According to +972 Magzine, Israel is intentionally destrings civilian areas to put pressure on Hamas
Report Details How Israel
Intentionally Targets Civilians in Gaza
Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com
(November 30, 2023) — A report from +972 Magazine published on Thursday detailed how Israel is intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza as part of its war strategy even when Israeli forces know strikes will kill young children.
The report, which cited current and former Israeli intelligence officials, said the massive civilian casualties in Gaza since October 7 are due to Israel expanding its authorizations to bomb non-military targets and the loosening of restrictions related to civilian deaths. Israel’s operations in Gaza have had a very high civilian casualty rate, but never at the scale of the current conflict.
Sources told +972 that the Israeli military has files on many potential targets that give them a good idea of the likely civilian casualties their strikes will cause. In one case discussed by the sources, Israel’s military command approved the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in an attempt to kill one Hamas commander.
One source said: “Nothing happens by accident. When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
The report also explains Israel’s targeting “power targets,” which include civilian infrastructure, such as high-rise apartment buildings, banks, universities, and other public buildings. Three sources who’ve been involved in hitting power targets told +972 that the purpose is that a deliberate attack on Palestinian society will exert “civil pressure” on Hamas. Israel used to often warn people to evacuate power targets before they were hit, but that practice has become much less common. In the current war, apartment buildings full of civilians have been leveled with no warning.
Sources told +972 that target files for high-rise buildings and other civilian infrastructure always contain some sort of alleged association with Hamas, the real purpose is to hurt civilians. “The sources understood, some explicitly and some implicitly, that damage to civilians is the real purpose of these attacks,” the report says.
Another category of targets that Israel strikes is known as “family homes,” where Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives live. In many cases, Israel has destroyed private residences to kill one Hamas member. The +972 report notes that in the current war, “Palestinian testimonies assert that some of the families that were killed did not include any operatives from these organizations.”
The report said that because most senior Hamas operatives are deep in tunnels underground in Gaza, many of the attacks on family homes target alleged junior Hamas operatives. The Israeli military is able to carry out such attacks at an incredibly fast pace thanks to an Artificial Intelligence program called the Habsora system.
Detailing what the AI program does, the report says, “Habsora generates, among other things, automatic recommendations for attacking private residences where people suspected of being Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives live. Israel then carries out large-scale assassination operations through the heavy shelling of these residential homes.”
One source said the Habsora system allows the Israeli military to run a “mass assassination factory” that focuses on “quantity, not quality.”
Israel has turned Gaza’s crowded blocks into an “assassination factory.”
Since Israel unleashed its brutal campaign against civilians in Gaza after the October 7 Hamas attack, it’s estimated over 15,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 6,000 children and 4,000 women. Shortly after the bombardment began, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the emphasis of the campaign “is on damage and not on accuracy.”
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