Israeli soldiers on leave are being investigated for war crimes in Gaza

An Israeli reservist hastily left Brazil this week after a Brazilian judge ordered an investigation into whether he committed war crimes in Gaza.

Israeli consular officials helped Private Yuval Vagdani leave the country on Sunday after the order was issued. This was prompted by a criminal complaint filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation, a Belgium-based non-profit, which “focuses on offensive legal action against perpetrators of war crimes and accomplices and instigators of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine.”

On Wednesday, the Israeli military announced that it would no longer identify soldiers by name in the media, “for fear of soldiers being arrested abroad.”

Mr. Wijdani was deployed to Gaza following the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, which led to Israel’s invasion of the Strip in a campaign aimed at defeating and destroying Hamas.

According to the Hind Rajab Foundation’s complaint, Mr. Wijdani posted videos and photos on social media from Gaza showing him destroying civilian homes and other buildings. Group Claims These actions were a systematic attempt to impose intolerable living conditions on the civilian population, in violation of international law. (The Times has not independently verified this evidence.)

A Brazilian judge decided that these allegations should be investigated, and referred the matter to the federal police. Several similar criminal complaints have been filed against vacationing Israeli soldiers in recent months, including in Cyprus, Sri Lanka, Argentina and Chile.

Mr. Vaghdani, who The Times could not reach for comment, He arrived in Israel on Wednesday.

In an interview with Israeli public radio and television, he admitted to publishing a video of a building being blown up. He said: “This is what they saw and they wanted to investigate me.” “They turned it from one verse into 500 pages, and they thought I had killed thousands of children and who knows what.”

He also told Mr. Vaghdani Kahn that he was in Nova Music Festival near the Gaza border on October 7, 2023, and survived the massacre there.

Israeli officials downplayed the seriousness of these cases, noting that none of the criminal complaints led to arrests. “We understand that part of this phenomenon is driven by pro-Palestinian activists and based on open source intelligence,” said Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an IDF spokesman.

The open source methods in question are social media posts, which pro-Palestinian groups are now using as evidence to seek criminal charges against soldiers when they travel abroad.

Universal jurisdiction

The combination of social media and international tourism – as well as a very old body of law – could open a new arena in international criminal law.

Universal jurisdiction, one of the oldest principles of international law, states that some crimes are so serious that any country in the world can bring criminal proceedings against their perpetrators. In the 18th century, this rule was used for crimes such as piracy; More recently, it has been used to prosecute genocide and war crimes.

Israel relied on universal jurisdiction to try Adolf Eichmann, a senior Nazi official, for crimes against humanity during the Holocaust. Spain relied on it to demand the extradition of Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, to face charges of torture and other crimes. In more recent examples, several European countries have relied on this principle to prosecute Syrian officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Belgium tried Rwandans accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide before its courts.

For decades, such cases were relatively rare and tended to target high-ranking officials. “There has been this tendency to focus on higher levels in order to achieve maximum impact, and also because at higher levels sometimes behavior is better documented than at lower levels,” said Yuval Shani, a professor of international law at Hebrew University. In Jerusalem.

It was previously difficult for a local prosecutor to obtain evidence of a war crime allegedly committed in another country. That has changed with social media. “Technology is coming to fill the gap, because once you film and document yourself committing a war crime, it becomes much easier to prosecute you, even in a court half a world away,” Mr. Shani said.

Experts say Israeli soldiers uploaded videos and other photos of themselves In Gaza Saying and doing things that could be interpreted as evidence of serious crimes, including destroying civilian homes and property, and calling for the expulsion or extermination of Palestinians.

While social media clips can be taken out of context or misinterpreted — and Israel has accused Hamas of using civilian infrastructure for military purposes — “some of them look very bad,” Mr. Shani said. “There is this potential degree of accountability that we have never seen before in wars, simply because it has been so difficult to gather evidence.”

However, while social media evidence is compelling, it is unlikely to be sufficient on its own to ensure a successful prosecution, said Rebecca Hamilton, a law professor at American University and a former lawyer in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Social media does not constitute a war crimes case.”

New legal strategy

The Hind Rajab Foundation claims to have collected evidence against about a thousand Israeli soldiers. It also tracks their overseas trips on social media as they post their vacations, then immediately files criminal complaints with the countries they visit.

Diab Abu Jahjah, head of the Hind Rajab Foundation, said that soldiers who abide by international law have nothing to fear from his organization. “We are not organizing a persecution campaign against Israeli soldiers,” he said. “We are bringing cases against soldiers against whom we have evidence that they are individually responsible for war crimes.”

Unlike higher commanders, lower-ranking soldiers typically do not have diplomatic immunity, or the resources to seek jurisdiction that might make them vulnerable to war crimes complaints.

Of course, an NGO filing a criminal complaint is not the same as a prosecutor bringing charges, let alone arrest or conviction.

The Israeli government has taken measures indicating that it is concerned about criminal complaints. The government, which insists that its forces in Gaza acted in accordance with international law, has formed an interagency team to assess the legal risks to soldiers and reservists abroad. The State Department recently issued a general warning to Israelis that their social media posts could be used to take legal action against them in other countries.

These cases may not need to go to court, or even lead to arrests, to have an impact. The prospect of soldiers being unable to travel abroad without risking imprisonment is one that the public may find difficult to tolerate.

Mr. Shani said that traveling abroad is very important for Israelis. “So I think there is a notion that this is actually an unacceptable risk, and that the government must remove this risk,” he added.

Isabel Kirshner and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Israel, Efrat Livni contributed reporting from Washington, D.C., and Jack Necas contributed reporting from Brazil.

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