It is interesting to see that analysis showing the BBC bias towards defending the IDF.
By comparison this article from Haaretz
(Israeli newspaper) has a different view. May 28th headline ( can be found in archive ph) by Amira Hass
The Only Ones Still Buying the Israeli Army's Version of the Rafah Strike
Israel's media has been concealing the unbearable figures and pictures of the Gaza war. The latest announcement from the army about the Rafah strike should also be taken with skepticism. Unless you are a devoted consumer of Israeli media.……..
….. and, concluding paragraphs about the IDF modus operandi,
*Many more details are unknown and may never be known; for example, why Al-Najjar and Abu Rabia were staying near or in the large encampment in the dunes. We don't know whether they were targeted because the IDF and Shin Bet had solid proof that they were still operating in the Hamas military arm, or if these were only assumptions, or if they were targeted in revenge for their attacks in the early 2000s. We don't know what these men would have chosen to do had they been released to their homes in the West Bank. Maybe they would have preferred to change their paths? We don't know if the alleged money transfers were intended for armed attacks against Israelis, or to help the families of dead Palestinians.
*What we know is that in the IDF wars against the Palestinians since the early 2000s, and in particular in the past seven months of the current Gaza war, a number of norms have been formed that enable and facilitate the mass killings of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza. We first learned about these norms from Palestinian reports and through testimonies, and then from investigations by independent journalists about the rules of engagement and the soldiers' conduct.
-
The definition of "collateral damage," which has become increasingly lenient over the years; in other words, the number of Palestinian civilians whom military advocate general jurists (and the state prosecutor's) permit be killed as the result of killing a single marked target (a senior military commander from Hamas or another Palestinian organization, a political figure or moneychanger, official or junior armed men, a tunnel shaft or an empty command post) and that they are prepared to defend in international judicial forums). According to an investigation by Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine, the number of "permitted uninvolved" civilians who may be killed ranges from 20 for each targeted junior member in a Palestinian armed organization to 100 "in exchange" for a senior member.
-
The "targets bank" – the members of armed Palestinian organizations who may and ought to be killed (or arrested, especially in the West Bank), according to the army and the intelligence – is a bottomless pit that includes former members who are no longer involved in military or even political activity, and also includes out-of-date addresses
-
Strike location: The targets bank not only permits the killing of Palestinians during battle and exchanges of fire, when they are about to launch a missile or are wearing an explosive vest, but also when they are asleep in bed, even in a hospital bed, or while visiting a sick relative, and even if when they are in the company of their children and parents, or engaged in an activity defined by the army as "suspicious" – standing by a window or on the roof of a home, riding a motorcycle or lighting a fire to boil water.
-
Use of the AI program Lavender, exposed by Abraham in +972 Magazine, which allows for a much shorter interval of time between identifying a target and hitting a person as a result of the minor human involvement in the process.
* A climate of disobedience in the army's lower ranks, and the lower ranks' lack of interest in the immediate political contexts, that attract global attention, like the famine in Gaza did. Low ranks' decisions led, for example, to the lethal strike on World Central Kitchen employees on April 2, and to IDF tank fire at "suspects" who were among the hundreds of starving residents waiting for an aid convoy and who had rushed to the food trucks on February 29.
*An Israel-wide climate of ignoring the facts. Under the cover of sterile words like "evacuation of the residents," "the IDF is operating" and "humanitarian area," the reality of the tent encampments with no infrastructure or protection from natural hazards and bombs doesn't sink into the Israelis' consciousness at all. The same is true for the various ballistic experts who apparently don't bother to calculate the potential of a missile striking adjacent civilian areas.
- An extreme dehumanization of the Palestiniansamong broad swaths of both the Israeli public and IDF soldiers. The disregard for the Palestinians' right to live, and their right to a decent life with dignity, has fallen in recent years – and not just since October 7 – to a nadir the likes of which we have never known. This process, consciously or unconsciously, willfully and wholeheartedly or not, has since long permeated the professional echelons at the Justice Ministry, IDF war rooms and army headquarters.