Rape, torture, use of human shields: Al Jazeera investigation claims to have found damning evidence of Israeli war crimes

Since Israeli troops marched into Gaza following the October 7 attack by Hamas against Israel, thousands of photos and videos have been posted on the internet by individual Israeli soldiers. Now, these very videos posted by Israeli soldiers could become evidence of war crimes.

Since Israeli troops marched into Gaza following the October 7 attack by Hamas against Israel, thousands of photos and videos have been posted on the internet by individual Israeli soldiers who carried their personal communication devices into the conflict zone.

Now, the very same videos posted by Israeli soldiers could become evidence of war crimes, which Tel Aviv has been accused of time and again since its retaliation against the Hamas attack.

An Al Jazeera investigation, which analysed thousands of such videos posted by more than 2,500 social media accounts and interviewed people on the ground and international experts, have found that the behaviour displayed by Israeli forces in these videos could be in violation of international humanitarian law (IHL), and amount to war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

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What did the investigation find?

The thousands of videos that were posted on the internet by Israeli soldiers displayed behaviour ranging from the cracking of crass jokes to the what appears to be the murder of unarmed civilians.

Broadly speaking, however, most of the media uploaded by said Israeli soldiers fell into one of three categories: wanton destruction, mistreatment of detainees, and the use of human shields, all of which are in violation of aforementioned international law.

Wanton destruction

Some of the videos analysed by the publication showed soldiers destroying property and possessions of people in Gaza, while others show houses being set alight. The most common feature in these videos, however, was the detonation of buildings, which, in itself is problematic.

"The fact that they’ve been able to rig these buildings up with explosives shows very clearly that there’s no current threat from those buildings," Charlie Herbert, a retired major-general in the British Army, told the publication, adding, "There’s no justification for destroying a structure if the enemy isn’t in it ... You can’t go around wantonly, unnecessarily destroying … civilian property … It’s banned."

Indeed, Article 8(2)(a)(iv) of the Rome Statue confirms the same, prohibiting "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."

Mistreatment of detainees

Perhaps the most dehumanising among the content posted online by Israeli soldiers was their treatment of detainees.

Videos analysed by Al Jazeera were found to have many instances of dehumanising behaviour: some showed large numbers of detainees stripped down to their undergarments, while one video showed naked and almost-naked detainees bound, blindfolded, and being physically abused.

In one such video, a French-Israeli soldier filmed a detainee being taken out of a truck, and was heard saying, "Look, I’m going to show you his back. You’re going to laugh at this. He was tortured."

First-person accounts collected by Al Jazeera seemed to confirm that the behaviour observed in these videos were not isolated incidents.

"They took my son, the eldest, who had just been married. He was tortured. I could hear his screams as they were suffocating him and beating him in the adjacent room," one Abu Amer told the publication, to cite one instance.

Meanwhile, Fadi Bakr, another Palestinian, told the publication that he was forced to lie on a decomposing corpse on the threat of execution. Bakr further said he saw guards using a dog to rape a young male inmate at the Sde Teiman detention centre in south Israel.

This abuse was not restricted to males—women were physically abused too, notes Al Jazeera, citing first person accounts.

The behaviour observed in these videos and weaned from first person accounts amounts to violation of international law as well, experts told Al Jazeera.

"Torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments" is prohibited under Article 8(2)(a)(ii) of the Rome Statute, while Article 8(2)(b)(xxi) of the same statute prohibits "committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."

Use of human shields

Six individuals interviewed by the publication testified to being used as human shields by Israeli forces, which is also prohibited under Article 8(2)(b)(xxiii) of the Rome Statute.

Abu Amer, for instance, described how Israeli forces would place men near the balcony, using them as shields while they returned fire. Amer further said that Palestinian men would be tasked with inspecting buildings for booby traps and ambushes, something which the publication said was corroborated by several pieces of video evidence.

Which Israeli units feature in these videos?

The investigation found that the 8219 Combat Engineering Battalion of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), also known as the Gadhan Commndo, prominently featured in many of the videos posted online.

The Gadhan Commando, Al Jazeera reported, is responsible for the destruction of hundreds of buildings in Gaza City. The publication further reported that between December 28, 2023 and June 9 this year, the unit levelled Khirbet Khuza'a, a town of around 13,000 people, situated close to the fence situating Gaza from Israel. Footage of some of these activities were also shared online by soldiers from the unit.

Apart from the 8219 Combat Engineering Division, the 202 Paratroopers Battalion was also identified—in one video posted online by a soldier called Shalon Gilbert, three unarmed men are seen being killed by snipers.

What does this investigation mean for Israel?

The investigation by Doha-based Al Jazeera, which has been banned by Israel since May this year, comes at a time when Israel is facing allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the latter being reserved for the most serious international crimes knowingly committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against civilians.

As of writing this, on Friday, a United Nations inquiry said that it had found that Israel carried out a concerted policy of destroying Gaza's healthcare system in the Gaza war, something that amounted to both war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination.

A statement on Thursday by former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, that accompanied the UN report accused Israel of "relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities" in the ongoing war.

"Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system," said Pillay, whose 24-page report covering the first 10 months of the war will be presented to the UN General Assembly on October 30.

Israel was swift to dismiss UN's Commission of Inquiry (CoI) report: "[The report] is another blatant attempt by the CoI to delegitimize the very existence of the State of Israel and obstruct its right to protect its population," Tel Aviv's mission in Geneva said in response.

It should be noted that while the UN CoI had earlier accused both Hamas and Israel of having committed war crimes during the October 7 attack and what followed after, it said that Tel Aviv's actions amounted to crimes against humanity because of the immense scale of the loss of civilian lives in Gaza.

Tel Aviv, however, has not cooperated with the inquiry, which it accuses of having an anti-Israel bias. The UN CoI, for its part, has also accused Israel of hindering its investigation by blocking access to Israeli and Palestinian territories.

That being said, the UN body has a broad mandate to collect evidence on war crimes and identify the perpetrators responsible for the same—evidence collected by such UN-mandated bodies have earlier served as the basis for the prosecution of international war crimes in the International Criminal Court.

With Al Jazeera now adding more evidence of alleged violation of international laws by Israeli soldiers, it remains to be seen where the allegations against Tel Aviv go once the UN submits its report on October 30.

(DH could not independently verify the content supporting the investigative report by Al Jazeera)