(((Intentional Civilian Casualties)))

''We're targeting civilian– military targets...'' - Netenyahu

Israeli military doctrine

Dahiya doctrine 

The Dahiya doctrine (named after a Lebanese suburb abliterated by Israel) is state sanctioned military doctrine specifically for Lebanon developed after the 2006 Lebanon War, advocating for the use of disproportionate, overwhelming force and destruction of civilian infrastructure. It involves targeting economic interests and civilian power centers in the hopes of forcing the population to turn on its military.

Habsora AI (Infrastructure)

The IDF uses an AI called Habsora, which generates targets to be bombed, while calculating  and displaying how many civilian causalities would be killed, one case describing Israeli military command knowingly approved the killing of hundreds of civilians in an attempt to assassinate a single Hamas commander: +972 source: “The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage... 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.”

"It was very surprising for me that we were asked to bomb a house to kill a ground soldier, whose importance in the fighting was so low," said one source about the use of AI to mark alleged low-ranking militants. "I nicknamed those targets 'garbage targets.' Still, I found them more ethical than the targets that we bomb just for deterrence — high rises that are evacuated and toppled just to cause destruction."

Since Oct. 7 the number of civilians allowed to be killed per strike was raised from 5 to 20.

''Power targets'' - The IDF refers to high-rises and residential buildings as "power targets". According to three intelligence sources the purpose of targeting high-rises is to harm Palestinian civil society in order to exert “civil pressure” and “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas in accordance with the Dahiya doctrine. 

The IDF also targets what they categorize as “family homes,” in order to assassinate a single resident suspected of being a Hamas or other resistance operative.

Abandonment of roof knocking - According to Airforce chief of staff, Omer Tishler, since October 7 Israel abandoned the practice of roof knocking (initial strike warning civilians to leave building) in areas with resistance fighters after Oct 7. 

There are “cases in which we shell based on a wide cellular pinpointing of where the target is, killing civilians. This is often done to save time, instead of doing a little more work to get a more accurate pinpointing... We are asked to look for high-rise buildings with half a floor that can be attributed to Hamas... Sometimes it is a militant group’s spokesperson’s office, or a point where operatives meet. I understood that the floor is an excuse that allows the army to cause a lot of destruction in Gaza. That is what they told us. If they would tell the whole world that the [Islamic Jihad] offices on the 10th floor are not important as a target, but that its existence is a justification to bring down the entire high-rise with the aim of pressuring civilian families who live in it in order to put pressure on terrorist organizations, this would itself be seen as terrorism. So they do not say it,”

Lavender AI (Civilians

Lavender is an AI targeting program developed by Unit 8200, and introduced in 2021 during Operation Guardian of the Walls. Unlike Hasbora, which targets buildings, Lavander focuses on people. The algorithm reportedly carries a known 10% misidentification rate, and in its use, the army permits 15 to 20 civilian deaths for low-ranking targets, and over 100 civilian deaths for high-ranking operatives.

Along with including simple junior officers who were to be killed in their homes with their families, the list also at times reportedly included children. ''Normally, operatives are over the age of 17, but that was not a condition."

Where's Daddy?

Intelligence officer to 972 and Local Call on AI-assisted tracking program, Where's Daddy: ''We're not interested in killing Hamas operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity. On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation as a first option. It's much easier to bomb a family's home. The system is built to look for them in these situations... The marked person would be placed under ongoing surveillance and could be attacked as soon as they set foot in their home, collapsing the house on everyone inside. Let's say you calculate that there is one Hamas operative plus 10 civilians in the house," A said. Usually these 10 will be women and children.'' 

The number of targets feverishly generated by officers seeking to pad their kill lists grew to as many as 37,000.

Zvika Fogel testemony

An Israeli general has confirmed that when snipers stationed along Israel’s boundary with Gaza shoot at children, they are doing so deliberately, under clear and specific orders. In a radio interview, Brigadier-General (Reserve) Zvika Fogel describes how a sniper identifies the “small body” of a child and is given authorization to shoot. Fogel’s statements could be used as evidence of intent if Israeli leaders are ever tried for war crimes at the International Criminal Court.