DrM

The IDF published a detailed response to the film NAZA, saying that it presents a “distorted, misleading and disingenuous picture,” an exact description of the IDF’s own response. Since October 2023, we’ve collected countless soldier testimonies from Gaza, so let us break it down: 1. IDF claim: The IDF’s binding orders explicitly, unequivocally, and clearly distinguish between terrorists and uninvolved civilians in Gaza. In reality: On the ground, the rules looked very different. The IDF may have fired “only” at people it, the IDF, classified as terrorists, but that raises the crucial question of who counted as a terrorist: someone who crossed an unmarked line and entered a “no-go zone,” stood on a roof and was deemed a “spotter”, or, in some cases, did nothing at all and was retroactively incriminated. Testimony: breakingthesilence.org.il/te… On retroactive incrimination: teapaw.org/BtSIsrael/status/20969… 2. IDF claim: The IDF denies ever having a 200-casualty approval-authority threshold for military objectives, or approving or carrying out such a strike in Gaza In reality: Le Monde recently published several testimonies from soldiers describing the IDF’s authorisation of up to 300 civilian deaths as collateral damage in a strike targeting Hamas brigade commander Ibrahim Biari nearly three years ago. The strike killed 126 people, including 68 children. The testimonies: lemonde.fr/en/international/… 3. IDF claim: AI does not decide who or what is designated as a target, or whether a strike is carried out; humans make those decisions. In reality: True, but as our former executive director @AGvaryahu put it, "AI has broken through the human bottleneck that once constrained every army, enabling an unprecedented rate of target production." This was compounded by “automation bias”, the tendency to place almost automatic trust in decisions made by a computer. The IDF insists that every decision is subject to human oversight, but that becomes almost irrelevant when the decision presented to a soldier is already the product of a system generating targets at a pace and on a scale no human can examine in depth within a narrow decision-making window. Avner Gvaryahu's article: haaretz.com/opinion/2026-09-… 4. IDF claim: The IDF’s binding orders have never automatically authorised strikes on targets expected to put a predetermined number of civilians at risk: for example, 20 civilians in a strike targeting a low-ranking operative. In reality: From October 2023 until at least December 2024, the IDF allowed up to 20 civilians to be killed for every low-ranking Hamas operative as a standard collateral-damage threshold. Combined with the sheer number of targets and the number of strikes carried out each day, this resulted in enormous numbers of civilians being killed. Testimony: breakingthesilence.org.il/te… 5. IDF claim: The IDF’s binding orders do not allow an evacuation warning issued for a particular area to be treated as permission to carry out strikes there while disregarding the presence of civilians who remained. In reality: The IDF designated areas where at least 75% of residents had evacuated as “combat zones,” which could then be bombed. Even that assessment was only a rough estimate based on partial data. But don’t take our word for it. Here’s the soldiers' testimony: breakingthesilence.org.il/te… 6. IDF claim: The IDF reviews strike outcomes and civilian-harm reports. Reviews have prompted debriefs; suspected violations are examined separately and may lead to criminal investigations. In reality: As of September 2026, Israel is publicly known to have convicted two soldiers for harming Palestinians: one for abusing detainees and one for looting. Neither was convicted for killing a Palestinian. Importantly, when the standard collateral-damage threshold is already as high as 20 people for a single low-ranking operative, the killing of 19 innocent women, children, elderly people, or men would not trigger an investigation. The strike would still fall within the authorised collateral-damage threshold. See the testimony in section 4. 7. IDF claim: Allegations of misconduct relating to shooting incidents near aid distribution centres have been referred for examination. In reality: More than 1,000 people were killed at GHF centres. Many more were shot nearby. This continued for many months. According to soldiers’ testimonies, the IDF used live fire to “direct the population” — that is, firing without aiming directly at people to signal to those arriving at distribution centres where the boundaries of the permitted area were. haaretz.com/middle-east-news… In conclusion, we have an extensive body of testimony explaining the reality that all of us have witnessed in Gaza over the past three years. The horrifying picture before us is not the result of procedural violations. The problem lies in the procedures and orders themselves, in directives that originate at the highest levels of the IDF and the Israeli government. That is what needs to be investigated.