An Israeli Air Force Officer – Army’s Bank of Goals Targets Civilians Randomly

IOF brags about having “Bank of goals” in the arenas of Palestine and Lebanon in particular (indicating to specific sites and individuals to be targeted). This tendency appeared clearly in light of murdering 9 family members of Al-Sawarkas in an Israeli airstrike in the area of Der Al-Balah, during the latest Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, which was called by the state of occupation as “Black Belt” operation between 12 and 13 of Novermber,2019.

According to the Israeli army, the house owned by Al-Sawarka’s family was one of the “bank of goals” of the Israeli forces. Their house was specified as a “target” before it was targeted few days ago.

Haaretz newspapers published on 15-12-2019 a report about the mechanism of preparing the “bank of goals”. “The view in the Israel Defense Forces is that success is measured by how many targets you create, the number of new targets that are entered into the database,” says A.

In such discussions,” says A and B about the validation process, “mostly there is no significant intelligence activity dealing with a target that already exists, because it is more important to create new targets. That is what they count for you in the end.”

For years A. and B. have participated in the decision-making process involved in the creation of targets and their approval.  Both told that the Haaretz about the dynamics between the teams responsible for these processes: the central role of the “trust me” culture in decision-making; giving more importance to having more targets regardless of their quality.

 “But in the end, they are people who are evaluated on the number of targets and validations, and they also want to go home on time. Everyone in the room understands that if we begin to look in depth at every target, they won’t leave for the next two weeks. So in many cases, it becomes a sort of automatic activity.”

Both “A” and “B” said that the strike against Al-Sawarka’s family was done to satisfy the teams, but the trust in the quality of the target was not high enough.

Office “A” stated to the quality of the political level in making “Bank of goals”, and said that “choosing goals was done without any logic”.

The two officers said “this is in order for officials to appear on cameras and say that they did what they promised to do”.

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