#local call

[W]hen it came to targeting alleged junior militants marked by [Israeli AI] Lavender, the army preferred to only use unguided missiles, commonly known as ‘dumb’ bombs (in contrast to ‘smart’ precision bombs), which can destroy entire buildings on top of their occupants and cause significant casualties. ‘You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs],’ said C., one of the intelligence officers. Another source said that they had personally authorized the bombing of ‘hundreds’ of private homes of alleged junior operatives marked by Lavender, with many of these attacks killing civilians and entire families as ‘collateral damage.’ In an unprecedented move, according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians; in the past, the military did not authorize any 'collateral damage' during assassinations of low-ranking militants. The sources added that, in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander.

During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt [Israeli AI software] Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a 'rubber stamp' for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about '20 seconds'' to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all. Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called 'Where’s Daddy?' also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences.