IDF targeting decision made by highly trained human operatives, not AI, IDF tells 'Post'

SEPTEMBER 14, 2026 21:25Updated: SEPTEMBER 14, 2026 21:47There are highly trained air force operations and legal military officials involved in IDF targeting decisions, despite claims by the NAZA film that the military has given over its discretion to artificial intelligence (AI), The Jerusalem Post has learned.There is significant frustration from the high levels of the IDF, some of which was made public in a speech by IDF Chief Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Efi Deffrin, that the NAZA movie was not shared with the military – in parallel to its being shown and reported on to the world – in order to give the IDF a fair chance to respond to specific allegations.It is not that top IDF officials do not know about collateral harm to Gazan civilians. They do, and they view it as a tragic aspect of war, worsened by Hamas trapping much of its population into being used as human shields, the Post understands.The IDF argues that the messages that have emerged from media reports about NAZA are that it is a film that ignores Hamas and all of the massive efforts it took during the war to evacuate civilians and to call off legally valid attacks because the IDF wanted to avoid harming civilians, valid or not.It is critical to remember in this debate that the laws of war do not require a ratio of zero dead civilians, or of fewer dead civilians than combatants.IDF Northern Brigade troops dismantle terror tunnels near the Yellow Line in the northern Gaza Strip. Images released on September 2, 2026. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)Rather, what is known as the proportionality calculation is highly elastic and connected to the specific circumstances, the value of the concrete military goal in question, the harm to civilians, and how viable it is to warn civilians to leave beforehand.The Post has learned that, in some cases, the air force even redirected missiles away from hitting Hamas terrorists after firing them, when civilians unexpectedly appeared close to the strike zone.IDF acknowledges mistakes possible in complex operationsOn the other hand, the Post has heard acknowledgments from the IDF that in complex operations, such as the chaotic rescue of hostage Noa Argamani in June 2024, more mistakes can happen because there is even less time for the human beings involved to fully comprehend the entire battlefield.In that particular case, the IDF rescue vehicle carrying Argamani, other hostages, and IDF soldiers out of a Hamas-controlled area got stuck and could not continue the escape.The IDF had minutes to save the rescuers lest all of the hostages and rescue soldiers be quickly surrounded and killed.Previously, IDF sources at the time had told the Post and other media that more mistakes were made in that operation regarding nearby civilians than would have been made had the operation continued as planned.But the Post has also now learned that despite a chaotic situation, those air force and other officials involved were still able to exercise a large degree of discretion to enable them to avoid hitting civilians beyond a certain volume.The IDF believes the NAZA filmmakers are manipulating the public by the use of the acronym NAZA – which stands for “collateral damage” – making it appear to be a dehumanizing term. Rather, the whole point of injecting that term into every attack is that – unlike Hamas – the IDF is always trying to reduce harm to civilians as a basic tenet of its “formula.”Previously, the Post has also reported that when the IDF sets some kind of minimal formula for how many civilians killed per Hamas official are “acceptable collateral damage,” this is never meant to lead to an automatic approval, but to be a minimum standard, though IDF officials will try to improve the odds, subjecting civilians to as little danger as possible, even indirectly.IDF views ratios of 100 or 500 civilians per Hamas terrorists as nowhere near realityMoreover, the Post has learned that the IDF view is that the astronomical ratios of 100 or 500 civilians per Hamas terrorists is nowhere near the reality; the ratios are much lower.That is not to say that there have not been examples in which the ratio has been considerably higher, but that has tended to happen when mistakes were made – such as in a case where one house was targeted to kill a Hamas official, but it turned out that under the house was a tunnel that the IDF was unaware of, and the collapse of the targeted house and the portion of the tunnel beneath it resulted in the unintentional collapse of a block of houses.Previously, the Post and various other media have reported on some intense disagreements after March 2025 specifically, when certain air force officers believed that certain Southern Command officers were being too aggressive about calling in some airstrikes.While this is not something that all IDF officials would deny, the Post understands that they would not place such disagreements in the context of the NAZA movie.Rather, these IDF officials would say that such disagreements are a natural result of professional differences, sometimes within a particular arm of the military and sometimes between different arms of the military, whose missions and contributions to the war effort may lead to different perspectives – but not relating to debates about genocide.Most frustratingly for the IDF, the Post understands that the 24 presumed IDF soldiers who were interviewed for the NAZA movie did not – allegedly, as the IDF says it does not know who they are – speak to higher IDF levels who might have been able to better contextualize for them the confusing and heart-wrenching issues that, according to NAZA, they were confronting as part of their role in war-fighting.Follow us on Google