In the war in Gaza that began in late 2023, two names appeared repeatedly in investigative reporting about how modern militaries generate targets: “Lavender” and “Habsora”. They are two distinct but complementary Artificial Intelligence systems used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). One focuses on Who, the other on Where.
1. The Names
Both names are intentionally mundane. Habsora is Hebrew for "The Gospel" or "The Tidings". It is sometimes written as "The Gospel."
Lavender has no Hebrew meaning; it follows a pattern in the IDF where intelligence systems are given English flower or color names - Blue Wolf, Red Wolf, Wolf Pack.
2. Habsora / The Gospel: The Infrastructure Targeting System
Habsora was developed by Unit 8200 of the Israeli Intelligence Corps of the IDF. Habsora was introduced and first used in operations in 2021.
Its function is to identify physical structures, not people. The program is described as using vast amounts of data to identify, with the help of artificial intelligence, physical targets such as rocket launch centers, headquarters, or potential storage sites.
According to reports, Habsora is designed to mark buildings and structures that the IDF claims militants operate from. It is categorized into four types of targets: tactical targets, underground targets, power targets, and family homes.
What made Habsora notable was its scale. Investigations described it as an AI-powered targeting system that identifies and generates attacks on up to 100 targets a day, compared to about 50 targets a year produced by human analysts before the war. This was described by a former officer as a "mass assassination factory."
A critical feature attributed to Habsora is that it also includes an estimate for the number of civilians who may be killed in attacks on private residences that it recommends bombing in advance.
3. Lavender: The Individual Targeting System
The exact date of development of Lavender remains classified.
Whereas Habsora focuses on buildings, Lavender focuses on marking individuals to include on a kill list.
Lavender is described as an AI-enabled database that assigns risk scores to Gazans based on patterns in their personal data to identify suspected operatives.
How does it work:
Data ingestion: Lavender uses data from the mass surveillance of Gaza, where the entire telecommunications network is monitored, to identify targets based on their phone calls, movements and interactions.
Analysis: It works by analyzing information collected on almost all 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip through a mass surveillance system. It assesses the likelihood of a person belonging to Hamas using a non-transparent ranking system.
Scoring: It uses machine learning to assign every resident a numerical score indicating their suspected likelihood of being affiliated with Hamas.
Output: Lavender generated a list of roughly 37,000 Palestinians as suspected operatives in the early weeks of the war. Other reports put the number as high as 37,000 men flagged as potential targets.
Lavender does not operate alone. Investigative reports from +972 Magazine and Local Call, which first broke the story in November 2023, said Lavender works alongside Habsora and a third system nicknamed "Where's Daddy?" — a system reportedly used to track when a flagged individual entered their family home to time a strike.
4. How The Two Systems Interact
Conceptually, the workflow described by sources is:
1. Lavender asks: Is this person a militant? It provides a probability score (1-100).
2. Habsora asks: Where is a legitimate military infrastructure target? It provides coordinates and target type.
3. Where's Daddy?[1] asks: When is the person from step 1 inside a building from step 2?
4. Human operators are then presented with the fused recommendation.
The IDF system, known as Lavender, was used to find and target alleged militants. According to the Israeli news report, Lavender works alongside another Israeli system known as Gospel. The former targets individuals.
5. Official Response and Controversy
The IDF has responded to these reports, particularly after the documentary "NAZA" featured testimonies from intelligence officers about the systems.
The army stated that its Lavender AI targeting program is not a list of targets pre-approved for strike, but rather a database to help cross-reference intelligence sources. A person's inclusion in the Lavender database does not mean that individual is a target and does not authorize a strike against them.
The IDF categorically rejects allegations that it used AI to indiscriminately target civilians, saying that all strikes require independent human verification, compliance with international law, and proportionality assessment.
Critics, including human rights lawyers and AI ethicists, raise three concerns:
A. Automation bias: If a system is 90% accurate and it flags 37,000 people, 3,700 are misidentified.
B. Scale without oversight: Generating 100 targets a day changes the tempo of war beyond what traditional legal review was built for.
C. Dehumanization: Turning risk scoring into a list reduces complex human context to data points.
Proponents argue that AI reduces human error, can process far more intelligence to avoid misidentification, and that the systems are decision-support tools, not decision-makers. Every strike still requires a human commander.
6. Historical Significance
Lavender and Habsora are not science fiction weapons. They represent a shift from precision-guided munitions to “precision-guided intelligence” (PGI). For 2,500 years, lavender the plant was used from Egyptian mummification to Roman baths. Lavender the system represents a similar shift in utility — from a scent to a signal.
Together, Lavender and Habsora illustrate the central dilemma of algorithmic warfare: Can an algorithm that is statistically effective be legally and morally acceptable when its errors mean civilian death? And where does accountability lie — with the code, the officer who built it, or the officer who approved its recommendation?
That question is now being litigated not only in military courts, but in documentaries, academic journals, and international courts, making these two systems perhaps the most documented case study of AI in active conflict to date.
[1] Where is Daddy? is the third layer in the targeting chain. If Lavender answers “Who is a target?” and Habsora/the Gospel answers “What building is a target?”, “Where’s Daddy” answers “When is the person inside the building?” It is not a separate kill-list. It only works after Lavender has flagged someone. Its job is to follow that person until an operational window appears.
