Some former and active-duty Israeli military and intelligence professionals are apparently upset over the massive killing of Palestinians and wanton destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure. Seven have now provided details for Yuval Abraham’s Nov. 30 article, “‘A Mass Assassination Factory’: Inside Israel’s Calculated Bombing of Gaza,” in +972 Magazine. (The magazine is put out in English by a joint team of Israelis and Palestinians and some writers are also associated with Just Vision in Arabic and Hebrew.) Abraham’s exposé makes clear that, under cover of the phrase “exterminate Hamas,” there lies a deliberate decision to make Gaza uninhabitable, where mass killing of civilians helps terrorize a population to flee.
The article opens: “The Israeli army’s expanded authorization for bombing non-military targets, the loosening of constraints regarding expected civilian casualties, and the use of an artificial intelligence system to generate more potential targets than ever before, appear to have contributed to the destructive nature of the initial stages of Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip.”
In brief, the army made a heavy priority in the early days to hit what it called “power targets”—defined as “private residences … public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks"—as opposed to actual military targets. In the first five days of fighting, of the army’s four categories of targets—“tactical targets,” “underground targets,” “power targets,” and “operatives homes”—a full 50% of those aimed at were the “power targets.” One source active in the targetting described the rationale: “The bombing of power targets … is mainly intended … to ‘create a shock’ that, among other things, will reverberate powerfully and ‘lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas.’” But, taken conjointly with the IDF Oct. 14 announcement that 1.1 million Palestinians had to clear out of northern Gaza immediately, it was clear that the focus on “power targets” was simply a terror campaign to ethnically cleanse the area, that had nothing whatever with trying to put pressure on Hamas.
