UN-Approved Targeting System For IDF Just Turns Off

Tel Aviv, September 1 – Casualty figures from the latest round of violence between Hamas and Israel have led the United Nations to impose oversight on Israeli military targeting systems, requiring the latter to have a feature that whenever it detects a potential target for the weapon, it shuts the system down.

UN representatives from various agencies expressed their horror at the number of civilians killed in the Gaza Strip, a figure that in any other conflict would be considered at or below average. However, since the subject is Israel, any sense of proportion or realism does not apply, as established in multiple UN Security Council and Human Rights Council Resolutions. The international body therefore implemented an approval protocol for armed conflict, whereby any sovereign member nation must have its targeting systems approved by the specially-formed Weapons Effectiveness Humaneness Regulation for Making Armed Conflict Happier Team (WEHRMACHT).

The WEHRMACHT, composed mainly of soldiers from Central Europe with extensive experience in how weapons affect civilian populations, determined that the Israel Defense Force’s current targeting system did not adequately account for the presence of civilians, as its definition of “civilian” did not match the requirements of International Law as it is practiced. While Israel’s definition was fairly straightforward, the UN and its affiliated agencies have insisted on a more nuanced approach in which the distinction between an acceptable target – i.e. a combatant – depends solely on that target’s ethnicity. Only if the target is Jewish does the system allow its operator to proceed.

The WEHRMACHT-approved system is called the Ethical Identification Navigational System And Targeting Zone Gratuitousness Reducer for Ultimate Person Protection among ENemies (EINSATZGRUPPEN), and it has undergone thorough testing in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Belarus, and western regions of Russia. WEHRMACHT director Wilhelm Keitel believes the system is ready for application to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the ratio of combatants-to civilians killed remains unacceptable.

“We believe the EINSATZGRUPPEN will do a precise job of calculating who should and should not be targeted,” said Keitel. “It has the remarkable capability of also using local resources to achieve its aims.” He noted that the percentage of combat-age males in the Palestinian casualties is roughly half, and the WEHRMACHT hoped to reduce that to zero.

In Ukraine, where the figure is similar in terms of both absolute numbers and percentage of combat-age males, Keitel says the technology is not necessary, since the EINSATZGRUPPEN had already been used there extensively.