Breaking the Silence: " The IDF delegated target identification to an AI system, a deeply problematic step in itself. This enabled the military to carry out strikes at an unprecedented pace. Combined with the IDF’s extremely permissive collateral damage policy, this sent the death toll in Gaza skyrocketing. "

Breaking the Silence

@BtSIsrael

 

The IDF's AI-generated assassination list. Now that everyone is talking about NAZA, the Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage,” let’s talk about how the IDF identified some of the targets for these strikes. 

 

This soldier gave us testimony about some of the crucial policies behind the astronomical death toll in Gaza. 

 

 The IDF delegated target identification to an AI system, a deeply problematic step in itself. This enabled the military to carry out strikes at an unprecedented pace. Combined with the IDF’s extremely permissive collateral damage policy, this sent the death toll in Gaza skyrocketing. 

 

The IDF allowed up to 20 civilians to be killed as collateral damage for every low-ranking Hamas operative targeted, whether a militant or a truck driver. This threshold could be raised dramatically when a senior Hamas member was the target.  

 

Testimony: “We worked with an artificial intelligence system, ‘Lavendar.’ They developed technological capabilities to establish that they (Hamas operatives) exist and they’re present there, and they expanded it (the identification of wanted people) to include anyone that you could somehow say belonged to Hamas.”  

 

Interviewer: What does belong to Hamas mean? "AI-[generated] things plus a few verifications that it’s actually the person [in question]."  “You’re genuinely targeting someone from the military wing, [but] how significant is he really? There’s a question mark over that. Let’s say, even if he is a fighter, would you now take down twenty people for a fighter? [...] [If] the person isn’t in a combat position, or say, a fighter is now fleeing to the south of the [Gaza] Strip, do I really need to go and kill him?” 

 

 Allowing such a high death toll in advance proved to be devastatingly destructive, and it is also deeply dehumanising. Palestinian lives are cheapened to the point where the killing of over a dozen people can be routinely sanitised under the label of “collateral damage.”

 https://x.com/BtSIsrael/status/2103103416062886316/photo/1

Find more testimonies from soldiers who have served in the occupied Palestinian territories on our website. Since 2004, we have collected, verified, and published thousands of testimonies.

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https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database/199893 

breakingthesilence.org.il

Breaking the Silence › Testimony › The enemy is finite

 

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