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IDF Allowed 100 Civilian Deaths for Every Hamas Official Targeted by Error-Prone AI System
"The IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option," an Israeli intelligence officer said. "It's much easier to bomb a family's home. The system is built to look for them in these situations."
Apr 03, 2024
As the Biden administration issued its latest assurance that officials are pushing Israel to be "precise" in its selection of targets in Gaza, an investigation into the Israel Defense Forces' use of a previously undisclosed artificial intelligence system found that the mechanism has replaced "human agency and precision" with "mass target creation and lethality."
Four months after +972 Magazine and Local Call, detailed the IDF's use of an AI system called the Gospel, which generates dozens of buildings and structures for the military to target in a single day, the two Israeli media outlets revealed that another AI machine called Lavender, which has also played a part in Israel's slaughter of at least 32,975 Palestinians since October.
Unlike the Gospel, reported +972's Yuval Abraham, "Lavender marks people—and puts them on a kill list."
Abraham spoke to six Israeli intelligence officers who have served in the IDF during Israel's current assault on Gaza and have 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," wrote Abraham. "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.'"
"It was known in advance that 10% of the human targets slated for assassination were not members of the Hamas military wing at all."
The system was designed to mark suspected military operatives in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) as potential bombing targets.
But the IDF gave "sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender's kill lists" in the early days of Israel's bombardment campaign, and gave "no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based."
Before bombing the houses of suspected armed group members, the intelligence officers did a brief assessment of the data to determine that the AI-selected target was male.
"A human being had to [verify the target] for just a few seconds," a source identified as B. told +972. "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."
"I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day," B. added. "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."
B. and the other sources acknowledged that the system was prone to error.
If the target had given his phone, which Lavender used to identify Hamas and PIJ suspects, to "his son, his older brother, or just a random man," said B., "that person will be bombed in his house with his family. This happened often. These were most of the mistakes caused by Lavender."
The system marked 37,000 Palestinians—and their homes, with family members potentially inside—as targets in the first weeks of the war, when the IDF "almost completely relied on Lavender."
The intelligence officers told Abraham that the IDF was "not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity," despite Israel's persistent claims that they are targeting military outposts and other noncivilian infrastructure.
"On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option," an officer identified as A. told +972 and Local Call. "It's much easier to bomb a family's home. The system is built to look for them in these situations."
As a result of the military's reliance of Lavender, wrote Abraham, "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."
The investigation also found that, according to two of the sources, the IDF decided in the early weeks of the war that "for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians"—an unprecedented approach by Israel to so-called "collateral damage."
"A ratio of 20 civilians killed for one target works out to about 95% civilian deaths," said enterpreneur Arnaud Bertrand.
For senior Hamas officials that were targeted, the army authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians.
IDF officers, including the sources, accepted that Lavender's calculations about targets were accurate only 90% of the time, +972 and Local Call reported.
"In other words, it was known in advance that 10% of the human targets slated for assassination were not members of the Hamas military wing at all," wrote Abraham.
One source defended the military's use of Lavender, saying investing "manpower and time" in analyzing whether a suspected junior militant is a legitimate target was not worthwhile.
"In war, there is no time to incriminate every target," said the intelligence officer. "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."
While collateral damage has long been a reality in violent conflicts, parties are bound by international humanitarian law that states they must distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Alex Hanna, director of research for the Distributed AI Research Institute, said the report illustrated the possible "future of AI warfare" for the U.S. and other powerful countries.
Bertrand suggested the "disturbing" report called to mind the Nazis' methodical massacre of Jewish people during the Holocaust.
"It's industrialized extermination," said Bertrand, "the likes of which we haven't seen since... you know when."
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Filmmaker Jonathan Glazer Speaks Out Against Israel's Hijacking of Holocaust to Justify Gaza War
"Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst," said Jonathan Glazer, director of The Zone of Interest.
Mar 11, 2024
The 96th annual Academy Awards on Sunday evening were marked by a number of statements—some vocal and some sartorial—in favor of Palestinian rights and against Israel's occupation and bombardment of Gaza, with filmmaker Jonathan Glazer directly addressing Zionists who have "hijacked" the Holocaust to justify relentless attacks on civilians.
Glazer accepted the award for Best International Feature Film for The Zone of Interest, his film about a Nazi commander who lives with his family just outside the walls of Auschwitz concentration camp, where gunshots and other sounds of the extermination of Jewish prisoners are audible from the commander's garden.
Glazer and producer James Wilson were adamant as they accepted the award that The Zone of Interest should not be viewed as a film about past events, but one that was "made to reflect and confront us in the present."
"Not to say, 'Look what they did then,' rather 'Look what we do now,'" said the director. "Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst."
"We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict, for so many innocent people.”
'Zone of Interest' director Jonathan Glazer spoke out about Israel's weaponisation of the Holocaust in his Oscar… pic.twitter.com/SM9JfhxvrO
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) March 11, 2024
Glazer then noted that both he and Wilson are among many Jewish people who object to the Israeli government's perennial claim—supported by Western countries including the U.S.—that Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and subjugation of Palestinian people is necessary to provide Jewish people with safety from the kind of persecution that ultimately led to the Holocaust.
"Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people," continued Glazer. "Whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization—how do we resist?"
Glazer's comments were immediately decontextualized by right-wing commentators including Newsweek opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon, who claimed the director displayed "moral rot" by telling the audience he refuted "his Jewishness."
"You're lying about what they said by adding a period in the middle of their sentence,"
said Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of the Jewish-led Palestinian rights group IfNotNow, which has frequently been accused of antisemitism by pro-Israel groups for objecting to Israeli apartheid. "They clearly meant they refute the way their Jewishness has been hijacked. You're supposed to be a journalist."
The Israeli group Breaking the Silence (BtS), run by veterans of the Israel Defense Forces who now object to the occupation, compared the outraged reaction to Glazer's speech to the aftermath of Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham's comments at the Berlin International Film Festival, where he spoke out against the subjugation of Palestinians in the West Bank.
Abraham was immediately denounced as antisemitic by Israeli media and received death threats, while the German government announced it would open an investigation into the filmmaker's comments.
"These 'misunderstandings' aren't new," said BtS regarding the response of Ungar-Sargon and others.
"It's possible to oppose the killing of innocent civilians in Gaza and still care for the safety of Israeli hostages," added the group. "One can worry about Israelis who were evacuated from their homes after October 7 and still be horrified by the conditions in which so many are currently living in Gaza. We refuse to let this harsh reality make us less human, and that we refuse to accept the ease with which the blood and lives of civilians is used as a justification for political ideologies, or as a bargaining chip. Empathy is not a zero-sum game."
Other than Glazer's speech, most commentary about Israel's assault on Gaza—now in its sixth month and having killed at least 31,045 Palestinians as the Israeli government blocks nearly all humanitarian aid from reaching the population—was made through Oscar attendees' clothing choices.
Several actors and filmmakers wore red pins in support of Artists4Ceasefire, which toldThe Hill that members showed "collective support for an immediate and permanent cease-fire, the release of all of the hostages, and for the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza."
Musician Billie Eilish, director Ava DuVernay, and actors including Ramy Youssef, Mark Ruffalo, Riz Ahmed, and Mahershala Ali were among those who wore the red pins.
Billie Eilish, Ramy Youssef, Ava DuVernay and other celebrities wore red pins at the Oscars in support for a cease-fire in Gaza. The design featured a single hand holding a heart and was organized by the group Artists4Ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/sj6HBzsoYi
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 11, 2024
"We're all calling for an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza," Youssef told reporters. "We're calling for the safety of everyone involved, and we really want lasting justice and peace for the Palestinian people... We really want to say, just stop killing children."
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Israeli Filmmaker Faces Death Threats, German Probe After Condemning Apartheid
The German government's threat to investigate Yuval Abraham "for simply acknowledging the apartheid under which his Palestinian co-director lives, is both chilling and completely absurd," said one film critic.
Feb 26, 2024
Despite facing death threats, Israeli documentary filmmaker Yuval Abraham said Monday that he stood "behind every word" of his condemnation of Israeli apartheid and the bombardment of Gaza, which he expressed while accepting the award for Best Documentary at the Berlin International Film Festival, also known as Berlinale.
Abraham stood alongside his co-director, Palestinian lawyer and activist Basel Adra, on Sunday as they accepted the award for their film No Other Land, about the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) demolition of homes in the occupied West Bank and eviction of people living there.
"I am free to move where I want in this land, Basel is, like millions of Palestinians, locked in the occupied West Bank," said Abraham. "This situation of apartheid between us, this inequality, it has to end."
Adra followed Abraham's remarks by calling on Germany to "respect the [United Nations] calls and stop sending weapons to Israel," garnering applause from the audience, as he noted that the support of Western countries has allowed at least 29,782 Palestinians in Gaza to be "slaughtered and massacred" by Israel.
The Israeli public broadcaster, Kan, promptly labeled Abraham's remarks an "antisemitic speech," while Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner denounced the statement and those of several other Palestinian rights supporters at the awards ceremony.
Abraham's statement, filmmaker Ben Russell's decision to wear a traditional Palestinian keffiyeh, and filmmaker Eliza Hittman's call for a cease-fire—a demand supported by international human rights groups, the vast majority of member states at the U.N. General Assembly, and numerous U.N. agencies—were reduced to "an intolerable relativization," according to Wegner.
The city's culture minister said the awards ceremony was "characterized by self-righteous anti-Israeli propaganda," while the federal commissioner for culture and the media said Monday that the government will open an investigation into the filmmakers' statements.
The outrage over the calls for an end to Israel's bombardment and oppression of Palestinians amounted to "authoritarian insanity," said journalist Mehdi Hasan.
Mickey Gitzin, director of the Israeli social justice group New Israel Fund, posited that the reaction to Abraham's comments in the country's news media "indicates more than anything else the great embarrassment of most Israelis about the reality of life we are creating in the West Bank."
"It is impossible to be a person with conscience and morals, to look at reality and live with it in peace," said Gitzin. "Therefore, most of us simply prefer to close our eyes, and those who are really careful, seek to kill the messenger."
After the film festival, Berlinale's official Instagram page was hacked by activists who posted messages including: "Genocide is genocide. We are all complicit."
In a statement about the Instagram incident, which the Berlinale said shared "antisemitic" rhetoric, the festival also distanced itself from the award winners who spoke out in favor of a cease-fire and criticized Israel's assault on Gaza and suggested that they should have also made supportive comments about Israel.
"We understand the outrage that the statements made by some of the award winners were perceived as too one-sided and, in some cases, inappropriate," said executive director Mariëtte Rissenbeek. "From our point of view, it would have been appropriate in terms of content if the award winners and guests at the award ceremony had also made more differentiated statements on this issue."
Film critic Siddhant Adlakha denounced the festival's response as "incredibly cowardly."
Germany's threat to investigate Abraham "for simply acknowledging the apartheid under which his Palestinian co-director lives, is both chilling and completely absurd," said Adlakha. "Just one of the many ongoing acts of institutional cowardice the film world sorely needs to recognize."
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