OPINION - IDF's admission that it targeted a journalist exposes crude attempt to control war narrative
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In international law, journalists are considered civilians; combatants are obliged to ensure their safety
Tim Dawson | 07.08.2024 - Update : 07.08.2024
- The author is deputy general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists
- Al-Ghoul and al-Rifi stood up to the most horrific force ever visited upon journalists and acted as the world’s eyes and ears
ISTANBUL
Ismail al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Rifi were observing the conflict-zone-reporting best practice, as they motored back from their assignment on the last day of July. Having reported issues facing the displaced people of northern Gaza, they were leaving the scene of greatest danger. Blast vests bearing the insignia "PRESS" protected their bodies. Minutes earlier they had updated the Al Jazeera newsroom with their location.
What we know about the IDF strike?
None of this would save their lives when an Israeli drone strike blasted their car. The explosion blew off al-Ghoul’s head – an image subsequently shared on social media. Al-Rifi, and Khalid Shawa, a boy who happened to be passing by on a bicycle, also died instantly.
Unusually, we know that the killing was deliberate – because the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has admitted as much.
The IDF justified the assassination, arguing that the journalist's name appears on a list of "senior Hamas officers" that it captured earlier in the conflict. This allegation is strenuously denied by al-Ghoul’s family, his employer and his union. And, IDF "evidence" in similar cases has appeared questionable. Indeed, Al-Ghoul spent enough time "on camera" that his capacity outside journalism would have been limited.
Critically, however, he was arrested by Israeli soldiers in March and held for 12 hours before being released without a charge. Surely, if the evidence of his Hamas membership justified his killing, there must have been sufficient basis for his prosecution?
This admission of targeting confirms much of what have for months been swirling allegations about IDF operations. We know that it has software – Pegasus – that secretly invades mobile phones and shares its user’s locations, communications and the identities of those who they meet.
We know that the IDF uses software called "Lavender" that deploys AI to sort operational intelligence and suggest targets for assassination. A further tool, "The Gospel", uploads targets’ geo locations to killer drones dramatically faster than had been possible with manual programming.
-------- [Insert: Gaza aid worker deaths heighten scrutiny of Israel’s use of AI to select targets "Five Months Into the War, Residents of Both the West Bank and Gaza Justify Hamas' Attack" The killing of foreign aid workers in Gaza has piled further pressure on Israel over its conduct of the war against Hamas, renewing scrutiny of how the Israeli army selects its targets in an ongoing military campaign that has devastated most of the Gaza Strip and killed or maimed tens of thousands of its inhabitants. [...]Israeli officials have promised a thorough investigation after seven staff of the US-based charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) were killed in an air strike in central Gaza on Monday – an attack UN chief Antonio Guterres described as “unconscionable” and “an inevitable result of the way the war is being conducted”. P - The WCK workers, six of them foreign nationals, had been travelling in two armoured cars bearing the charity’s logo, and a third “soft-skinned” vehicle, along a route preapproved and coordinated with the Israeli army. Defence sources told Haaretz .. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-02/ty-article/.premium/idf-bombed-wck-aid-convoy-3-times-targeting-armed-hamas-member-who-wasnt-there/0000018e-9e75-d764-adff-9eff29360000%20%C2%A0 .. that the convoy was hit three times by missiles fired from a drone because of erroneous suspicions that a terrorist was on board. [...]“Nothing happens by accident,” added another military source. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed – that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.” The ‘Gospel’ Experts say Israel’s ability to track down suspected Hamas militants, and estimate the collateral damage from its strikes, is aided by unprecedented use of artificial intelligence in generating targets at a much faster rate than was previously possible. P - The IDF first advertised its use of AI-powered targeting after an 11-day conflict in Gaza in May 2021 that commanders described as the world’s “first AI war”. The military chief during that conflict, Aviv Kohavi, told Israeli mediaahead of the October 7 attacks that AI systems had enabled the IDF to identify“100 new targets every day” whereas human analysts could previously produce only “50 targets in a year” [...]“We prepare the targets automatically and work according to a checklist,” a separate source who previously worked in the target division told the Israeli publications. “It really is like a factory. We work quickly and there is no time to delve deep into the target. The view is that we are judged according to how many targets we manage to generate.” P - [What product does your factory produce? Death. We produce death, including many unjustified murders.] P - AI scientists have also voiced deep misgivings about the use of complex data-crunching technologies to artificially generate hit lists. The shockingly high civilian casualty rate in Gaza suggests the “factory” is either faulty or operating under questionable guidelines, said Toby Walsh, chief scientist at the University of New South Wales AI Institute in Australia. [...]Overreliance on technology The Gospel is one of several AI programmes used by Israeli military intelligence, said Tal Mimran, a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who has worked with the Israeli military during previous campaigns, offering legal advice on air strikes as part of a panel of experts sitting in a target room. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174171788] --------
More than 12% of Gazan journalists lost their lives
Alongside this technological capability is the extraordinary number of journalists who have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7. The most conservative tally is around 120, some believe that as many as 165 Gazan reporters have perished since Oct. 7. This is dwarfed by the total death toll in Gaza, now somewhere around 40,000 victims. It is the mortality rate among journalists that is really striking. There were approximately 1,000 journalists in Gaza at the start of the conflict – more than 12% have now lost their lives.
This extraordinary rate of killing, and the precision targeting to which the IDF has admitted, points to a simple and awful conclusion. But there is more.
Since the outset of the conflict the Israeli government has barred international reporters from entering Gaza – despite hundreds petitioning to be admitted. It has also threatened to remove funding from newspapers such as Haaretz, shut down Al Jazeera’s operation in Israel, and disabled the internet at key moments.
And, following the law is not the IDF way either. When the United Nations investigated the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, its report concluded: “The Israeli security forces used lethal force without justification under international human rights law and intentionally or recklessly violated the right to life of Shireen Abu Akleh.”
But why target journalists in this way? The only plausible explanation is that this is an attempt to control the war narrative, and show that the IDF takes out civilian targets at will.
In international law, journalists are considered civilians; combatants are obliged to ensure their safety. The IDF’s bloody campaign is in clear contravention of this – but whether the institutions of international law will bring anyone to justice remains to be seen. The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) lead prosecutor, Karim Khan, displayed bravery in May when he issued arrest warrants for the Israeli and Hamas leadership. If he sees these cases through to satisfactory conclusions he will have shown himself as one of the greatest jurists of our age.
Justice, if it comes, will be no comfort to al-Ghoul and al-Rifi. They have distinguished themselves, however, by standing up to the most horrific force ever visited upon journalists and continuing to act as the world’s eyes and ears. There is no consolation for them – but they deserve celebration; their colleagues who continue this work deserve our support.
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