IDF Lies About ‘Independent’ Army Investigator Ties to AI-Targeted Killing Technology in Rafah and Gaza

The Israel Defence Force (IDF) has lied on record to disassociate the head of an “independent” Israeli Army Commission, tasked with investigating an Israel airstrike which killed dozens of Palestinian civilians in Rafah on Sunday, from innovative AI targeted killing technology being deployed in Gaza using state-of-the-art drones.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described the deadly airstrike, which has killed at least 45 civilians including children, as a “mishap” and “tragic mistake”. The IDF has said the attack was targeted at two senior Hamas officials.

Following the Rafah airstrike, the IDF announced that its General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism, characterised as an independent military body responsible for investigating unusual incidents amid the war, would conduct a probe into the incident. 

However, the head of the independent investigating body, Major General Yoav Har-Even, who also led the internal inquiry into the killings of seven World Central Kitchen (WCK), is directly connected to Israeli military AI drone technology blamed for systematically and disproportionately killing Palestinian civilians while targeting Hamas suspects.

In a statement responding to Byline Times’ previous investigation into retired Yoav Har-Even, unearthing his leading role in an Israeli government-owned defence firm which directly supported the IDF’s new AI ‘Storm Clouds Division’, the IDF falsely claimed that Har-Even has been unaffiliated with the firm since last January. In reality, Storm Clouds drones used to identify targets in densely populated parts of the Gaza Strip were deployed in Gaza for highly classified operations after the 7 October Hamas terrorist attack under Har-Even’s watch.

The news emerges as it has been revealed that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency attempted to influence the decisions of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague in a near decade-long campaign involving ‘threats’ to the former chief prosecutor. The current chief prosecutor has filed applications for the arrest of Netanyahu, his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and three senior Hamas officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Leaked State Department documents examined by Byline Times reveal how Gallant was among a corpus of senior Israeli military leaders who worked closely with the Obama administration as early as 2009 to refute UN findings that Israel had committed actions “amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity” during Operation Cast Lead. 

As a result of that process, senior Obama officials helped shape the elaborate legal justifications that the IDF is currently deploying in Gaza to justify mass killings of Palestinian civilians as part and parcel of a legitimate war-fighting strategy to target Hamas.

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Mistakes, Lies and Videotape

In April, Maj. Gen. Har-Even led the General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism inquiry into the killings of WCK aid workers. Har-Even exonerated the IDF of criminal culpability in the killings, concluding that they were the result of unintentional “grave errors”. 

WCK rejected the legitimacy of the inquiry and demanded a fully independent investigation. Video evidence confirms that the aid worker convoy was systematically targeted and attacked multiple times by IDF drones. 

That month Byline Times revealed that Har-Even was directly involved in supporting the Israel military campaign in Gaza after the 7 October Hamas terrorist attacks in his capacity as the CEO of Rafael, Israel’s largest defence firm owned by the Israeli Ministry of Defence.

In a subsequent statement to Byline Times, an IDF spokesperson denied that Har-Even was involved in the Gaza operation: “Yoav Har Even recently began his position as Head of the General Staff’s Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism. He does not work at Rafael, he resigned from his post last January and has no conflict of interest.”

However, the IDF’s claims are completely false. Although Yoav Har-Even announced that he would be stepping down from his role as CEO of Rafael in May 2023, he continued to hold the post well into the first months of 2024 because a replacement for him was not identified and agreed by the board until December 2023. 

That month, according to a Rafael press release: “Major General Har-Even has agreed to extend his tenure in response to the board’s request, due to the ongoing ‘Swords of Iron’ war ensuring a smooth transition with the incoming CEO.” The chairman of Rafael’s board thanked Har-Even “his current efforts in the ‘Swords of Iron’ war”.

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Inquiry Head’s Ties to Military AI Systems

In February 2024, Har-Even conducted an interview with the Israeli press from his office at Rafael in the capacity of “outgoing CEO”. In that interview, he provided astonishing details about his role, and the role of Rafael, in new AI targeting systems in Gaza:

“In the Storm Clouds project, I can take small, unmanned platforms like UAVs, drones and nanosatellites weighing anything from one ounce to over 200 lbs. that fly independently in clusters at an altitude of 20 inches to 400 miles. This means I can operate clusters to roam the skies like clouds of drones operated remotely with no pilot. This makes the person needed to fly them remotely obsolete.”

According to Har-Even, drones operating as part of the Storm Clouds programme “align themselves independently and will have a range of sensors.” The commander marks a square on the map via his phone or tablet, he explained, delineating the square in which he intends to deploy the drones. The drones then send all relevant intelligence directly without the commander needing to contact the General Staff or the Military Intelligence Directorate 

The Storm Clouds programme is a new Israeli air force division developed by the Rafael-owned company Aeronotics as part of the 144^th Phoenix UAV squadron, launched at Hatzor Air Base formally in August 2022. An official IDF announcement released at the time noted that the 144^th would be the first squadron in the “Storm Clouds” array.

Its 5^th generation drones are known as ‘Sparks’ (Nitzotz in Hebew) and coordinate collectively in “flocks” through an array of sensors. In September 2023, Rafael’s executive vice president Yuval Miller told Israel National News: “Rafael and Aeronautics are proud to hand over to the IDF and the IAF the ‘Storm Clouds’ development system and the ‘Spark’ aircraft that stands in front of it. The ‘Storm Clouds’ project, which Rafael and Aeronautics have been leading in recent years, is a significant breakthrough in upgrading the IAF’s capabilities and is a significant force multiplier.”

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Storm Clouds in Gaza

The Jewish Orthodox Mishpacha magazine confirmed that the Rafael Storm Clouds programme was deployed in Gaza for the first time in November with the approval of the IDF’s chief of staff. Intelligence Online, the respected newsletter on the global intelligence world, described the introduction of the Rafael technology in Gaza as its “baptism of fire” and “the backbone” of the IDF’s “intelligence in the urban combat against Hamas in Gaza.”

Mishpacha reported that the Nitzotz drone is “extremely quiet, can remain over enemy territory for prolonged periods, and possesses advanced sensory capabilities for exposing enemy targets.” The drones are currently “being used to detect Hamas operatives in the densest neighbourhoods of Gaza” and for “gathering intelligence in heavily populated, built-up areas.” The drone is also being used to support “the air force, military intelligence, and ground forces in the Strip carry out ‘expose-attack’ missions.”

Mishpacha cites a senior Israeli military official in the Southern Command: “Our goal is to use Storm Clouds to control territory. Instead of watching a specific point, it will command an extensive geographical area and alert us to anything moving that seems suspicious, based on the criteria we give it.”

Har-Even in other words played an intimate role in overseeing the development and deployment of the drone technology which has resulted in large-scale civilian deaths across Gaza, including the IDF’s targeted killing of WCK aid workers and of a refugee camp in Rafah. The IDF’s false statement denying this conflict of interest fundamentally discredits the idea that the IDF can legitimately investigate itself. 

The revelations lend credence to the recent order from the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) to cease its operations in Rafah where over 1 million Palestinians have sought refuge. The court has ruled that Israeli must “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

A spokesperson for IDF told Byline Times: “The IDF is committed to mitigating civilian harm during operational activity. In that spirit, the IDF makes great efforts to estimate and consider potential civilian collateral damage in its strikes. The IDF is fully committed to respecting all applicable international legal obligations, including the Law of Armed Conflict.”