Instruments Of Cruelty: Israel Is Using A Rogue, Unmanned AI Called ‘Lavender’ To Help Kill Gazans And Conduct Bombings

Israel is again facing scrutiny for using unmanned artificial intelligence to mark and target thousands of Palestinians in Gaza for assassination, and used to coordinate bombings in the tiny nation under siege by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

+972 Magazine, an independent publication run by Israelis and Palestinians, in collaboration with another outlet, Local Call, wrote a very detailed article last week detailing this killer AI system known as “Lavender.”

+972 very thoroughly explains what Lavender is, how it works and its protocols, how it picks its targets, the types of targets, how Israeli officials use the data to then carry out the strikes, and so forth.

In short, the magazine provides this summation of Lavender and how its been used in the introduction of their report:

---

According to six Israeli intelligence officers, who have all served in the army during the current war on the Gaza Strip and had first-hand involvement with the use of AI to generate targets for assassination, Lavender has played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war. In fact, according to the sources, its influence on the military’s operations was such that they essentially treated the outputs of the AI machine “as if it were a human decision.”

Formally, the Lavender system is designed to mark all suspected operatives in the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), including low-ranking ones, as potential bombing targets. The sources told +972 and Local Call that, during the first weeks of the war, the army almost completely relied on Lavender, which clocked as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants — and their homes — for possible air strikes.

During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt 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.

The result, as the sources testified, is that thousands of Palestinians — most of them women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting — were wiped out by Israeli airstrikes, especially during the first weeks of the war, because of the AI program’s decisions.

“We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,” A., an intelligence officer, told +972 and Local Call. “On the contrary, the IDF 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.”

The Lavender machine joins another AI system, “The Gospel,” about which information was revealed in a previous investigation by +972 and Local Call in November 2023, as well as in the Israeli military’s own publications. A fundamental difference between the two systems is in the definition of the target: whereas The Gospel marks buildings and structures that the army claims militants operate from, Lavender marks people — and puts them on a kill list. 

In addition, according to the sources, when it came to targeting alleged junior militants marked by 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.

---

The magazine went on to note that Lavender ‘analyzes information collected on most of the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip through a system of mass surveillance, then assesses and ranks the likelihood that each particular person is active in the military wing of Hamas or PIJ. According to sources, the machine gives almost every single person in Gaza a rating from 1 to 100, expressing how likely it is that they are a militant.’

The magazine highlighted how in 2023 how this new precision targeting system collects information called “features,” and essentially then creates unique for all of the people it has mapped-out, and then ranked by officials.

A senior officer with the IDF who went by the alias “B” said that once Lavender was given the approval to start mapping out a wide range of targets, unlike previously when it was used as a complimentary tool to snuff out senior targets, the AI was allowed to basically mark a plethora of low-level targets to be bombed, and IDF officials just ran with it without actually determining as to why.

“At 5 a.m., [the air force] would come and bomb all the houses that we had marked,” B. said. “We took out thousands of people. We didn’t go through them one by one — we put everything into automated systems, and as soon as one of [the marked individuals] was at home, he immediately became a target. We bombed him and his house.”

Another source said:

It was very surprising for me that we were asked to bomb a house to kill a ground soldier, whose importance in the fighting was so low. I nicknamed those targets ‘garbage targets.’ Still, I found them more ethical than the targets that we bombed just for ‘deterrence’ — highrises that are evacuated and toppled just to cause destruction.

Moreover, another intelligence source said in a statement: “In war, there is no time to incriminate every target. So you’re willing to take the margin of error of using artificial intelligence, risking collateral damage and civilians dying, and risking attacking by mistake, and to live with it.”

Another informant that worked with Lavender and helped to train it expressed his concern with its decision making.

I was bothered by the fact that when Lavender was trained, they used the term ‘Hamas operative’ loosely, and included people who were civil defense workers in the training dataset.

Since it’s an automatic system that isn’t operated manually by humans, the meaning of this decision is dramatic: it means you’re including many people with a civilian communication profile as potential targets.

The source said, adding that even if one believed that these people deserved to die, ‘training the system based on their communication profiles made Lavender more likely to select civilians by mistake when its algorithms were applied to the general population.’

Another source that goes by ‘A,’ who was an officer in a target operation room amidst this war, said that because of the way the algorithms were set up it has resulted in high numbers of women and children dying in these attacks. “Let’s say you calculate [that there is one] Hamas [operative] plus 10 [civilians in the house],” ‘A’ said. “Usually, these 10 will be women and children. So absurdly, it turns out that most of the people you killed were women and children.”

Though there is lackadaisical oversight in monitoring and thoroughly checking what Lavender decides, and IDF official said in a statement to the magazine:

Hamas places its operatives and military assets in the heart of the civilian population, systematically uses the civilian population as human shields, and conducts fighting from within civilian structures, including sensitive sites such as hospitals, mosques, schools and UN facilities. The IDF is bound by and acts according to international law, directing its attacks only at military targets and military operatives. 

Each target is examined individually, while an individual assessment is made of the military advantage and collateral damage expected from the attack […] The IDF does not carry out attacks when the collateral damage expected from the attack is excessive in relation to the military advantage.

The IDF also rejected the claims made by their +792’s sources.

Though the IDF has repeatedly denied the claims that their attacks have been indiscriminate and reckless, ‘A’ explained how they were given unprecedented abilities to allow for high degrees of collateral damage.

It’s not just that you can kill any person who is a Hamas soldier, which is clearly permitted and legitimate in terms of international law. But they directly tell you: ‘You are allowed to kill them along with many civilians.’ Every person who wore a Hamas uniform in the past year or two could be bombed with 20 [civilians killed as] collateral damage, even without special permission. In practice, the principle of proportionality did not exist.

He said

In conclusion, ‘B’ summed it up by warning that Israel’s acts are going to haunt them in the long run.

In the short term, we are safer, because we hurt Hamas. But I think we’re less secure in the long run. I see how all the bereaved families in Gaza — which is nearly everyone — will raise the motivation for [people to join] Hamas 10 years down the line. And it will be much easier for [Hamas] to recruit them.

---

AUTHOR COMMENTARY

The article is long but worth the read, so I suggest checking it out for yourself, and read all the details not covered in this report.

What ‘B’ – this intelligence official who worked with Lavender – said, echoes what I have said before in other reports concerning Israel’s war, that what they have done and are still doing will unquestionably cause the world to retaliate. They definitely will not forget what is going on, and ultimately will lead to further persecution of Jews abroad and in Israel, and anyone who attempts to sympathize with them. And, as I have indicated before, Israel may very likely see a lot of death well before the time of Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30) (falsely so-called “The Tribulation”) kicks-off, and this has a big reason to play into it.

Remember that military group that forecast a 70% die-off in the American population by 2025? Well, they also forecast that Israel’s population will be cut in half (52%); their GDP will see an 80% drop, their military expenditures will cascade by 91%, and their purchasing power parity (PPP) will sink by 67%.

Furthermore, this harkens back to the points I raised in my article last year, “Israel’s Cruelty In Gaza Is Fulfilling Bible Prophecy Through People Like Netanyahu.”

Genesis 49:1 And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days. [2] Gather yourselves together, and hear, ye sons of Jacob; and hearken unto Israel your father. [5] Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. [6] O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their selfwill they digged down a wall. [7] Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.

Regardless of what some may say of me and lie about me, I am not “antisemitic” and I am not “anti-Israel.” Israel is God’s chosen nation, regardless of what replacement theology heretics claim, and the Lord has covenants to keep with them that he will fulfil, and thus will save a remanent of them before they can be totally destroyed (Romans 11; Revelation 12; Ezekiel 36-39; Numbers 24:1-9).

-Having said that, with Netanyahu being a Levite, as discussed in my report, and what is happening now with Lavender AI, this clearly qualifies as “instruments of cruelty are in their habitations.” This is just mass, indiscriminate slaughter right before everyone’s eyes, and now we know a big reason as to why.

And again, it goes back to what I have been saying about this AI push, that it’s becoming people’s gods that are not to be questioned, and whatever it directs then it must be so.

Proverbs 26:18 As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, [19] So is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am not I in sport?

The notion that the IDF has flattened Gaza under the guise of getting Hamas has eroded. Hardly few people who are following this actually believe that ruse at this point (again, go read my report to see this spiritual connections), unless the people supporting the mass genocide are bloodthirsty neo-cons in the U.S. who salivate over war, or willfully ignorant neo-evangelicals. Does that mean I condone Hamas? Don’t be silly, of course not.

But again, let’s not forget (and I will continue to harp on this), that Israel and the U.S. created Hamas on purpose via divide and conquer tactics. SEE: Did You Know That The United States And Israel Created And Funded Hamas?

---

[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).

The WinePress needs your support! If God has laid it on your heart to want to contribute, please prayerfully consider donating to this ministry. If you cannot gift a monetary donation, then please donate your fervent prayers to keep this ministry going! Thank you and may God bless you.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE