Bombing
Israeli AI ‘using WhatsApp data’ to target Gaza families for bomb strikes
‘Lavender’ AI set to prioritise hitting targets at home with their families and is said to be using WhatsApp data for its process – but how is Israel getting hold of it?
Israel’s AI system for targeting people for murder in Gaza uses WhatsApp data among its targeting criteria, according to a report in the Israeli 972 magazine and analysis by Paul Biggar of Tech for Palestine.
The platform is marketed as encrypted ‘end to end’, supposedly offering complete security, and WhatsApp told Middle East Monitor that:
WhatsApp has no backdoors and we do not provide bulk information to any government. For over a decade, Meta has provided consistent transparency reports and those include the limited circumstances when WhatsApp information has been requested. Our principles are firm – we carefully review, validate and respond to law enforcement requests based on applicable law and consistent with internationally recognized standards, including human rights.
However, a 2021 Freedom of Information Request to the FBI revealed that WhatsApp’s owner provides ‘near real-time’ information to US authorities – not the content of messages in most cases, but of who is sending and receiving messages:
WhatsApp will produce certain user metadata, though not actual message content, every 15 minutes in response to a pen register [a special type of federal request], the FBI says. The FBI guide explains that most messaging services do not or cannot do this and instead provide data with a lag and not in anything close to real time: “Return data provided by the companies listed below, with the exception of WhatsApp, are actually logs of latent data that are provided to law enforcement in a non-real-time manner and may impact investigations due to delivery delays.”
This potentially fits with reports in Israeli media that Israel is using an artificial intelligence platform named ‘Lavender’ to identify thousands of human targets in Gaza and flag them for an airstrike, with WhatsApp data forming a key part of the AI’s decision process, based on the WhatsApp connections of supposed ‘militants’ – and that the system is designed to kill large numbers of civilians. One source told 972 that when Lavender identifies a target, Israeli forces:
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.
But of course, people are in WhatsApp groups of all kinds of topics and for all kind of reasons – and merely being in a group which has a ‘militant’ member is no guarantee of any kind of ‘guilt’ – even if the right to resist occupation is disregarded, as Israel, the US and UK do.
This pattern raises the possibility that Israel is obtaining WhatsApp data, whether directly or from the US government. Another possibility is that Israel is accessing the data through the notorious ‘Pegasus’ hacking programme that has been shown to target WhatsApp users, hijacking their phones through WhatsApp even, in the later Pegasus versions, if they don’t open any suspicious links. Journalists, politicians, human rights activists and others are known to have been hacked by governments using the software, including its use by the Saudis against dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
So serious was the issue that in 2021 tech firm Apple sued NSO, the maker of Pegasus, for targeting Apple users. NSO claimed that the software is used only against ‘terrorists’ – as which Israel, the UK, US and some others have designated Palestinian resistance groups – but there is clearly no guarantee that the definition of ‘terrorist’ is not extended in practice to anyone targeted by Israel. Biggar has accused WhatsApp’s owners of breaking international law and violating human rights.
Facebook, which belongs to the same Meta parent group as WhatsApp, has been accused of shutting down the circulation of pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist posts and treating the term ‘Zionist’ as hate speech. In 2020, the company admitted changing its algorithms to filter out left-wing news and analysis from users’ feeds while allowing right-wing propaganda to flow unchecked.
However Israel is accessing the WhatsApp data it is said to be using to target Palestinians and their families, undoubtedly a war crime, the news that it is doing so is a warning for those who dissent from Establishment narratives and use ‘private’ messaging services to do so.
Meta continued its statement to Middle East Monitor:
Our principles are firm – we carefully review, validate and respond to law enforcement requests based on applicable law and consistent with internationally recognized standards, including human rights.
The US and UK governments, however, continue to insist that Israel is following international law and recognised human rights standards, even as it murders tens of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children.
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Video: Israel targeted SIX international aid groups that had shared their coordinates
Groups hit repeatedly when IDF knew where they were, killing aid workers and their families
A still from the NYT video shows a traumatised aid worker
A New York Times investigation has revealed that at least six international aid groups working to help starving Palestinians in Gaza were targeted by Israeli forces – hit despite having repeatedly shared their locations with the Israeli military. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) from France, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) based in the UK, the US International Rescue Committee, Anera from the US and the Red Cross/Red Crescent from Switzerland were all hit, along with the well-known repeat attack on three World Central Kitchen (WCK) vehicles spread across a 2.4km distance.
The analysis of photographic evidence and communications between the groups and the IDF has been published today. The IDF claimed that the WCK attack was a ‘mistake’ and admitted that the WCK workers had reported their locations and movements as requested to – but the attacks on five other groups also known to have communicated their positions establishes what was already clear: the attacks were intentional.
Some of the attacks targeted the aid workers’ homes, killing them and multiple family members including children. Watch below:
The UK continues to arm and assist Israel, despite several British citizens being among those murdered. Israel has slaughtered well over forty thousand civilians since 7 October, mostly women and children, and is starving two million more. The country is on trial for genocide before the ICJ, which has repeatedly ordered Israel to stop killing and starving Palestinians.
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Israeli media: Israel ‘totally defeated’ – and terrified of Iran
Source close to discussions about Iran says millions would be fleeing Israel if they knew what was being said
Israeli media are often far more honest about what their country is doing – and what is going on in it – than western ‘mainstream’ media are about the same issues. While UK ‘msm’ still maintain the lie that Hamas ‘beheaded babies’ and raped women on 7 October, Israeli media sometimes freely discuss the truth – and frequently and openly write about the ‘immense’ numbers of Israelis killed that day by the Israeli military.
And now, Israeli media are discussing two further truths that will not be aired by UK broadcasters or printed by UK papers.
First, Haaretz – one of Israel’s major dailies – has splashed a headline concluding that Israel has lost – totally lost – the ‘war’, the genocide, it has been raining down on the innocent civilians of Gaza. Lost so badly that Israel cannot be secure – and will not either regain by force the captives taken by Hamas, or end its pariah status:
And second, journalists with sources close to the Israeli regime’s discussions about Iran – which yesterday achieved a measured but compelling attack on Israel in retaliation for Israel’s bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus – are saying openly that those discussions are so terrifying that if the Israeli populace knew what was being said, millions of them would be flooding Israel’s main international airport to try to get out of the country:
The UK government, opposition and media are incorrigibly dishonest about Israel’s genocide and its terrible consequences for the millions of innocents in Gaza and the West Bank – and the ruination of both Israel’s and the West’s always-thin pretence as democratic, humane and law-abiding. But the truth is out there – and will percolate through.
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Pics/vid: Liverpool comes out three times for Gaza – Grand National, city and Waterloo
City sees whole weekend of solidarity and activism
Liverpool and Merseyside saw a whole weekend of solidarity with the Palestinians against Israel’s genocide over the last couple of days – beginning with a demonstration at Aintree racecourse for the Grand National.
Protesters, including members of Merseyside’s Jewish community, received a positive reaction from most racegoers as they braved windy weather to wave banners and Palestinian flags:
Sunday saw a large march through the city centre – numbers that have remained undiminished through the long months of Israel’s ongoing war crimes against Palestinian civilians – including a group of women holding ‘bloodied’ bundles representing the around eighteen thousand children murdered in Gaza:
And on Sunday night, around a hundred activists – gathered at Da Gurka restaurant in Waterloo to share food, lift spirits and raise thousands of pounds for Medical Aid for Palestinians.
Israel is losing the PR war badly, its murderousness and arrogance as it slaughters tens of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children, and tries to starve two million more, appalling the world and prompting millions to turn out on the streets every week. The flailing of its far-right regime is now putting the whole world in danger as it tries to provoke a regional war and bring the US into open aggression against the Muslim nations around it.
Free Palestine. Justice for Gaza and the West Bank.
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Video: Israel’s ‘error’ killing of WCK food aid workers was 3 attacks over 1.5 miles
‘Error’? The facts say different but western governments still complicit
Israel has claimed that its slaughter of seven World Central Kitchen food aid workers was an ‘error’ and says it is investigating. The attack consisted of three separate bombings – across a distance of 2.4km.
And as a White House correspondent pointed out in questions to government spokesperson John Kirby this evening, the attacks were spread across time, too – with the first strike hitting one vehicle then two more as survivors tried to escape with their wounded in the remaining two: an attack designed to make sure no one got out of it alive:
The ‘error’ also happens to have achieved Israel’s objective of cutting off the only remaining significant supply of food to the two million civilians of Gaza – WCK fed some half million Palestinians – after Netanyahu ordered his forces to prevent any shipping of food by UN agency UNRWA.
Yet the US and UK political establishments remain more than happy to collude in Israel’s fictions – and to allow the war criminals to investigate themselves. The UK has not even ordered Israel’s far-right ambassador to appear to explain Israel’s actions, despite at least one UK citizen being among the murder victims.
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Exclusive: Foreign Office has not summoned Israel ambassador over murder of UK food workers
7 World Central Kitchen workers murdered in air strike as they delivered food to starving Palestinians – but while Australia has summoned ambassador over killing of its citizen, UK has not
The UK government has not summoned the Israeli ambassador to account for the murder of seven food charity workers, including British citizens.
The group also included Palestinians, an Australian, a US-Canadian and a Polish citizen, as well as British. The convoy of three vehicles was bombed despite World Central Kitchen (WCK) coordinating its departure with Israeli forces, according to the Charity’s spokesperson.
All three trucks, which were spaced at least 500m from each other, were hit.
Israel has admitted carrying out the attack, which it claims was an accident. WCK has now suspended its operations, leaving Palestinians even deeper in famine after Israel blocked all deliveries by UNRWA, the UN’s relief agency for Palestinians.
According to the UN and World Health Organization, approaching two million Palestinians in Gaza are in, or at risk of, starvation because of Israel’s blockade.
The Australian Prime Minister has ordered the Israeli ambassador to attend an urgent meeting to account for Israel’s murder of the charity workers. However, the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) press office told Skwawkbox, in response to an enquiry whether the UK had done the same, that the FCDO had nothing to add to David Cameron’s tweet. Number 10 said the matter was being dealt with by the FCDO).
Cameron’s tweet has been shared by the FCDO, but that’s all
The UK government has been exposed covering up the legal advice of its own lawyers that Israel is committing war crimes in it’s mass slaughter of over 40,000 Gaza civilians, it’s wounding of 80,000 more and its imposed famine.
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Graham tells staff/organisers Unite will always put arms jobs before fighting Gaza genocide
‘Unhinged’ letter to all staff, organisers and officers includes ‘disgusting’ section about Palestine
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has sent a letter to all the union’s staff, organisers and officers that has been described as an ‘unhinged’ attempt to counter criticisms. Skwawkbox will publish analysis of the various sections separately – and will first cover what Unite figures have described as Graham’s ‘disgusting’ comments on Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
The letter claims that Graham and Unite have led on opposition to the mass murder in Gaza – despite Graham being widely criticised for her silence on the issue and insiders saying that she had to be pressured into a proper statement on Gaza at all.
And the section, which is titled ‘Palestine’, goes on to make clear that while Unite has given a one-off donation (one that Skwawkbox understands was given suddenly and without approval by Unite’s elected executive) to Doctors without Borders, Ms Graham and the union under her will always prioritise defence industry jobs above any outside issues, despite the union’s official, democratic position in support of sanctions and a boycott against Israel.
The full section reads:
Palestine
Of all the issues that have been used in these attacks, probably the most abhorrent is the attempted weaponisation of the conflict and the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and the collective punishment of the people of Gaza.
Unite, through the General Secretary and the Chair of the Union and the Executive Council, was the first major union to publicly and unambiguously call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. We were very clear. We have watched on with horror the bombardment and destruction of Gaza, and the unbearable terror, suffering and death of its innocent civilians. We have been unequivocal that the deliberate killing of civilians, hostage-taking and collective punishment are war crimes and should be identified as such.
Unite has also donated £50,000 to Médecins Sans Frontières/ Doctors Without Borders specifically to help the many victims of this horrific conflict. Most recently the General Secretary has written to the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) offering our solidarity after the horrific bombing of their Gaza headquarters which, alongside providing services to workers, was also functioning as a kindergarten and bakery.
However, we cannot and will not endorse any organisation which decides unilaterally and without any discussion (let alone agreement) with the workers themselves, to support the targeting of our members’ workplaces or their jobs. To be clear, this will not happen. No outside body, no matter what their political position, will be allowed to dictate terms to our Union and our members.
It is important to highlight here that it is a core principle of Unite that as a trade union the ‘first claim’ on our priorities is always the protection and advancement of our members’ interests at work. It is very simple. Unite cannot and never will advocate or support any course of action which is counter to that principle. We are a trade union, not a political party or single-issue campaign group.
Therefore, there is no contradiction for a trade union to hold a position of solidarity with Palestinian workers, while at the same time refusing to support campaigns that target our members’ workplaces without their support. Similarly, we cannot be expected to affiliate to organisations that actively work against our members and their jobs.
Examples include groups that look to build networks inside trade unions to undermine the defence industry or demand the disbandment of NATO and AUKUS. Whatever anyone may think personally about those objectives is irrelevant. We are a trade union with thousands of members employed in the defence industry. It is the views of affected members that take precedence in a trade union. That will not change and nor should it. Unite members have recently been attacked directly, been spat at and called “child killers”. We cannot and will not endorse this.
Emphases added
One furious senior insider told Skwawkbox:
She’s effectively saying members working in defence don’t care if what they make ends up killing women and children in Gaza – only jobs matter. Has she bothered asking any of them?
Another said:
Unite’s official position, democratically reached repeatedly at conference and confirmed again just last summer, is that it supports Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. We didn’t add ‘except where it might affect defence jobs’. We’ve also voted for the end of trade agreements with Israel. This is disgusting by Sharon.
Sharon Graham has been alleged by insiders to have:
- banned Unite officials and national banners from pro-Gaza protests
- banned and smeared films and books exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam
- placed an official under investigation who refused to cancel a Palestine solidarity fringe event at Labour’s 2023 annual conference
- told her chief of staff to threaten a soon-to-retire official with the loss of a pension bonus if he did not soften his support for Palestinians
Her supporters also prevented debate and votes on Gaza at a meeting of the union’s elected executive earlier this month.
According to human rights group Euro Med Monitor, since 7 October last year Israel has killed over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded more than double that number, overwhelmingly women and children and many of them with life-changing injuries, while Gaza’s health and school systems have been bombed into collapse, often using US- and UK-made weapons and systems. More than a million people have been forcibly displaced and Gaza is in famine because of Israel’s blockade of food and vital supplies. Israel is formally on trial for genocide before the International Court of Justice and ordered to stop its slaughter – and has been found by UN human rights investigators to be committing genocide.
Unite was contacted for comment but did not respond by the press deadline.
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Video: Israeli Knesset member mocked and called liar by UN-linked parliament gathering
Hard right advocate of ‘levelling’ Gaza derided for repeating debunked atrocity propaganda to 148th Assembly of Inter-Parliamentary Union
Danny Danon, a hard-right Likud member of Israel’s Knesset, has been derided as a liar and jeered by attendees at the 148th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), a UN-linked gathering of the world’s parliaments, which is taking place in Geneva.
Danon, who advocated for the ‘levelling’ of Gaza almost ten years before the Hamas raid on 7 October last year, blamed Hamas for Israel’s actions in Gaza, ignored the seventy-five years of illegal occupation and slaughter by Israel and regurgitated atrocity propaganda about child rapes and murders, which has been discredited for months – and was booed by delegates and angrily confronted by the Palestinian delegate, before being carpeted by Ireland’s representative for his ‘lots of lies’ on behalf of a ‘failed’ regime:
In 2013, Danon, an opponent of immigration from Africa to Israel – where discrimination against Black Jews is rife – advocated for punishment attacks against Palestinian civilians and infrastructure, including a suggestion that Israel “delete” one whole neighbourhood in Gaza in response for every rocket launched by the Palestinian resistance, an act of collective punishment that is a clear war crime under international law.
A year later, Danon advocated cutting off all electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza, prefiguring the blockade by Israel that has pushed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into famine. A month later, Danon said that Israel should respond to the kidnapping of an IDF soldier by “levelling Gaza”. Since the resistance raid, he has been a prominent advocate for the ‘voluntary’ removal of all Palestinians from Gaza to other countries, yet he clearly thinks he has the right to demand obedience and belief from the global community.
The IDF has admitted that the number of its own people that it killed during the Hamas raid was ‘immense’ – an admission ignored entirely by the UK media. Israel has murdered over 40,000 Palestinians since 7 October and wounded double that amount in its levelling of Gaza, mostly women and children. It is using starvation as a weapon of war and has killed dozens of Israeli hostages while taking thousands of Palestinian hostages and, according to the UN, carrying out summary executions of civilians and raping and abusing Palestinian women and girls.
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Biden Decries Civilian Deaths in Gaza as Pentagon Fails With Its Own Safeguards
As the Biden administration ratchets up its criticism of Israel’s ongoing campaign in Gaza, it has failed to implement its own civilian casualty avoidance policies for the U.S. armed forces, according to a scathing new government audit.
“The right number of civilian casualties is zero,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of Israel’s war last week.
In December, a year after the Pentagon announced a new program to address civilian casualties, the Joint Chiefs of Staff called for an “urgent” effort to get units and headquarters throughout the military to take on the task of mitigating civilian harm.
“Hard-earned tactical and operational successes may ultimately end in strategic failure if care is not taken to protect the civilian environment as much as the situation allows – including the civilian population and the personnel, organizations, resources, infrastructure, essential services, and systems on which civilian life depends,” says the new Joint Chiefs of Staff directive to the armed services. The January 2024 document, obtained by The Intercept, has not been previously reported.
But as the Defense Department pushes forward to revamp its protocols addressing civilian harm, the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, released an audit this month that finds that field commands have so far largely rejected the Pentagon’s effort. The scathing GAO report, “Civilian Harm: DOD Should Take Actions to Enhance Its Plan for Mitigation and Response Efforts,” finds that Washington has failed to inculcate a new appreciation of the impact of civilian harm and that its top down directives have been met with ire and confusion from both military commanders and rank-and-file soldiers alike.
In December 2023, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued an instruction formalizing the department’s new civilian harm response, which “Establishes policy, assigns responsibilities, and provides procedures for civilian harm mitigation and response.”
“Protecting civilians from harm in connection with military operations is not only a moral imperative, it is also critical to achieving long-term success on the battlefield,” the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan said, as previously reported by The Intercept.
Wide-ranging in its scope, the directive and plan sets in motion 11 core objectives that establish a Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Steering Committee, a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, the creation of dedicated staff positions at battlefield commands to help mitigate civilian harm, and multiple initiatives to gather more information on incidents and trends with the goal of reducing civilian casualties.
The new regulation, Dan E. Stigall, director for Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Policy in the Office of Secretary of Defense, wrote in December 2023, “provides important policy guidance to shape how DoD conceptualizes, considers, assesses, investigates, and responds to civilian harm.”
And yet the GAO report, issued earlier this month, finds that despite the Pentagon mandate, Middle East and Africa regional commanders have failed to change practices for how civilian harm prevention is being factored into military operations. The GAO also found that the Defense Department “has not addressed uncertainty about what constitutes improvement and how the action plan applies to certain operations.” In other words, there is an absence of processes and metrics to record civilian deaths and then interpret incidents and causes for the purpose of learning lessons. The Pentagon itself has also failed to think through civilian casualties and harm caused in the context of all types of operations.
The GAO generally excuses the failure of the fighting commands to take adequate measures to revamp their practices given the military’s focus on small-scale counterterrorism operations over the past two decades. According to the report’s findings, “in our discussions with DOD components about challenges in implementing the action plan, some [commanders] indicated that they are unclear about how to mitigate and respond to civilian harm for large-scale conflicts. This is because they felt that the action plan is geared toward counterterrorism operations.” Creating a culture of civilian harm reduction “will require much more time, resources, and personnel than during the counterterrorism or irregular warfare operations of the past 20 years,” the GAO concludes.
Large-scale conflicts refer to potential wars with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. But building up a capacity inside the military to assess civilian harm for conflicts like Ukraine and Israel is also a Pentagon goal in order to properly assess the use of U.S. weapons by American arms recipients, experts say.
U.S. Central Command officials, responsible for the Middle East, told the GAO that they didn’t understand the end goal of the Defense Department plan, given that they felt it fails to provide any way to measure the number of civilian deaths. The command also told the GAO that it was already working to mitigate civilian harm even without the new directives, saying that “the [Pentagon] action plan may be more helpful to other combatant commands that have not had recent experiences with combat and civilian harm mitigation.” It is a strange position for CENTCOM to take given that Austin’s directive itself was precipitated by successful lobbying by human rights groups for the military to address civilian harm in conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria, where it became clear that CENTCOM was not doing enough.
U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, similarly told the GAO that it should be allowed to continue with its operations as they are being conducted and that nothing more needed to be done to implement Austin’s plan. According to the report, a SOCOM official “told us that there is currently no deficiency in DOD’s civilian harm mitigation and response efforts and the action plan codifies what the command is already doing.”
Officials from Africa Command and Indo-Pacific Command expressed similar skepticism about the Pentagon’s effort, according to the GAO report. A Navy officer said that the new regulations were unpopular within the rank and file: “some staff at lower levels of the Navy are asking questions about what DOD is fixing by implementing the action plan,” the officer said.
On December 13, 2023, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a new staff functional task, contained in its Unified Joint Task List, or UJTL, that directs all military organizations to “manage civilian harm mitigation and response.” The UJTL is the standard “library of tasks, which serves as a foundation for capabilities-based planning across the range of military operations.” It is a comprehensive menu of “tasks, conditions, and measures” used to establish standards and even job descriptions across the entire defense enterprise. A printout of the tasks is over 1,600 pages, but the UJTL is maintained electronically.
According to an electronic copy obtained by The Intercept, the “urgent” priority new task directs the armed forces to “plan, integrate, and/or manage approaches for mitigation and response to civilian harm in plans, operations and/or training.”
“This task may include the Civilian Environment Teams at operational commands, composed of intelligence professionals; experts in human terrain, civilian infrastructure, and urban systems; and civil engineers, to assist commanders in understanding the effects of friendly and adversary actions on the civilian environment. This task may also include the development of command red teaming policies and procedures appropriate to relevant operational environments, with a focus on combating cognitive biases throughout joint targeting processes,” the description of the task says. It calls for reporting on the number of “trained, qualified, and certified personnel ready to support civilian harm mitigation and response requirements.”
With Austin’s civilian harm reduction rollout in 2023 and now with the Joint Chiefs of Staff chiming in, demanding that the services and commands incorporate civilian harm reduction into its staff and operations, a fundamental disagreement inside the military comes into focus, pitting top brass in Washington against combat commanders serving overseas. In the field, according to the GAO report, commanders believe that they are abiding by the laws of war and that their jobs which require putting their lives on the line are difficult and dangerous enough without having to modify them to satisfy Washington. They view the Pentagon as out of touch, catering more to public opinion and negative news coverage than to military reality.
The Pentagon, by focusing on “managing” and “mitigating” civilian harm is also being cautious about directing any mandate to count (or account for) civilian casualties because of the legacy of the dreaded “body count” from the Vietnam era, where commanders were pressured to inflate the number of enemy killed to demonstrate the false success of their operations. In Desert Storm (the first Gulf War in 1991), then CENTCOM commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf fashioned his own experiences into a creed that his command would refuse to count not only Iraqi combatants killed, but Iraqi civilians as well. For many in the military, that bias not to count civilian casualties has continued to this day.
Pressure from human rights and civilian casualty organizations began to change this practice after the Kosovo war in 1999, holding NATO and individual military forces accountable for civilian casualties and harm. Two decades of fighting after 9/11 accentuated the need to account for civilian harm, not just for legal and humanitarian reasons, but also because the effort to kill terrorists without accounting for civilian effects was shown to just increase the number of terrorists in succeeding generations.
In the formulation of its civilian harm “mitigation” strategy, the Pentagon has chosen specifically to ignore the work of the human rights and warfare-monitoring community, as revealed in a 2022 RAND Corporation report on “U.S. Department of Defense Civilian Casualty Policies and Procedures.” The Office of the Secretary of Defense, the report says, rejected the use of “third party” assessments because it did “not want to be held accountable to a range [of number] that is not an accurate estimate.”
The GAO report notes that a Joint Staff official said that the Defense Department still chooses to ignore civilian casualty assessments from third-party sources even though it itself fails to aggregate its own data and make its own efforts. Citing the RAND study, the GAO notes however that “Third-party groups tend to identify a range of estimates and leverage local news, social media sites, and footage of incidents posted to YouTube or other outlets” and that these estimates, though they can vary widely from the DOD’s internal numbers, are still essential to improve the accuracy of the military’s own assessments.
The GAO urges the DOD to establish effective metrics and “to get buy-in from DOD components and officials at all levels implementing the [civilian harm] action plan.” It also says that the Pentagon needs to “better monitor progress in implementing [its own plan] to help ensure that the improvements endure.” It is not an optimistic prognosis for civilians after years of external pressure and more than a year after Austin unveiled his new plan.
The post Biden Decries Civilian Deaths in Gaza as Pentagon Fails With Its Own Safeguards appeared first on The Intercept.
Breaking: UN Special Rapporteur confirms Israel committing genocide (video)
Report to go before UN’s human rights commission against backdrop of starving Palestinian children and continued murder of innocents
The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, international lawyer Francesca Albanese, has told Al Jazeera this morning that she will present her expert findings confirming Israel’s genocide to the UN’s human rights commission next week.
In January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that there is a ‘plausible’ case that Israel is committing genocide, but Albanese – like hundreds of millions of people around the world – knows that the case is far more than merely ‘plausible’, even more so after Israel ignored the ICJ’s instructions to stop bombing, shooting and starving the Palestinians of Gaza:
Albanese’s interview took place against a backdrop of another confirmation of the obvious – that Gaza is now officially in famine and approaching a point where starvation and disease caused by Israel’s continued will kill more than Israel’s bombs and bullets. The harrowing footage of emaciated, dying children shown on Al Jazeera shows that Palestinian children are Israel’s main targets in the starvation campaign, just as they have been in the mass murder of civilians through bombs and missiles.
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