Israel has published hundreds of airstrike videos – but they only tell part of the story

“I lost everyone I love,” Marwa Jarada says, reflecting on the airstrike that killed her parents and 14 other family members. 

Last October, Israel bombed her family’s apartment in Gaza City, reportedly killing at least 101 people. Two days later, on 27 October 2023, the Israeli military (IDF) posted aerial footage of the strike, claiming they were targeting a “Hamas terror tunnel”.

The video is one of hundreds posted online by the Israeli military since the conflict erupted a year ago, following Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel. The Gaza-based militant group killed approximately 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and took a further 251 as hostages.

Israel has responded with a ground invasion and an extensive aerial bombing campaign, which it says have killed thousands of Hamas fighters and are intended to eliminate Hamas and free the remaining hostages.

Gaza’s Hamas-led health ministry says the war has killed almost 42,000 people, mostly women and children. Volker Turk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has said the scale of civilian death in Gaza is “overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli Defence Forces to comply with the rules of war”.

Working with investigative war monitor, Airwars, Sky News has analysed the IDF’s use of aerial footage over the past year.

Experts say these videos are intended to show Israel’s military success against Hamas, but they only provide a limited account of the strikes. Contrasting them with on-the-ground footage and interviews with survivors and their families, we document what these deadly attacks were like for Gaza’s civilians.

In response to a detailed list of findings and questions sent by Sky News, an IDF spokesperson said that “many of the accusations and claims presented in the investigation are baseless and constitute speculation”.

They added: “The segments published by the IDF have shown tens of millions of viewers how terrorist infrastructures are embedded within the civilian population. The IDF regards every loss of civilian life as a profound tragedy and approaches it with the utmost seriousness.”

The IDF has posted hundreds of airstrike videos

Airwars analysis of IDF social media accounts shows they posted footage of 1,219 Israeli strikes in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 31 August – including 531 in the month after the war began.

The IDF videos have striking visual similarities – they are often in black and white, grainy and with no sound. Taken from a distance, you can rarely make out the people on the ground.

“A number of researchers have long raised concerns about the video game-isation of war,” says drone warfare expert Zachary Kallenborn.

“I think these videos highlight that a little bit, where you don’t necessarily engage with the people… they’re little dots on the screen.”

The attack on Al Taj

Marwa’s family moved into the seven-storey apartment building of Al Taj, in an upmarket part of Gaza City, three years ago.

After Israel ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza on 13 October, her uncle and his family joined them, resulting in 19 family members living together.

On 25 October, an Israeli airstrike destroyed al Taj in what the IDF later said was an attack on a Hamas tunnel in the area.

In the hours after the strike, Marwa, who lives in the US, began getting messages from other relatives saying they had not heard from those living in al Taj. She began to panic. Scrolling through Telegram news channels, she saw a mention of a strike on the building.

At first, the 25-year-old hoped a warning had been issued or her family had somehow escaped, but a call from her brother Tamer confirmed her worst fears: her father’s body had been found.

The IDF posted aerial footage of the strike two days later. Geolocated by Airwars and confirmed by Sky News, it begins with an explosion just south of the Al Taj building.

Immediately after, 10 plumes of fire shoot up around Al Taj, before the building disappears behind a cloud of smoke.

Sky News military analyst Sean Bell says the plumes and their timing are best explained by a missile exploding in an underground facility, with the explosion then escaping through air ducts and entrances.

At least 101 people were killed in the strike, including 44 children and 37 women, and “hundreds” of others injured, according to Airwars analysis.

Among the dead were Marwa’s parents. “I really love them,” she says, tearfully. “I would do anything to have them back.”

Her sisters, Haneen and Nisreen, were also killed. Marwa describes Nisreen as her “soulmate”, and says the 29-year-old psychologist was due to get married in December.

Marwa’s nephew Abdullah had earned a scholarship to a school in Qatar before he was killed alongside his little brother Naser, a budding athlete.

Only three members of Marwa’s family who were staying at al Taj – Amro, Yahya and Yosef – survived the strike.

Marwa said her family did not receive any warning of the strike, a claim echoed by a relative from her uncle’s side of the family, Hisham.

Legal experts told Sky News that militaries are obliged under international law to issue warnings to civilians where feasible.

Sky News asked the IDF whether an evacuation warning had been issued and whether there was anything about the strike that made it time-sensitive but did not receive a response to these questions.

“A tunnel is not going anywhere,” says Dearbhla Minogue, a senior lawyer with the Global Legal Action Network. “There’s absolutely no reason you would not evacuate that building before you launch that attack.”

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari has previously said the Israeli military seeks “no harm to innocent civilians”, but is simply trying to retrieve its hostages and root out Hamas. The militant group has a vast network of tunnels in Gaza and has been accused of operating in civilian areas.

“If you attack us, this is what will happen to you”

Dr Craig Jones, a lecturer at Newcastle University and an expert in conflict law, says posting footage like this “nearly always serves a purpose” for the side that publishes it, as they have “no legal obligation” to do so.

Experts say the videos are intended to send different messages to different audiences.

Dr Andreas Krieg, a war expert at King’s College London, said: “The first narrative they want to push out, towards the domestic audience, is ‘We’re winning’.

“The number two message is one of deterrence, which is aimed at Hamas, Iran [and] Hezbollah… to say, if you attack us, this is what will happen to you.”

Federico Borsari, an expert in security and defence at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), says the videos also aim to demonstrate to the international community Israel’s use of precision-guided munitions.

“Israel wants to show that it cares about striking the target using as much accuracy as possible and avoiding collateral damage.”

He adds that the Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, making it a particularly challenging environment in which to conduct precision strikes. But Dr Krieg says the volume of footage sends a message of its own.

“They might be targeted strikes,” he says. “But the cumulative effect… is the near complete destruction of the entire physical infrastructure of Gaza.”

One of the deadliest strikes took place on 26 May, close to Kuwaiti Al-Salam Camp 1, an area housing displaced Palestinians near Rafah.

It came days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to halt its operation in Rafah, amid international condemnation of the offensive in the south of Gaza. Israel has argued the wording of the ICJ’s ruling did not prohibit its invasion of Rafah.

The IDF said the strikes targeted rocket launchers and two “senior Hamas” militants using two munitions, each with 17kg of explosives. Hamas has repeatedly launched rockets at Israel over the course of the past year.

Videos of a large fire emerged on the night of the attack. One video, too graphic to publish, shows a man carrying the remains of his daughter in a plastic bag.

Fourteen-year-old Aya was decapitated in the explosion. Her father, Abu Mohammed, told Sky News at the time he saw “lots of people” killed in the streets: “Civilians, not people who have carried out any actions or anything.”

Gaza health authorities said at least 45 people were killed in the airstrike and subsequent fire. The IDF claimed the fire was “not caused” by their strike.

In response to questions posed by Sky News, the IDF says the strike targeted senior Hamas operatives who had directed attacks against Israeli civilians in the West Bank, and “numerous measures were taken to mitigate the harm to civilians”.

The IDF’s footage of the strike shows at least three figures moving but cuts off just after the blast and does not show when or where the fire began.

“It is certainly incomplete”

IDF footage is often blurry, making some details difficult to verify, according to conflict law expert Craig Jones.

“You can’t tell whether these are civilians or combatants, what the objects are, who’s in the frame – you can’t objectively tell from the footage alone,” he says.

He says the IDF often “overlays” footage with captions “that tell the viewer what to see”.

Another expert says the limited view also tells us little about the experience on the ground.

Drone warfare expert, Zachary Kallenborn, says: “You don’t get the heat, the pressure, the sounds, the explosions, the buildings around you crumbling. So, it is certainly incomplete,” he says.

However, he adds, having a complete picture of reality on the ground could also cause viewers to oppose reasonable military actions, because “any type of war is atrocious and horrible”.

In August, the Israeli military confirmed an airstrike in al Mawasi on 13 July killed the head of Hamas’s military wing, Mohammed Deif.

Deif was deemed a high-priority target for Israel due to his status in Hamas. But the attack killed many civilians, left hundreds injured, and took place in an area the IDF had previously marked as a humanitarian zone.

More than two weeks after the strike, the IDF posted its footage and said its fighter jets were involved in the operation.

It begins with a blast in a field near residential buildings, before a second later another explosion is seen. The video stops before the clouds of smoke disappear.

Aftermath footage filmed on the ground provides a contrasting view of the strike. One video shows a large crater in the ground as groups of people dig for survivors.

A man in the video said: “We were sitting, displaced in our tents, when suddenly all we saw was a belt of fire without prior warning”.

Airwars’ assessment says on 13 July, at least 57 civilians were killed in a series of declared Israeli airstrikes near the al Nas Junction in the al Mawasi area near Khan Younis, and 300 more were injured.

Hamas neither confirmed nor denied the killing of Deif.

The IDF described the incident as a “precise, targeted strike” on a compound housing Deif and another senior Hamas commander, Rafa’a Salameh, and that its intelligence confirms that both were killed.

Dr Jones says that militaries are not required to issue evacuation warnings where this is not feasible.

He adds targets such as Deif would “reasonably” command a greater tolerance for civilian casualties, but that militaries are still bound by rules of proportionality.

He says the highest number of civilian casualties he has ever seen a Western military willing to tolerate in a single strike is 50, during the fight against Islamic State in Mosul.

An IDF spokesman said that, in accordance with international law, Israel takes “all feasible precautions” to mitigate civilian harm, including issuing evacuation warnings via SMS, leaflets and phone calls, and that civilians are put at risk by the “unprecedented embedding of Hamas within civilian areas”.

Israel’s prime minister has said the war in Gaza will not end until Hamas is defeated and all hostages are returned.

As the conflict spills over Israel’s border with Lebanon, international pressure is mounting for all sides to agree to a ceasefire.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.