The Truth About Israel’s “Gospel”

Israel has deployed an artificial intelligence tool "Gospel" to select targets in its bombardment of alleged Hamas targets in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza.

The system gathers coordinates of houses and locations where members of Hamas and other groups may be present besides tracking their movements which is then confirmed by human intelligence before ordering a strike.

“This system (Gospel) allows the use of automatic tools to produce targets at a fast pace. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), and through the rapid and automatic extraction of updated intelligence - it produces a recommendation for the researcher, with the goal being that there will be a complete match between the machine's recommendation and the identification performed by a person,” an IDF press release said on November 2, perhaps the first official acknowledgement of the existence of an AI-based targeting system that largely went unnoticed by the international media.

'A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza

Further, an investigation by Israeli publications +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals, “The Israeli army’s expanded authorization for bombing non-military targets, the loosening of constraints regarding civilian casualties, and the use of an artificial intelligence system to generate more potential targets than ever before, appear to have contributed to the destructive nature of Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip,” the publication wrote November 30.

“Compared to previous Israeli assaults on Gaza, the current war has seen the army significantly expand its bombing of targets that are not distinctly military in nature. These include private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks,” the report, which is claimed to be based on conversations with current and former Israeli intelligence and military sources said.

Significantly, the former IDF chief of staff Aviv Kochavi gave details of the AI-based targeting system in an interview to Ynetnews published 30 June 2023, well before the current hostilities began on October 7.

Among all the technological revolutions, artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to be the most radical, for better or worse. The IDF recognized this field years ago and harnessed it to enhance combat effectiveness, he said.

“One example of this is the Targeting Directorate established three years ago. It is a unit comprising hundreds of officers and soldiers, powered by AI capabilities. It is a machine that processes vast amounts of data faster and more effectively than any human, translating them into actionable targets. In Operation Guardian of the Walls, once this machine was activated, it generated 100 new targets every day. To put it in perspective, in the past, we would produce 50 targets in Gaza in a year. Now, this machine created 100 targets in a single day, with 50% of them being attacked," he said.