Israel gave officers all-clear to kill civilians – NYT

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) allegedly loosened its rules of engagement at the start of the war with Hamas, giving officers permission to conduct airstrikes even when they knew that dozens of civilians would be killed, the New York Times has reported.

Within hours of Hamas militants attacking Israel on October 7 last year, the IDF issued an order authorizing mid-ranking officers to strike not just senior Hamas commanders or known military sites, but also low-level fighters and sites with a potentially high number of civilian bystanders, the newspaper reported on Thursday, citing interviews with Israeli officers.

Whereas the IDF officially tolerated between five and ten civilian casualties for every enemy operative killed in the past, the change in the rules bumped the number of acceptable casualties up to 20, the New York Times’ sources said.

The change meant that “the military could target rank-and-file militants as they were at home surrounded by relatives and neighbors, instead of only when they were alone outside,” the newspaper noted.

In practice, IDF commanders authorized strikes that they knew would endanger more than 100 civilians, the newspaper claimed, citing interviews with more than 100 military personnel. Flawed systems were used to identify targets, and unguided 2,000-pound bombs were used in strikes that previously would have called for smaller munitions, it added.

Within three days of Hamas’ attack, the IDF removed a pre-existing cap on the number of strikes its forces could conduct in a single day. As a result, some 30,000 munitions were fired in the first seven weeks of the conflict, more than in the next eight months combined, according to the report.

In a statement to the New York Times, the IDF acknowledged that the rules of engagement had changed after October 7, but said its forces had “consistently been employing means and methods that adhere to the rules of law.”

Israeli forces have killed nearly 45,400 people in Gaza since the conflict began, according to figures supplied by the enclave’s Health Ministry and accepted as accurate by the UN. The majority of those killed have been women and children.

Last December, South Africa filed a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Earlier this year, the court ordered Israel to do everything in its power to prevent the genocide of Palestinians, and to take immediate action to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza by allowing more food and medicine into the territory.

The New York Times’ report backs up earlier findings by the Israeli-Palestinian +972 Magazine. Back in April, the magazine revealed that the IDF was using an experimental AI system to identify targets in Gaza, with commanders initially programming the system to limit potential civilian casualties to 20, and later scaling its tolerance for innocent casualties up to 100.

The IDF denied these claims, stating at the time that it “does not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives or tries to predict whether a person is a terrorist.”