In a report aired on Weekend News with Ayala Hasson, Lt. Col. (res.) Yair Miron, author of Matir Asurim and a veteran of Israeli Military Intelligence's Captives and Missing Persons Unit, responds to claims made in the documentary "NAZA." Drawing on direct experience with target-vetting and strike-approval processes during the war, he explains how collateral-damage assessments, partial information, legal considerations, and the hostage issue itself factored into these decisions - and why the film's account does not match the processes he took part in.
Miron is the central interviewee in the report. His segment begins around 2:57.
According to Miron, approving a strike is not an automatic decision but a graduated process based on the intelligence picture, an assessment of expected harm, military advantage, legal considerations, and the appropriate level of authorization. The hostage issue added, in many cases, an additional layer of review.
Miron explains that collateral damage refers to foreseeable harm to civilians or civilian property resulting from a strike on a military target. It is not approved in a vacuum, he says, but weighed alongside the target itself, the military advantage, proportionality, and the precautions that can be taken.
Regarding the film's claim that a strike was approved with an expected toll of roughly 500 casualties, Miron says such a description does not match the approval processes he took part in, and that an event of that scale would have required discussions and approvals at the highest levels. He also points to an important methodological distinction: between an advance damage estimate and the actual casualty count after the fact. Without identifying the specific strike, target and approval document the claim is based on, he says, it cannot be checked using outcome data alone.
Miron also rejects the portrayal of artificial intelligence as replacing the decision-making process. Technological tools can help gather and process information, he says, but responsibility for approval and for weighing the consequences remains with people, within the chain of command.
This discussion connects to one of the central questions in Matir Asurim: how people and systems make decisions when information is partial, time is short, and the cost is human. The book is a documentary novel based on Miron's service in the Captives and Missing Persons Unit, and it explores the tension between speed and precision, between technology and understanding, and between authority and responsibility.