Since May 2021, when the Israeli Defense Forces launched what officers described as the country’s “first AI war” during an 11-day conflict in Gaza, Israel has continued to expand its use of artificial intelligence technologies to surveil and target Palestinian civilians.
The escalation of military tactics to include automated systems operating with minimal human intervention has raised serious concerns about reliance on unauthorized data extraction and computerized decision-making in paramilitary operations, signaling a growing convergence between mechanized warfare and information capital in the digital age.
Despite claims by officials affiliated with the IDF, including former Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi, that these applications “produce vast amounts of data more effectively than any human,” recent investigations into Israel’s use of the software have found the algorithms to be unreliable and unsuitable for decisions as consequential as determining whether an individual lives or dies.
A 2024 assessment by Human Rights Watch of Israel’s use of four AI-powered systems concluded they relied on “faulty data and inexact approximations to inform military actions,” underscoring their propensity for error and inconsistency despite official assurances to the contrary.
The IDF’s use of AI systems to determine military targets has also prompted questions about the extent of human oversight involved. One system, known as Lavender, was described by Human Rights Watch as using machine learning to assign Gaza residents a numerical score indicating the suspected likelihood that a person is a member of an armed group.
The IDF has said the tool is used alongside manual procedures carried out by military officers and cannot replace the role of an intelligence analyst.
In a 2024 press release clarifying its use of AI tools, the military stated that “the inclusion of a person in the [Lavender] database cannot be solely relied upon to identify him as a military operative that can be attacked” and that artificial intelligence tools do “not constitute the sole basis for determining targets eligible to attack.”
However, accounts from IDF officials suggest limited human involvement in reviewing AI-generated material beyond brief assessments of outcomes.
One officer who used Lavender told The Guardian, “I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added-value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval.”
The remark suggests a narrow form of oversight despite the IDF’s stated claims that the system operates within a broader target-verification process.
A 2024 Human Rights Watch report further warned that the military’s reliance on such systems could violate international humanitarian law, particularly the laws of war requiring distinction between military targets and civilians and the obligation to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm.
The report characterized Israel’s use of AI technologies as an extension of extractive surveillance practices that collect personal data from Palestinian civilians in violation of international human rights law, feeding that information into machine-learning systems meant to distinguish between military objectives and civilians.
According to the report, these tools appear to rely more on speculative assumptions drawn from unlawfully acquired data than on rigorous technical procedures to determine the fate of people in Gaza. As long as AI programs continue to be used to identify targets without meaningful oversight, the military risks breaching the laws of war that require constant and careful distinction between civilians and combatants to limit civilian casualties.
The United Nations Special Committee has suggested that the IDF’s use of AI with limited human monitoring may reflect disregard for those obligations, stating in a 2024 press release that “the Israeli military’s use of AI-assisted targeting, with minimal human oversight, combined with heavy bombs, underscores Israel’s disregard of its obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants and take adequate safeguards to prevent civilian deaths.”
The deployment of these technologies by the IDF reflects a broader shift toward automated or unmanned systems to generate targets in paramilitary operations.
In “A Theory of the Drone,” French theorist Grégoire Chamayou describes how drone warfare collapses surveillance and combat into a single mechanism, writing, “Here, vision is a sighting: it serves not to represent objects but to act upon them, to target them. The function of the eye is that of the weapon.”
Chamayou argues that the image presented on a screen is not an objective reflection of reality but a projection shaped by subjective assumptions embedded in the technology.
The process of designating targets, Chamayou writes, depends on identifying “non-normative” behaviors as defined by algorithms, rather than recognizing individual identities.
“Because this model of information is predicated on an analysis of behavior patterns rather than the recognition of nominal identities,” he notes, “it claims to be able, paradoxically, to ‘identify’ individuals who remain anonymous.” Such identification, he argues, is generic rather than individual.
This inherent bias, obscured by claims of technical neutrality, is evident in the IDF’s AI-powered systems, which process data obtained from Palestinians in Gaza to “draw inferences from [such] data and recognize patterns without explicit instructions.”
In reducing people to statistical profiles and generalized traits while maintaining an appearance of objectivity, these systems undermine the reciprocity of combat and eliminate the possibility of self-defense. Entire lives and personal histories are reduced to technical variables, transforming warfare into a logistical operation in which direct recognition of the human target is no longer required.
As the death toll in Gaza continues to rise, with more than 69,000 Palestinians reported killed and more than 170,000 reported injured since Oct. 7, 2023, according to U.N. humanitarian updates citing Gaza’s Health Ministry, the IDF’s use of AI systems to produce targets quickly has intensified concerns that these tools may be accelerating and magnifying loss of life.
With opportunities for mutual self-defense effectively erased, Palestinian lives are increasingly subjected to automated decision-making, their survival contingent on the outputs of an algorithm.
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The anonymous author with no bio takes a serious, global issue and narrows it into a familiar moral narrative centered on Israel. The subject is the expansion of AI-assisted warfare, yet the framing converts a worldwide technological shift into a single-country indictment. AI-driven targeting, automated decision support, and compressed kill chains are now features of modern conflict everywhere. The war in Ukraine has shown how quickly drone warfare, algorithmic targeting, and rapid human-in-the-loop systems evolve, with advantages shifting back and forth as each side adapts. These developments are not unique to Israel and massively larger in scale elsewhere, and leaving out other wars obscures the real issue: how warfare itself is being reshaped by speed, data, and automation. But it does expose the anti-Israel obsession from certain news outlets that is so common today.
The “author” frames Israel as the singular embodiment of a global problem, using selective sourcing and moralized language to reinforce a predetermined conclusion. By ignoring how similar technologies are deployed by other states, the piece isolates Israel as a symbolic stand-in for everything disturbing about modern war. Israel is painted the locus of moral failure rather than an interest in understanding how automated warfare now operates across conflicts.
The lack of author transparency compounds the problem. With no full name, credentials, or background provided, readers have no way to assess the perspective shaping these claims. That omission is especially glaring in a piece that leans heavily on self-declared moral authority while avoiding broader comparative analysis. And if the author is under age 22 (not my line for when someone becomes an adult . . . but . . . ), I’ll probably be berated for being an a-hole to a child, again.
It’s interesting to note that two of the leading stories today were written anonymously or at least partially so. The fact that people are afraid to put their name on certain opinions should be a topic of more discussion.
I do think your second paragraph merits discussion – I think you are correct that the piece isolates Israel and Israel is definitely on the forefront of this but not alone in this trend of modern warfare.
So is this article written by one of your interns or was it submitted by an outsider?
You demand full names from commenters, I’m curious why not the same for the authors of the articles?
The article is from one of our community journalists. On a case by case basis, we have allowed for anonymous submissions. For instance, Ghostwrite Mike is one of our incarcerated writers and has posted psuedonymously for years.
Might have to start rethinking stuff. Found out today that one of our older court watch articles where we were still naming defendants, we stopped in 2022, caused a wife to get fired from her job and a husband to not have his u-visa renewed. You guys are free to live consequence free for the most part, there are increasingly consequences which puts a huge weight of responsibility on me that you don’t even begin to think about.
What . . . WHAT? I thought your policy was that authors had to be named and have a bio unless it was an extreme case. So now the metric for ‘extreme’ is “people are afraid to put their name on certain opinions”. I would think putting my name on certain opinions (such as the one I just expressed) would pass that test hands down . . . . . and I don’t think I have to draw a map for you to know what I’m talking about.
“I do think your second paragraph merits discussion – I think you are correct that the piece isolates Israel and Israel is definitely on the forefront of this but not alone in this trend of modern warfare.”
I’ve been compiling a list of media channels that are various forms of Israel/Jew-hating (the anti-Israel lot call that “doxxing” – ha ha ha). Some are just outright Jew haters, but with some it’s a weird ‘obsession’ with Israel that goes with a sneer and lightly-veiled contempt, outrageously out-of-proportion in the number of stories and often really scraping the barrel for content. With some I think it’s ‘sincere’, with others I fear their only motivation is ‘clicks’ (money) and it is so sad they don’t care that this fuels parallel public obsession with similar contempt – which may be even worse of a motivator than so-called ‘antisemitism’ itself (it’s at least a tie)
Opposite the parable about “I said nothing, and then them came for me”, it’s more like “I couldn’t keep my f*-ing mouth shut, and then they came for me”.
The reason for the “anti-Israel” bias is the same reason for the “anti-American” bias.
They are viewed (and correctly so) as being far more powerful than their foes. (With the exception of China, which isn’t yet a formal foe.)
Correctly so? I dunno when your foes are trying to exterminate you. Iran, despite their current military limitations, is still a very strong foe via funding in the $billions to its various proxies and Israel is *tiny*.
At one point Israel was fighting a *six front* war. How many countries have ever had to do THAT ? Here are the fronts: Hezbollah (Lebanese Shiite militia operating along Israel’s northern border funded by Iran), Hamas (Islamist governing authority and militant group operating in the Gaza Strip with Iranian funding), Palestinian Islamic Jihad (smaller militant group operating primarily in Gaza funded by Iran), West Bank militant groups (localized armed factions operating in the West Bank), Iranian IRGC / Quds Force (Iranian state military units coordinating regional proxy operations from Syria), Houthis / Ansar Allah (Iran-aligned Yemeni movement launching long-range missile and drone attacks), Iran (direct missile and drone launches from its own territory, first time in history).
Iran has 10x the population of Israel and 80x the land mass of Israel and 4x as many troops.