This week, we at +972 Magazine and Local Call published a huge story that I’ve been working on for a long time. Our new investigation reveals that the Israeli army has developed an artificial intelligence-based program called “Lavender,” which has been used to mark tens of thousands of Palestinians as suspected militants for potential assassination during the current Gaza war.

According to six whistleblowers interviewed for the article, Lavender has played a central role in the Israeli army’s unprecedented bombing of Palestinians since October 7, especially during the first weeks of the war. In fact, according to the sources, the army gave sweeping approval for soldiers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists with little oversight, and to treat the outputs of the AI machine “as if it were a human decision.” While the machine was designed to mark “low level” military operatives, it was known to make what were considered identification “errors” in roughly 10 percent of cases. This was accompanied by a systematic preference to strike Lavender-marked targets while they were in their family homes, along with an extremely permissive policy toward casualties, which led to the killings of entire Palestinian families.

The investigation — which exposes new layers and hard truths about the devastating Gaza war — has had a monumental impact in the 48 hours since it was published. The article has already been viewed by hundreds of thousands worldwide, and shared by influential journalists, rights activists, and other public figures. Media outlets like The Guardian, The Washington Post, Le Monde, Haaretz, CNN, Business Insider, The Independent, and others have amplified our story to global audiences. I was interviewed on the BBC, CNN, Channel 4, and Democracy Now, with more to come.

At the political level, meanwhile, White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby noted that the United States was examining the contents of our investigation. Palestinian parliamentarian Aida Touma-Suleiman cited sections of our report in a speech at the Knesset. UN Secretary General António Guterres expressed that he was “deeply troubled” by our findings, adding “No part of life and death decisions which impact entire families should be delegated to the cold calculation of algorithms.”

It has been meaningful to see so many readers praising our investigation as one of the most important works of journalism in the war. And we have much more we want to do.

I personally hope that this exposé will help bring us a step closer toward ending this terrible war and confronting the violent systems that enable injustice here in Israel-Palestine. I’m grateful to you for reading our investigation, and for supporting the work that journalists like myself are doing at +972 Magazine.