI week in 2023, which was reported on at the time in the Israeli media.

In the lecture, the commander speaks about a new, sophisticated target machine used by the Israeli army that detects "dangerous people" based on their likeness to existing lists of known militants on which it was trained. "Using the system, we managed to identify Hamas missile squad commanders," "Col. Yoav" said in the lecture, referring to Israel's May 2021 military operation in Gaza, when the machine was used for the first time.

| [!Slides from a lecture presentation by the commander of IDF Unit 8200’s Data Science and AI center at Tel Aviv University in 2023, obtained by +972 and Local Call.](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) | |:--:| | Slides from a lecture presentation by the commander of IDF Unit 8200’s Data Science and AI center at Tel Aviv University in 2023, obtained by +972 and Local Call. |

| [!Slides from a lecture presentation by the commander of IDF Unit 8200’s Data Science and AI center at Tel Aviv University in 2023, obtained by +972 and Local Call.](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) | |:--:| | Slides from a lecture presentation by the commander of IDF Unit 8200’s Data Science and AI center at Tel Aviv University in 2023, obtained by +972 and Local Call. |

The lecture presentation slides, also obtained by +972 and Local Call, contain illustrations of how the machine works: it is fed data about existing Hamas operatives, it learns to notice their features, and then it rates other Palestinians based on how similar they are to the militants.

"We rank the results and determine the threshold \[at which to attack a target\]," "Col. Yoav" said in the lecture, emphasizing that "eventually, people of flesh and blood take the decisions. In the defense realm, ethically speaking, we put a lot of emphasis on this. These tools are meant to help \[intelligence officers\] break their barriers."

In practice, however, sources who have used Lavender in recent months say human agency and precision were substituted by mass target creation and lethality.

'There was no "zero-error" policy'

B., a senior officer who used Lavender, echoed to +972 and Local Call that in the current war, officers were not required to independently review the AI system's assessments, in order to save time and enable the mass production of human targets without hindrances.

"Everything was statistical, everything was neat --- it was very dry," B. said. He noted that this lack of supervision was permitted despite internal checks showing that Lavender's calculations were considered accurate only 90 percent of the time; in other words, it was known in advance that 10 percent of the human targets slated for assassination were not members of the Hamas military wing at all.

For example, sources explained that the Lavender machine sometimes mistakenly flagged individuals who had communication patterns similar to known Hamas or PIJ operatives --- including police and civil defense workers, militants' relatives, residents who happened to have a name and nickname identical to that of an operative, and Gazans who used a device that once belonged to a Hamas operative.

"How close does a person have to be to Hamas to be \[considered by an AI machine to be\] affiliated with the organization?" said one source critical of Lavender's inaccuracy. "It's a vague boundary. Is a person who doesn't receive a salary from Hamas, but helps them with all sorts of things, a Hamas operative? Is someone who was in Hamas in the past, but is no longer there today, a Hamas operative? Each of these features --- characteristics that a machine would flag as suspicious --- is inaccurate."

| [!Palestinians at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 24, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) | |:--:| | Palestinians at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 24, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90) |

Similar problems exist with the ability of target machines to assess the phone used by an individual marked for assassination. "In war, Palestinians change phones all the time," said the source. "People lose contact with their families, give their phone to a friend or a wife, maybe lose it. There is no way to rely 100 percent on the automatic mechanism that determines which \[phone\] number belongs to whom."

According to the sources, the army knew that the minimal human supervision in place would not discover these faults. "There was no 'zero-error' policy. Mistakes were treated statistically," said a source who used Lavender. "Because of the scope and magnitude, the protocol was that even if you don't know for sure that the machine is right, you know that statistically it's fine. So you go for it."

"It has proven itself," said B., the senior source. "There's something about the statistical approach that sets you to a certain norm and standard. There has been an illogical amount of \[bombings\] in this operation. This is unparalleled, in my memory. And I have much more trust in a statistical mechanism than a soldier who lost a friend two days ago. Everyone there, including me, lost people on October 7. The machine did it coldly. And that made it easier."

Another intelligence source, who defended the reliance on the Lavender-generated kill lists of Palestinian suspects, argued that it was worth investing an intelligence officer's time only to verify the information if the target was a senior commander in Hamas. "But when it comes to a junior militant, you don't want to invest manpower and time in it," he said. "In war, there is no time to incriminate every target. So you're willing to take the margin of error of using artificial intelligence, risking collateral damage and civilians dying, and risking attacking by mistake, and to live with it."

B. said that the reason for this automation was a constant push to generate more targets for assassination. "In a day without targets \[whose feature rating was sufficient to authorize a strike\], we attacked at a lower threshold. We were constantly being pressured: 'Bring us more targets.' They really shouted at us. We finished \[killing\] our targets very quickly."

He explained that when lowering the rating threshold of Lavender, it would mark more people as targets for strikes. "At its peak, the system managed to generate 37,000 people as potential human targets," said B. "But the numbers changed all the time, because it depends on where you set the bar of what a Hamas operative is. There were times when a Hamas operative was defined more broadly, and then the machine started bringing us all kinds of civil defense personnel, police officers, on whom it would be a shame to waste bombs. They help the Hamas government, but they don't really endanger soldiers."

| [!Palestinians at the site of a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, March 18, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) | |:--:| | Palestinians at the site of a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, March 18, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90) |

One source who worked with the military data science team that trained Lavender said that data collected from employees of the Hamas-run Internal Security Ministry, whom he does not consider to be militants, was also fed into the machine. "I was bothered by the fact that when Lavender was trained, they used the term 'Hamas operative' loosely, and included people who were civil defense workers in the training dataset," he said.

The source added that even if one believes these people deserve to be killed, training the system based on their communication profiles made Lavender more likely to select civilians by mistake when its algorithms were applied to the general population. "Since it's an automatic system that isn't operated manually by humans, the meaning of this decision is dramatic: it means you're including many people with a civilian communication profile as potential targets."

'We only checked that the target was a man'

The Israeli military flatly rejects these claims. In a statement to +972 and Local Call, the IDF Spokesperson denied using artificial intelligence to incriminate targets, saying these are merely "auxiliary tools that assist officers in the process of incrimination." The statement went on: "In any case, an independent examination by an \[intelligence\] analyst is required, which verifies that the identified targets are legitimate targets for attack, in accordance with the conditions set forth in IDF directives and international law."

However, sources said that the only human supervision protocol in place before bombing the houses of suspected "junior" militants marked by Lavender was to conduct a single check: ensuring that the AI-selected target is male rather than female. The assumption in the army was that if the target was a woman, the machine had likely made a mistake, because there are no women among the ranks of the military wings of Hamas and PIJ.

"A human being had to \[verify the target\] for just a few seconds," B. said, explaining that this became the protocol after realizing the Lavender system was "getting it right" most of the time. "At first, we did checks to ensure that the machine didn't get confused. But at some point we relied on the automatic system, and we only checked that \[the target\] was a man --- that was enough. It doesn't take a long time to tell if someone has a male or a female voice."

To conduct the male/female check, B. claimed that in the current war, "I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time. If \[the operative\] came up in the automated mechanism, and I checked that he was a man, there would be permission to bomb him, subject to an examination of collateral damage."

| [!Palestinians emerge from the rubble of houses destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in the city of Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, November 20, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) | |:--:| | Palestinians emerge from the rubble of houses destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in the city of Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, November 20, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90) |

In practice, sources said this meant that for civilian men marked in error by Lavender, there was no supervising mechanism in place to detect the mistake. According to B., a common error occurred "if the \[Hamas\] target gave \[his phone\] to his son, his older brother, or just a random man. That person will be bombed in his house with his family. This happened often. These were most of the mistakes caused by Lavender," B. said.

STEP 2: LINKING TARGETS TO FAMILY HOMES

'Most of the people you killed were women and children'

The next stage in the Israeli army's assassination procedure is identifying where to attack the targets that Lavender generates.

In a statement to +972 and Local Call, the IDF Spokesperson claimed in response to this article that "Hamas places its operatives and military assets in the heart of the civilian population, systematically uses the civilian population as human shields, and conducts fighting from within civilian structures, including sensitive sites such as hospitals, mosques, schools and UN facilities. The IDF is bound by and acts according to international law, directing its attacks only at military targets and military operatives."

The six sources we spoke to echoed this to some degree, saying that Hamas' extensive tunnel system deliberately passes under hospitals and schools; that Hamas militants use ambulances to get around; and that countless military assets have been situated near civilian buildings. The sources argued that many Israeli strikes kill civilians as a result of these tactics by Hamas --- a characterization that human rights groups warn evades Israel's onus for inflicting the casualties.

However, in contrast to the Israeli army's official statements, the sources explained that a major reason for the unprecedented death toll from Israel's current bombardment is the fact that the army has systematically attacked targets in their private homes, alongside their families --- in part because it was easier from an intelligence standpoint to mark family houses using automated systems.

[Indeed, several sources emphasized that, as opposed to numerous cases of Hamas operatives engaging in military activity from civilian areas, in the case of systematic assassination strikes, the army routinely made the active choice to bomb suspected militants when inside civilian households from which no military activity took place. This choice, they said, was a reflection of the way Israel's system of mass surveillance in Gaza is designed.]

| [!Palestinians rush to bring the wounded, including many children, to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as Israeli forces continue pounding the Gaza Strip, October 11, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills)](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) | |:--:| | Palestinians rush to bring the wounded, including many children, to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as Israeli forces continue pounding the Gaza Strip, October 11, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills) |

The sources told +972 and Local Call that since everyone in Gaza had a private house with which they could be associated, the army's surveillance systems could easily and automatically "link" individuals to family houses. In order to identify the moment operatives enter their houses in real time, various additional automatic softwares have been developed. These programs track thousands of individuals simultaneously, identify when they are at home, and send an automatic alert to the targeting officer, who then marks the house for bombing. One of several of these tracking softwares, revealed here for the first time, is called "Where's Daddy?"

"You put hundreds \[of targets\] into the system and wait to see who you can kill," said one source with knowledge of the system. "It's called broad hunting: you copy-paste from the lists that the target system produces."

Evidence of this policy is also clear from the data: during the first month of the war, more than half of the fatalities --- 6,120 people --- belonged to 1,340 families, many of which were completely wiped out while inside their homes, according to UN figures. The proportion of entire familes bombed in their houses in the current war is much higher than in the 2014 Israeli operation in Gaza (which was previously Israel's deadliest war on the Strip), further suggesting the prominence of this policy.

Another source said that each time the pace of assassinations waned, more targets were added to systems like Where's Daddy? to locate individuals that entered their homes and could therefore be bombed. He said that the decision of who to put into the tracking systems could be made by relatively low-ranking officers in the military hierarchy.

"One day, totally of my own accord, I added something like 1,200 new targets to the \[tracking\] system, because the number of attacks \[we were conducting\] decreased," the source said. "That made sense to me. In retrospect, it seems like a serious decision I made. And such decisions were not made at high levels."

The sources said that in the first two weeks of the war, "several thousand" targets were initially inputted into locating programs like Where's Daddy?. These included all the members of Hamas' elite special forces unit the Nukhba, all of Hamas' anti-tank operatives, and anyone who entered Israel on October 7. But before long, the kill list was drastically expanded.

"In the end it was everyone \[marked by Lavender\]," one source explained. "Tens of thousands. This happened a few weeks later, when the \[Israeli\] brigades entered Gaza, and there were already fewer uninvolved people \[i.e. civilians\] in the northern areas." According to this source, even some minors were marked by Lavender as targets for bombing. "Normally, operatives are over the age of 17, but that was not a condition."

| [!Wounded Palestinians are treated on the floor due to overcrowding at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, central Gaza Strip, October 18, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills)](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) | |:--:| | Wounded Palestinians are treated on the floor due to overcrowding at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, central Gaza Strip, October 18, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills) |

Lavender and systems like Where's Daddy? were thus combined with deadly effect, killing entire families, sources said. By adding a name from the Lavender-generated lists to the Where's Daddy? home tracking system, A. explained, the marked person would be placed under ongoing surveillance, and could be attacked as soon as they set foot in their home, collapsing the house on everyone inside.

"Let's say you calculate \[that there is one\] Hamas \[operative\] plus 10 \[civilians in the house\]," A. said. "Usually, these 10 will be women and children. So absurdly, it turns out that most of the people you killed were women and children."

STEP 3: CHOOSING A WEAPON

'We usually carried out the attacks with "dumb bombs"'

Once Lavender has marked a target for assassination, army personnel have verified that they are male, and tracking software has located the target in their home, the next stage is picking the munition with which to bomb them.

In December 2023, CNN reported that according to U.S. intelligence estimates, about 45 percent of the munitions used by the Israeli air force in Gaza were "dumb" bombs, which are known to cause more collateral damage than guided bombs. In response to the CNN report, an army spokesperson quoted in the article said: "As a military committed to international law and a moral code of conduct, we are devoting vast resources to minimizing harm to the civilians that Hamas has forced into the role of human shields. Our war is against Hamas, not against the people of Gaza."

Three intelligence sources, however, told +972 and Local Call that junior operatives marked by Lavender were assassinated only with dumb bombs, in the interest of saving more expensive armaments. The implication, one source explained, was that the army would not strike a junior target if they lived in a high-rise building, because the army did not want to spend a more precise and expensive "floor bomb" (with more limited collateral effect) to kill him. But if a junior target lived in a building with only a few floors, the army was authorized to kill him and everyone in the building with a dumb bomb. | [!Palestinians at the site of a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, March 18, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) | |:--:| | Palestinians at the site of a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, March 18, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90) |

"It was like that with all the junior targets," testified C., who used various automated programs in the current war. "The only question was, is it possible to attack the building in terms of collateral damage? Because we usually carried out the attacks with dumb bombs, and that meant literally destroying the whole house on top of its occupants. But even if an attack is averted, you don't care --- you immediately move on to the next target. Because of the system, the targets never end. You have another 36,000 waiting."

STEP 4: AUTHORIZING CIVILIAN CASUALTIES

'We attacked almost without considering collateral damage'

One source said that when attacking junior operatives, including those marked by AI systems like Lavender, the number of civilians they were allowed to kill alongside each target was fixed during the initial weeks of the war at up to 20. Another source claimed the fixed number was up to 15. These "collateral damage degrees," as the military calls them, were applied broadly to all suspected junior militants, the sources said, regardless of their rank, military importance, and age, and with no specific case-by-case examination to weigh the military advantage of assassinating them against the expected harm to civilians.

According to A., who was an officer in a target operation room in the current war, the army's international law department has never before given such "sweeping approval" for such a high collateral damage degree. "It's not just that you can kill any person who is a Hamas soldier, which is clearly permitted and legitimate in terms of international law," A. said. "But they directly tell you: 'You are allowed to kill them along with many civilians.'

"Every person who wore a Hamas uniform in the past year or two could be bombed with 20 \[civilians killed as\] collateral damage, even without special permission," A. continued. "In practice, the principle of proportionality did not exist."

According to A., this was the policy for most of the time that he served. Only later did the military lower the collateral damage degree. "In this calculation, it could also be 20 children for a junior operative ... It really wasn't like that in the past," A. explained. Asked about the security rationale behind this policy, A. replied: "Lethality."

| [!Palestinians wait to receive the bodies of their relatives who were killed in Israeli airstrikes, at Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, November 7, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) | |:--:| | Palestinians wait to receive the bodies of their relatives who were killed in Israeli airstrikes, at Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, November 7, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90) |

The predetermined and fixed collateral damage degree helped accelerate the mass creation of targets using the Lavender machine, sources said, because it saved time. B. claimed that the number of civilians they were permitted to kill in the first week of the war per suspected junior militant marked by AI was fifteen, but that this number "went up and down" over time.

"At first we attacked almost without considering collateral damage," B. said of the first week after October 7. "In practice, you didn't really count people \[in each house that is bombed\], because you couldn't really tell if they're at home or not. After a week, restrictions on collateral damage began. The number dropped \[from 15\] to five, which made it really difficult for us to attack, because if the whole family was home, we couldn't bomb it. Then they raised the number again."

(max char reached). Read the entire article here (mirror)

האם יש פה ישראלים? אשמח שתשלחו לי הודעה אני מעוניין ליצור קהילה רצינית של ישראלים בלבד

Jewish UPenn Students Could Face Discipline For Screening Film Critical Of Israel

by Matt Shuham, HuffPost

University of Pennsylvania administrators told a student group it could lose funding and organizers could face consequences for screening "Israelism."

A Jewish student group at the University of Pennsylvania is facing potential disciplinary action for screening a documentary critical of the Israeli government.

Multiple universities have now attempted to stop student screenings of “Israelism,” an award-winning film that features the stories of American Jews who have traveled to Israel and subsequently reexamined their relationship with the country and with their own pro-Israel religious educations in the United States after seeing how Israel treats Palestinians.

Students from Penn Chavurah, a progressive Jewish group on campus, hosted a screening of the film Tuesday night, even though the university refused to permit access to a venue. Nearly 100 people packed into a classroom to watch the documentary, according to Jack Starobin, a board member and organizer at Chavurah.

“It’s moments like these where we’re counting on strong leadership to stay true to this university’s values, and that’s where I think the failing has been on the part of Penn administrators,” Starobin, a senior at Penn, told HuffPost.

A screening of the film, which was released in February, was scheduled for Oct. 24 but was postponed after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent retaliatory attacks on the Palestinian territory of Gaza.

Starobin said he’d been in talks with university administrators for weeks about holding a screening this month instead. A few days ago, the university denied organizers’ request for event space to hold the screening, suggesting it be delayed until February. Administrators never provided any specifics behind their reasoning, Starobin said. Erin Axelman, a co-director and producer of the film who participated in a question-and-answer session after Tuesday’s screening, said administrators referred “vaguely only to campus safety.”

When administrators found out that organizers planned to hold the screening this week anyway, they told Starobin that doing so could jeopardize Chavurah’s status and funding from the school, and could lead to disciplinary action against organizers, he told HuffPost.

Harun Küçük, the director of UPenn’s Middle East Center, which ultimately arranged a room for the screening, resigned from that post Tuesday over “inappropriate pressure from administrators” regarding the screening, according to a letter from the school’s chapter of the American Association for University Professors. Küçük, who did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment, confirmed his resignation to The Daily Pennsylvanian, telling the paper, “I would not have resigned if I had any comment left in me.” He is still an associate professor of history and sociology of science at UPenn.

A university spokesperson who declined to give his full name acknowledged to HuffPost that administrators sought to postpone the screening until February ― citing “the safety and security of our campus community” without explaining further ― and said that student organizers had “disregarded” the university’s direction by hosting the screening this week.

“Consistent with University policy, the student organizers will be referred to the Office of Community Standards and Accountability to determine whether a violation of the Code of Student Conduct occurred,” the spokesperson said.

Axelman accused the university of a “profound lack of academic integrity” and of attempting to intimidate and censor student organizers.

“We are honestly baffled and deeply disappointed by UPenn’s continued attempt to censor progressive Jewish voices, at the exact time when nuanced conversations about Jewish identity and the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are most needed,” Axelman said.

Since Oct. 7, Penn has come under significant pressure from politicians and benefactors who have pushed administrators to fight antisemitism, broadly defined.

Earlier this month, more than two dozen members of Congress wrote to Penn President Liz Magill condemning “your institution’s silence in condemning the terrorist attack that took place by Hamas on October 7, 2023.” (Magill had been far from silent, releasing numerous statements that condemned the attack and antisemitism.) Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a signatory, sent similar messages to Yale, Columbia and Harvard, CNN reported.

That letter, and various donors to Penn, also condemned the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, which was held on Penn’s campus in September.

On the other hand, some professors, students and pro-Palestinian activists have criticized Magill for statements that, as the Arabic literature scholar and Penn professor Roger Allen told The Daily Pennsulvanian, “vastly under-represented opinions and status” of Arab and Palestinian community members.

Starobin criticized what he viewed as a double standard at the university. Earlier this month, he noted, Rabbi Shmuel Lynn commented during an event hosted by Penn Hillel and Meor Penn, another Jewish group on campus, “It is not trite to say that there’s a war, there’s another frontline, there’s another camp of battle that we’re all fighting ... there’s a two-front war, in this sense, for the heart and soul of us, the people, [and] for the existential threat, the survival.”

The Penn student said he regretted that Penn Chavurah’s decision to hold the “Israelism” screening had turned oppositional and noted that organizers had cooperated with police who were on hand the night of the screening. His organization’s goal, he said, was to provide an opportunity to discuss a controversial topic in an open environment. The university’s action to prevent the screening, he argued, boded poorly for academic freedom.

“It suggests that the university feels it has the license to shut down any dialogue on campus if it conflicts with the preferences of its donors or the dominant current of national politics,” Starobin said. “And that kind of caving toward the dominant strain of thinking on a controversial issue is precisely the kind of intellectual tunnel vision that a university should seek to avoid, combat and provide space to escape.”

> “That kind of caving toward the dominant strain of thinking on a controversial issue is precisely the kind of intellectual tunnel vision that a university should seek to avoid.” >- Jack Starobin, UPenn senior

Fights over the film, which have played out on various college campuses, are part of a larger public debate over the limits of acceptable criticism of the Israeli government. On Oct. 7, Hamas militants based in Gaza killed about 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostage in a surprise attack, according to Israeli authorities. Israel responded with devastating airstrikes and a ground invasion on the Gaza Strip that have now claimed at least 15,000 lives, according to Palestinian authorities, and led to the displacement of nearly 2 million people, according to the United Nations. Several Israelis held in Gaza have now been swapped for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel as part of a cease-fire agreement that continues to be negotiated.

Hunter College canceled a scheduled screening of “Israelism” earlier this month. The New York City college’s interim president, Ann Kirschner, said that the decision was made in the interest of ensuring “the safety of our learning community” and that administrators wanted to avoid “targeting any students, faculty or staff based on their identity: the essence of bigotry.”

“In the current climate, we seek to balance our commitment to free speech and academic freedom with the danger of antisemitic and divisive rhetoric,” Kirschner said, noting that police were investigating the drawing of swastikas on posters surrounding school buildings.

The school’s senate, composed of students, faculty and staff, subsequently passed a resolution criticizing what it called “an egregious and illegitimate violation of the academic freedom necessary for departments to pursue their academic missions and institutions of higher education to operate with integrity.” The university rescheduled the screening for Dec. 5.

Daniel J. Chalfen, one of the film’s producers, told The New York Times that Hunter’s initial decision to cancel the screening was the result of “a very organized campaign to shut it down.” The Times noted at least two email campaigns that produced hundreds of messages urging Hunter administrators to cancel the screening, including one originating from a Facebook post that described the film as “antisemitic.”

The following day, The Forward, the nonprofit Jewish publication, reported on a pattern of similar email campaigns attempting to prevent screenings of the film at several colleges, including Oberlin and Yale. The publication also reported that Dov Waxman, the director of UCLA’s center for Israel studies, said he’d come “under intense pressure from numerous organizations and individuals,” including calls asking for major donors to the center to push for his firing, because he’d decided to host a screening of “Israelism.”

“The opposition is not from students,” Sam Eilertsen, who co-directed the film with Axelman, told The Forward. “The opposition is coming from just people on the internet.”

לפחות ברדיט הדיונים הם לא 100% חד צדדיים ויש אנשים שמבינים את המשמעות של רצח עם ולא סתם קופצים על כל הזדמנות לחרבן על ישראל כי אמריקאים מקבילים הכל ללבנים נגד שחורים ואין להם את היכולת לראות משהו קצת יותר עמוק מזה... מרגיש כאילו אני לבד פה, בכלל יש בלמי עוד ישראלים? כשאני מנסה לומר לאנשים שאולי לא כדאי לקרוא לעזה רצח עם בזמן שמתעלמים מסודן ומיאנמאר אני בערך חוטף על זה מכות

This letter was written to the Editors of the New York Times Dec. 2, 1948 -- only months after the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel.

The letter was signed by Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook, Jessurun Cardozo, Zellig Harris, Bruria Kaufman, Irma Lindheim, Seymour Melman, Fritz Rohrlich, Stefan Wolpe, and others.

> TO THE EDITORS OF NEW YORK TIMES: > > Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine. > > The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin's political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents. > > Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin's behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement. > > The public avowals of Begin's party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future. > > Attack on Arab Village > > A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants (240 men, women, and children) and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin. > > The Deir Yassin incident exemplifies the character and actions of the Freedom Party. > > Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead they have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model. > > During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute. > > The people of the Freedom Party have had no part in the constructive achievements in Palestine. They have reclaimed no land, built no settlements, and only detracted from the Jewish defense activity. Their much-publicized immigration endeavors were minute, and devoted mainly to bringing in Fascist compatriots. > > Discrepancies Seen > > The discrepancies between the bold claims now being made by Begin and his party, and their record of past performance in Palestine bear the imprint of no ordinary political party. This is the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party for whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike), and misrepresentation are means, and a "Leader State" is the goal. > > In the light of the foregoing considerations, it is imperative that the truth about Mr. Begin and his movement be made known in this country. It is all the more tragic that the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin's efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to Begin. > > The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin and his party; and of urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism. > > ISIDORE ABRAMOWITZ, HANNAH ARENDT, ABRAHAM BRICK, RABBI JESSURUN CARDOZO, ALBERT EINSTEIN, HERMAN EISEN, M.D., HAYIM FINEMAN, M. GALLEN, M.D., H.H. HARRIS, ZELIG S. HARRIS, SIDNEY HOOK, FRED KARUSH, BRURIA KAUFMAN, IRMA L. LINDHEIM, NACHMAN MAISEL, SEYMOUR MELMAN, MYER D. MENDELSON, M.D., HARRY M. OSLINSKY, SAMUEL PITLICK, FRITZ ROHRLICH, LOUIS P. ROCKER, RUTH SAGIS, ITZHAK SANKOWSKY, I.J. SHOENBERG, SAMUEL SHUMAN, M. SINGER, IRMA WOLPE, STEFAN WOLPE. > > New York, Dec. 2, 1948

Channel 14 at it again. Denied that Biden asked Netanyahu to stop the Reform. Didn't even bothered to delete this when even they acknowledged that it wasn't true.

As I'm writing this, the protesters are marching towards Jerusalem, over thousand pilots will stop serving, investors are losing their confidence, the current government refuses to negotiate while finding the problems in anything but themselves. While likely there is no majority of citizens to support their actions, the judicial reform still has a significant number of supporters. Failure to pass the legislation may cause the government to dissolve. And yet there might be a few coalition members who are reasonable enough to do the right thing.

What do you say?

! ! !

A few years ago (pre-pandemic), my wife and I participated in a dig at Tel Azekah. We uncovered stone walls, figurines, and had the good fortune to find a mostly-intact pot containing seeds.