Times Report on IDF's Lack of Civilian Protections in Gaza 'Confirms What We All Knew'
"Israel has adopted an understanding of the laws of war that cancels the category of civilian to serve its war of annihilation," said one observer.
Human rights advocates and journalists in the Middle East have warned since Israel began its assault on Gaza 14 months ago that the Israel Defense Forces, which heralds itself as "the most moral army in the world," has actually been operating far outside the bounds of international humanitarian law—targeting not just Hamas commanders and other armed militants in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack in October 2023, but accepting and encouraging the killing of thousands of civilians of all ages.
On Thursday, The New York Times published an extensive report on how the IDF operated in the earliest weeks of Israel's current escalation, during which more than 15,000 Palestinians—a third of the overall total so far—were killed in Israeli airstrikes and other attacks.
The report details an order that was given by IDF leaders on October 7, 2023, hours after the Hamas-led attack, that the Times said was not previously reported—and builds on extensive reporting by human rights groups like Amnesty International and news outlets such as +972 Magazine and Haaretz about the military's widespread killing of civilians, in many cases with U.S.-made weapons.
The order described in the Times report directed mid-ranking Israeli officers to strike thousands of junior Hamas fighters and minor military sites that had not been the focus of earlier campaigns, and gave them the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians with each strike.
For some strikes that targeted senior Hamas leaders, the IDF was given the authority to kill more than 100 civilians, and in an order given on October 8, 2023, strikes on military targets in Gaza "were permitted to cumulatively endanger up to 500 civilians each day"—removing a previous limit.
Allowing the killing of more than 100 civilians for one commander crossed "an extraordinary threshold for a contemporary Western military," reported the Times, which has faced accusations of pro-Israel bias in its coverage over the past 14 months.
The newly reported orders reflect comments made by top Israeli government leaders in the early days of the IDF's bombardment, which were reported on at the time by Common Dreams and other outlets. Then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on October 10 that he had "released all the restraints" on Israeli troops, and President Israel Herzog asserted days later that there were no civilians in Gaza who were "not involved" in the Hamas attack.
The investigation, said University of Edinburgh political scientist Nicola Perugini, "confirms what we all knew."
The Times reported that the family members of Shaldan al-Najjar, a senior commander in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were some of the first casualties of Israel's new operating procedures in Gaza. A two-month-old baby was among 20 of al-Najjar's family members who were killed in an airstrike in October 2023, and the severed hand of one of his niece's was found in the rubble of the family home.
Mid-level Israeli officers were required to get approval for strikes from senior commanders if a target was close to a site like a school or healthcare facility, but those targets were "regularly approved."
The Times based its reporting on dozens of military records and interviews with more than 100 soldiers and officials, including 25 IDF members who helped approve or vet targets.
The report details how the Israeli air force "raced through" a database of hundreds of militants and military sites that had been compiled from extensive vetting, and put pressure on the military to quickly find thousands of new targets.
The IDF also largely stopped its use of warning shots to give civilians time to flee an area before a large-scale strike, and significantly increased risks to civilians by using 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs.
The military told the Times in a statement that its soldiers have "consistently been employing means and methods that adhere to the rules of law."
The Times' reporting comes less than two weeks after the death toll in Gaza was reported to have passed 45,000. A United Nations analysis in November found that women and children made up 70% of the people killed in the enclave between October 2023 and April 2024.
On December 18, Haaretz reported that the IDF has adopted a point of view that "everyone's a terrorist" in Gaza—a report, policy expert Assal Rad said, that was unlikely to be covered by Western news outlets.
At +972 Magazine, journalist Yuval Abraham has written at least twice since October 2023 about the IDF's use of artificial intelligence systems to generate large numbers of targets in Gaza. As Common Dreams reported in December 2023, an AI-driven system called the Gospel was used to produce 100 targets in a single day, leading IDF sources to compare Gaza to a "factory" where the maximum number of casualties—whether of militants or civilians—was accepted and encouraged.
About 37,000 Palestinians and their homes—potentially with family members inside—were marked by another AI system called Lavender in the first weeks of the war, Abraham reported in another article in April.
In that article Abraham emphasized, similarly to the Times, that up to 100 civilian deaths were allowed for every killing of a senior Hamas commander.
"Glad the Times is covering the IDF's total lack of safeguards to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza," said podcast host and former Obama White House staffer Tommy Vietor, "but outlets like Haartez and +972... had these stories months ago."
