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Source: https://www.jns.org/analysis/no-strike-was-ever-decided-based-on-an-algorithm
No IDF Strike Was Ever Decided Based on an Algorithm
(JNS) Yaakov Lappin - An Israeli military source on Thursday rejected multiple claims made in the documentary "NAZA" (collateral damage). Many of the allegations stem from a misunderstanding of the targeting process. Any strike must pass through a five-stage chain of approval in the IDF before it is carried out. It starts with the intelligence apparatus, made up of analysts who compile and analyze information from a variety of sources. An intelligence officer who is not an analyst then verifies the data and decides whether to designate it for the targeting process. "There's an intelligence apparatus, then an operational apparatus of planning, meaning a planning apparatus, then legal review, then initial authorization by the commander, then the possibility of real-time information and additional assessment." The planning stage does not involve the same people who conducted the initial intelligence work. "They [the analysts] are not part of that process." Legal advisers then review both the intelligence and the operational plan before a strike is presented to "an operational commander," who decides whether to approve, reject or send the plan back for further work. Even after approval, "real-time circumstances" can and often do prompt a commander to re-evaluate a proposed strike. Such information is "not known and not exposed to someone in the beginning of the chain." The film's anonymous interviewees typically recount only that preliminary intelligence stage. Their testimony "does not establish the final assessments on which commanders relied, the conditions they imposed and the precautions taken during execution, or the attack's actual effects." "The IDF has never planned, approved or carried out any strike in Gaza in which 500 civilians or anything close to that number were expected to be killed as a result of the strike," despite the allegations in the film. "Each structure struck in such cases was individually assessed and identified as a military objective and as a valid target," adding that "no strike was ever decided based on an algorithm." The writer is a research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.