It is very difficult to comprehend. How is it possible that an army that prides itself on being the most moral and at the same time the most technologically advanced in the world makes so many mistakes? The sequence of the bombing of the Gaza hospital Nasser, recorded on video, leaves little doubt: first, Israel fires at the building. Minutes later, when the rescue services and reporters arrive, a second missile (experts say it is a Spike) kills them with deadly precision. In military jargon, it is called a "double tap". It is a sequence known and repeated time and time again by the Israeli Armed Forces against Palestinian targets. Organizations and journalists have documented similar patterns in multiple episodes. Under international law, it is called a "War Crime".
The death of journalists in Gaza does not seem like an accident, but a strategy. The data is cold but revealing: it is the conflict with the most deceased (murdered) reporters since World War II, surpassing Iraq (150), Vietnam (63), Afghanistan (65), or Syria (134), with a scandalous list of over 190 reporters. The same could be said of hospitals: Israel has attacked 34 out of the 36 medical centers in the strip.
The number of casualties is consistent with the policy deployed by Israel in Gaza: leaving no witnesses. This is achieved in two ways: first, by preventing international press from entering the strip, something that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has been doing since this operation began after the Hamas attacks. The second is by eliminating the Gaza reporters still working inside. On their national television channels, the Israeli population does not broadcast any images of what their soldiers are doing on the ground, as they are footage recorded by Palestinians, precisely those who end up dying later.
In recent years, reporters have become targets for many armies and militias worldwide. The word "press" on a bulletproof vest or helmet no longer protects you, but rather puts a target on you. Nowhere, not even in present-day Ukraine, where Vladimir Putin has taken to bombing journalist hotels (Hotel Park in Kharkiv, Reikartz Hotel in Zaporizhia, Druzhba Hotel in Pokrovsk, Sapphire Hotel in Kramatorsk...), are reporters subjected to this macabre lottery where they have all the numbers for the draw.
The explanations from the spokespeople of the Israeli Armed Forces usually point to the same argument for these types of bombings: "They are Hamas terrorists". If anyone questions this logic from the outside, then they are inevitably labeled as "antisemitic", although it should be clarified that Palestinians are also purely Semitic. The reality of these murdered reporters is that they are well-known, accredited professionals, many of them on the payroll of major international media and agencies, such as Associated Press, Reuters, France Press, or Al Jazeera, who work under extremely harsh and precarious conditions but are always identified as reporters with their "press" label clearly visible, as dictated by the laws of war.
The Israeli army is reducing the strip to ashes with a brutality reminiscent of Russia in Mariupol or Grozny, or the Allies with the German city of Dresden in World War II, with death tolls in the tens of thousands and 83% of them civilians according to leaked data from the Israeli army. The vast majority have been killed with large bombs, launched by fighter jets even at refugee camps, such as Jabalia on October 31, 2024, or Al Mawasi this past summer. Induced famine does the rest.
Killing with Artificial Intelligence
However, the Israeli army uses other much more precise systems to hunt down individuals with names and surnames, which serve equally for the most wanted Hamas terrorists as for certain civilians like reporters. Precise bombers like the one that killed the entire Al Jazeera team (five professionals) near Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City just two weeks ago show that Israel can use both the hammer and the scalpel at the same time.
This is where the technological layer comes in. Investigative journalism (for example, +972 Magazine, The Guardian, Le Monde) describes algorithmic support systems like "The Gospel" to quickly generate targets from historical databases, intelligence, and social networks; "Lavender" for mass marking of suspects; and utilities like "Where's Daddy?" to locate moving targets. From about 50 targets a year, the Israeli army has moved to hundreds daily. The IDF rejects these accusations and claims they are support tools, with human review and legal advice in each attack, but the scandalous number of euphemistically termed "collateral victims" undermines that explanation.
In the final phase, tools like "Fire Factory" calculate loads, sequences, and assign platforms —drone, fighter jet, missiles— to execute the strike. According to these investigations, human intervention can be reduced to authorization; according to the official version, humans remain in the loop and proportionality is evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
The Netanyahu government not only has a problem with Hamas, but also with the truth.