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Times Report on IDF's Lack of Civilian Protections in Gaza 'Confirms What We All Knew'
"Israel has adopted an understanding of the laws of war that cancels the category of civilian to serve its war of annihilation," said one observer.
Dec 26, 2024
Human rights advocates and journalists in the Middle East have warned since Israel began its assault on Gaza 14 months ago that the Israel Defense Forces, which heralds itself as "the most moral army in the world," has actually been operating far outside the bounds of international humanitarian law—targeting not just Hamas commanders and other armed militants in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack in October 2023, but accepting and encouraging the killing of thousands of civilians of all ages.
On Thursday, The New York Times published an extensive report on how the IDF operated in the earliest weeks of Israel's current escalation, during which more than 15,000 Palestinians—a third of the overall total so far—were killed in Israeli airstrikes and other attacks.
The report details an order that was given by IDF leaders on October 7, 2023, hours after the Hamas-led attack, that the Times said was not previously reported—and builds on extensive reporting by human rights groups like Amnesty International and news outlets such as +972 Magazine and Haaretz about the military's widespread killing of civilians, in many cases with U.S.-made weapons.
The order described in the Times report directed mid-ranking Israeli officers to strike thousands of junior Hamas fighters and minor military sites that had not been the focus of earlier campaigns, and gave them the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians with each strike.
For some strikes that targeted senior Hamas leaders, the IDF was given the authority to kill more than 100 civilians, and in an order given on October 8, 2023, strikes on military targets in Gaza "were permitted to cumulatively endanger up to 500 civilians each day"—removing a previous limit.
Allowing the killing of more than 100 civilians for one commander crossed "an extraordinary threshold for a contemporary Western military," reported the Times, which has faced accusations of pro-Israel bias in its coverage over the past 14 months.
The newly reported orders reflect comments made by top Israeli government leaders in the early days of the IDF's bombardment, which were reported on at the time by Common Dreams and other outlets. Then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on October 10 that he had "released all the restraints" on Israeli troops, and President Israel Herzog asserted days later that there were no civilians in Gaza who were "not involved" in the Hamas attack.
The investigation, said University of Edinburgh political scientist Nicola Perugini, "confirms what we all knew."
The Times reported that the family members of Shaldan al-Najjar, a senior commander in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were some of the first casualties of Israel's new operating procedures in Gaza. A two-month-old baby was among 20 of al-Najjar's family members who were killed in an airstrike in October 2023, and the severed hand of one of his niece's was found in the rubble of the family home.
Mid-level Israeli officers were required to get approval for strikes from senior commanders if a target was close to a site like a school or healthcare facility, but those targets were "regularly approved."
The Times based its reporting on dozens of military records and interviews with more than 100 soldiers and officials, including 25 IDF members who helped approve or vet targets.
The report details how the Israeli air force "raced through" a database of hundreds of militants and military sites that had been compiled from extensive vetting, and put pressure on the military to quickly find thousands of new targets.
The IDF also largely stopped its use of warning shots to give civilians time to flee an area before a large-scale strike, and significantly increased risks to civilians by using 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs.
The military told the Times in a statement that its soldiers have "consistently been employing means and methods that adhere to the rules of law."
The Times' reporting comes less than two weeks after the death toll in Gaza was reported to have passed 45,000. A United Nations analysis in November found that women and children made up 70% of the people killed in the enclave between October 2023 and April 2024.
On December 18, Haaretz reported that the IDF has adopted a point of view that "everyone's a terrorist" in Gaza—a report, policy expert Assal Rad said, that was unlikely to be covered by Western news outlets.
At +972 Magazine, journalist Yuval Abraham has written at least twice since October 2023 about the IDF's use of artificial intelligence systems to generate large numbers of targets in Gaza. As Common Dreamsreported in December 2023, an AI-driven system called the Gospel was used to produce 100 targets in a single day, leading IDF sources to compare Gaza to a "factory" where the maximum number of casualties—whether of militants or civilians—was accepted and encouraged.
About 37,000 Palestinians and their homes—potentially with family members inside—were marked by another AI system called Lavender in the first weeks of the war, Abraham reported in another article in April.
In that article Abraham emphasized, similarly to the Times, that up to 100 civilian deaths were allowed for every killing of a senior Hamas commander.
"Glad the Times is covering the IDF's total lack of safeguards to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza," said podcast host and former Obama White House staffer Tommy Vietor, "but outlets like Haartez and +972... had these stories months ago."
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No Israeli Civilian Deaths Reported as Iran Confined Missile Barrage to Military Targets
Some supporters of Israel, said one observer, "are so enamored by war crimes they seem to think the entire purpose of retaliatory action is to kill civilians rather than target military infrastructure."
Oct 02, 2024
Iran's armed forces on Tuesday night said it had hit its intended military targets with its ballistic missile strikes in Israel, and dismissed Israeli and U.S. claims that the operation was a failure—claims that critics said displayed the view of Israel and its biggest military funder that civilian casualties are an acceptable part of warfare.
Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said that Israel's three main airbases, radar sites, armored Israel Defense Forces (IDF) vehicles around the Gaza Strip, and the headquarters of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, were among the targets.
"Only military sites were targeted. If Israel is not contained by U.S. and Europe, and takes action against our sovereignty and territorial integrity, tonight's operation will be repeated in much greater size," said Bagheri.
Sameh al-Asali, a Palestinian laborer from Gaza who was in the West Bank city of Jericho, was hit by a missile fragment and killed.
The missile strikes were carried out in retaliation for Israel's killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and as a warning to Israel not to escalate against Iran. They followed the IDF's invasion of Lebanon in a widening conflict that began last year after Israel retaliated for a Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023 by launching a full-scale assault on Gaza as well as numerous attacks on the West Bank.
While downplaying the effectiveness of Iran's missile barrage, the U.S. and Israel also classified the attack as a "significant escalation," with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying Iran had "made a big mistake... and it will pay for it."
Israel vowed to respond to the attack, with IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Peter Lerner saying, "There will be consequences."
Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said Iran's military actions had been taken in self-defense and were carried out "within national interests and in line with international regulations."
Israel has been accused of blatantly violating international humanitarian law in Gaza by targeting civilian infrastructure and collectively punishing the population of 2.3 million people with what United Nations experts have called a "targeted starvation campaign." Netanyahu's government faces a genocide case brought by South Africa and other countries at the International Court of Justice, and has been ordered by the court to protect civilians in Gaza.
Philip Proudfoot, an anthropologist and researcher at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, said supporters of Israel seemed to see the lack of Israeli civilian casualties from Iran's attack on Tuesday as worthy of mockery rather than evidence of a targeted and strategic military strike.
"These are people are so enamored by war crimes they seem to think the entire purpose of retaliatory action is to kill civilians rather than target military infrastructure," said Proudfoot. "Iran warned of the impending response, targeted military infrastructure, didn't kill a single Israeli civilian, and demonstrated that the Iron Dome is not impervious, restoring a sense of regional deterrence. I don't see why Tehran would see this as a failure."
In the 24 hours after Iran's missile strikes, Gaza's Health Ministry reported on Wednesday that 51 people in the enclave were killed in Israeli attacks, including at least nine at the Muscat School and the Al-Amal Orphanage in Gaza City. Israel said the school and orphanage were being used as Hamas command centers—a frequent claim the IDF has used to rationalize its attacks on civilian infrastructure and residential areas while blaming Hamas for civilian casualties that result.
CNN reporter Jim Sciutto noted Tuesday that Mossad's headquarters is in a "densely populated area" of Tel Aviv, and said the targeting of the building added "one more layer of escalation."
"This really brings rampant, shameless Western media racism to the fore," said U.K. journalist Owen Jones. "If that was a Hamas or Hezbollah target, 'human shields' is exactly what we'd hear."
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IDF Soldier Confesses That in Gaza, 'It's Permissible to Shoot Everyone'
Detailed accounts by former Israeli soldiers describe how they fired their weapons out of "boredom," designated any Palestinians in sight as a threat, and routinely burned homes down.
Jul 08, 2024
Disputing the repeated claims of Israeli officials and their vehement supporters in the Biden administration, who have scoffed at concerns that the Israel Defense Forces are targeting civilians in Gaza, in-depth reporting on Monday based on the testimony of six former IDF soldiers described how they were encouraged to fire their weapons to relieve "boredom" and felt "authorized to open fire on Palestinians virtually at will, including civilians."
In their latest investigative report on the IDF's rules of engagement in Gaza, Israeli publications +972 Magazine and Local Call interviewed six soldiers who had been released from active duty.
Medical providers and eyewitnesses have described the shooting of Palestinian women and children by Israeli snipers, and footage has shown unarmed Palestinians being executed while walking along a road, but the soldiers confirmed that the IDF has been operating with "total freedom of action," as one said, since October.
"If there is [even] a feeling of threat, there is no need to explain—you just shoot," said a soldier identified as B.
If troops see a person approaching and don't know whether they are armed or pose a threat, "it is permissible to shoot at their center of mass [their body], not into the air... It's permissible to shoot everyone, a young girl, an old woman," said B.
"Every day, at least one or two [civilians] are killed [because] they walked in a no-go area. I don't know who is a terrorist and who is not, but most of them did not carry weapons," said one soldier.
The soldiers said they sometimes fired their weapons as "a way to blow off steam or relieve the dullness of their daily routine," with one reservist saying that they wanted "to experience the event [fully]."
The reservist described shooting "for no reason" at times, "into the sea or at the sidewalk or an abandoned building," while a soldier identified as S. told +972 and Local Call that the IDF would engage in a tactic called "demonstrating presence," in which they would repeatedly fire their weapons to show any Palestinians in the area that they were there.
They would "shoot a lot, even for no reason—anyone who wants to shoot, no matter what the reason, shoots," said S.
The report follows the publication of an analysis by medical experts in The Lancet, who said the death toll in Gaza—officially over 38,000—could be off by roughly 150,000 people due to the deaths of Palestinians who have starved, died of medical conditions that couldn't be treated due to the destruction of the healthcare system, and succumbed to other "indirect" impacts of the war.
Al Jazeera journalist Laila Al-Arian said that the confessions of the Israeli soldiers to +972 only confirm what "has been clear since the beginning."
"Israeli soldiers in Gaza are operating under the premise that they can kill anything that moves and that every Palestinian is fair game for slaughter," she said.
The soldiers also described "routinely" executing Palestinian civilians because they had entered an area designated a "no-go zone" by the IDF, and allowing their surroundings to become "littered with civilian corpses, which are left to rot or be eaten by stray animals."
The soldiers were instructed to hide the bodies when international aid groups arrived, to ensure that "images of people in advanced stages of decay don't come out."
S. said they "saw a lot of civilians—families, women, children," and confirmed that "there are more fatalities than are reported."
"Every day, at least one or two [civilians] are killed [because] they walked in a no-go area. I don't know who is a terrorist and who is not, but most of them did not carry weapons," they said.
B. told +972 and Local Call that the army suspects any male between the ages of 16 and 50 of being a terrorist, and treats anyone walking around outside or looking at the IDF from a building as suspicious—and a legitimate target.
"You shoot," said B. "The [army's] perception is that any contact [with the population] endangers the forces, and a situation must be created in which it is forbidden to approach [the soldiers] under any circumstances."
The report follows previous revelations from the Israeli news outlets on the IDF's use of artificial intelligence to target Palestinians, with little regard for civilians who might be killed when suspected Hamas members were attacked in their homes.
A soldier identified as A. said that working alongside commanders in an operations room and determining which buildings should be struck "felt like a computer game."
"I, too, a rather left-wing soldier, forget very quickly that these are real homes," said A. "Only after two weeks did I realize that these are [actual] buildings that are falling: if there are inhabitants [inside], then [the buildings are collapsing] on their heads."
Yuval Green, who served in the 55th Paratroopers Brigade late last year and signed a letter with 40 other reservists last month refusing to take part in the invasion of Rafah, testified that soldiers were ordered to burn down homes that they had occupied.
"If you move, you have to burn down the house," he said, adding that the policy did not make sense to him in an operation that was supposedly aimed at targeting Hamas.
"We are in these houses not because they belong to Hamas operatives, but because they serve us operationally," Green said. "It is a house of two or three families—to destroy it means they will be homeless."
Policy analyst Tariq Kenney-Shawa addressed those who might be surprised that "Israeli soldiers would so readily admit their war crimes."
"It's simple," Kenney-Shawa said. "They've never faced any consequences. They are only rewarded for their massacres."
Yael Berda of the Middle East Initiative said the latest dispatch from +972 regarding the orders IDF soldiers are given is likely just a fraction of the truth that will eventually come out about the war in Gaza.
"I am pretty sure we don't know half of what went on during these nine months in Gaza," she said.
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