Editor's Notes: The IDF needs to be accountable for unanswered military queries

In December 2024, The Jerusalem Post asked the IDF about two strikes in Gaza that killed Hamas commanders Ibrahim Biari and Wisam Farhat. Reports about the operations alleged large civilian casualties. Our military correspondent, Yonah Jeremy Bob, asked for the details behind those decisions.

The army explained its approval procedures. It said it had no fixed casualty ratios and that commanders had to assess whether each strike was proportionate. We published those explanations in Yonah’s analysis.

He also asked about the two operations themselves. Yonah tells me he pursued those questions then and on at least two further occasions. Sometimes officials refused specifics. Sometimes they said they did not know and might get back to him. The information never arrived.

Nearly two years have passed. I would like to know who is responsible for getting him an answer.

The documentary NAZA has now made allegations about Israeli targeting decisions an international story again. Its directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, drew on anonymous testimony about the civilian deaths anticipated before airstrikes. The IDF said the testimony could not be verified and that humans approved targeting decisions.

Questions reached the army long before NAZA broke

Our questions reached the army long before the current argument over NAZA. Officials have had time to investigate, consult their lawyers, and work out what can be released.

I believe the IDF is the most humane army in the world.

In November 2023, a Palestinian dentist named Mahmoud Shaheen told the BBC that Israeli intelligence officers had kept in touch with him for hours while he helped evacuate neighbors from buildings in Gaza’s al-Zahra neighborhood. When he needed more time, they allowed it. When his phone battery ran low, an officer reached him through a neighbor’s phone.

The BBC found Shaheen through other residents and checked details against community posts and satellite images, although it could not independently verify the calls. The army could tell us how it organized those evacuations and how often officers delayed strikes to give people more time.

In September 2024, humanitarian pauses agreed to by Israel and Hamas helped health workers vaccinate almost 560,000 children against polio. WHO documented nine-hour daily pauses in designated areas. Palestinian medical teams and international agencies administered the vaccines, with Israeli cooperation helping them reach children during the fighting.

I get frustrated reading commentary that has little interest in those efforts or in Hamas’s use of civilian areas. We should challenge it with the fullest record we can provide, accepting that some of what we publish will be painful.

Seven World Central Kitchen aid workers were killed in April 2024. The IDF found serious errors and breaches of procedure, dismissed two officers and reprimanded senior commanders. WCK demanded an independent investigation. We should be asking what changed after that investigation and whether anyone checked that the changes worked.

Human rights violations around the world

The Americans have faced such questions. Their August 2021 drone strike in Kabul killed 10 civilians, including seven children. The man they had followed was an aid worker. A Pentagon review found failures in communication and target identification; no troops received disciplinary punishment.

Six years earlier, an American gunship attacked a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 42 people. The organization had supplied its coordinates and contacted military authorities during the attack. Sixteen personnel received administrative punishments, with no courts-martial.

The Pentagon concluded that the Kabul strike was a tragic mistake and found no misconduct or negligence. That distinction was available to the Americans after they killed seven children. It should be available when assessing an Israeli operation, subject to the same examination of the evidence.

In the Netherlands, it took four years for journalists to expose Dutch responsibility for a 2015 strike on an ISIS bomb factory in Hawija, Iraq. Secondary explosions were reported to have killed 70 civilians. Subsequent disclosures showed that the Defense Ministry had access to casualty information years before the public knew what had happened.

There was justified outrage over these cases. In the Netherlands, officials also had to explain why they had withheld information for so long. Our military should consider how much harder it becomes to defend an account once journalists discover what was left out.

Earlier this week, I argued for opening more of Israel’s October 7 archive to foreign journalists. Their work could reach audiences who distrust Israeli officials. It could also expose Israeli failures, which the government would have to accept.

I don’t know whether the full record of the Biari and Farhat strikes will vindicate the decisions made. If it reveals mistakes, including serious ones, I want us to publish them. The families whose relatives were killed deserve an explanation, and Israelis deserve to know what their army established.

Intelligence sources and methods need protection. Officials can redact sensitive material and arrange independent scrutiny where public disclosure would endanger someone. They should explain which questions they can answer now and what prevents them from answering the rest.

Yonah raised a possibility that ought to worry the people making those decisions: an American administration restricting military sales to Israel in three years because allegations we could have answered had gone unanswered. I hope the officers insisting on bitachon mida, information security, are also considering that possibility.

The army should publish its estimates of civilian and combatant deaths, explaining how it calculated them and what remains uncertain, and release completed investigations into disputed strikes. If the investigations into Biari and Farhat are still unfinished, tell us what is taking so long.