EXCLUSIVE: Inside Israel’s Insta-Genocide

Part One: Weaponizing the humiliation of Gaza’s Palestinians

​​Babies, brides, and tanks. Scroll through the Facebook page of photographer David Stein and see beautiful wedding and event photos he has recently taken. But over the last eight months of posts, what used to be a timeline packed with portraits of happiness, has become one scattered with images of war, as Stein turned his lens on his deployment to Gaza.

Some of Stein's war photos aren’t all that memorable – soldiers walking, standing around, posing with their weapons. But one photo does stand out. Not only for what the photo shows, but because Stein chose to take it and upload it to social media. “We’ll settle for this picture; there are pictures not for publication,” he writes in Hebrew as part of the caption. 

The image shows a group of detained Palestinians, including what appears to be at least one elderly man and two children, stripped to their underwear. The young boys and men, most of whom appear blindfolded, are lined up. Many have their arms stretched to touch the shoulders of the person standing in front of them. It’s unclear where they’re being paraded to, what their names are, if they’re still alive today. It’s a picture that says so much and nothing at the same time. 

Since the war began, we have uncovered hundreds of photos and posts by Israeli soldiers from their time inside Gaza. Those that picture Palestinians are often like the one shared by Stein – humiliating, disrespectful, and degrading. But others feature Israeli soldiers themselves – relaxing inside Palestinians' homes, playing with Palestinian children’s toys and women’s lingerie, eating the food Palestinians left behind as they fled for their lives. 

Some images we’ve uncovered were hidden behind private accounts, but many others were public – underscoring the brazen, acceptable, and even encouraged behavior that has taken hold of Israel’s military and society. The social media posts we documented don’t offer a glimpse of the war; they offer a much fuller picture. One that takes the veil off what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared again on Friday “the most moral military in the world” and reveals the reality that dehumanizing Palestinians is baked into the Israeli military’s DNA.

In this exclusive two-part investigation for Zeteo, we zero in on more than two dozen posts by Israeli soldiers found primarily through open-source information. Many of the accounts were and remain public, but we accessed and uncovered posts from private accounts as well. Some were made private or appear to have been deactivated after we (a Palestinian journalist and an activist based in the occupied West Bank) reached out to them or the Israeli military for comment. The majority of the cases we cite in part one of this investigation are being reported here for the first time. 

In most cases, we verified the accounts through multiple images or videos directly posted to the accounts of Israeli soldiers. We confirmed rank and brigade or battalion by the insignia on a soldier's uniform or through other sources. Unless noted, the soldiers who shared the posts did not respond to our requests for comment.

“Happy With Such Scenes”

For many Israeli soldiers, it appears that posting images of detained Palestinians gives them a way to share, even boast about, their experience with their friends. There seems to be no thought about the humiliation the Palestinians are subjected to – or what such photos could do to Israel’s global reputation. 

For Stein, the image of the detainees appears worth sharing to “convey a bit of the story” of his time at war, as part of the caption to his album reads in Hebrew. 

Stein was one of the few Israeli soldiers we reached out to who agreed to speak to us. In a phone interview in May, he acknowledged his deployment to Gaza “wasn’t easy –to see a human being in this situation,” but at the same time, he admitted he didn’t care there were children and elderly men among the detainees. “What I cared about was our mission to guard them,” he said. “I wasn’t part of their arrest. I know nothing. We were told that these guys are Nukhba,” he told Zeteo, referring to an elite unit within Hamas’ military wing believed to be largely behind the Oct. 7 attack. ‘Nukhba’ is the Arabic word for “elite.”

According to Stein, some of the detainees were made to sit facing the wall. “They couldn’t speak, they couldn’t do anything,” Stein said. 

“Our mission was to ensure that everything proceeded quietly. That was our main concern,” he added. “Sometimes we needed to silence the detainees because we didn’t want them to communicate with each other … We needed to maintain silence there, and sometimes we had to intervene to keep them quiet,” he said, without elaborating on what such intervention entailed. 

Asked about another photo he shared showing the destruction in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shuja'iyya, Stein says he wasn’t shocked at what he saw. “I don’t know if ‘shocking’ is the word. We were quite happy with such scenes.”

It’s not just Stein who posted photos of detained Palestinians. An Instagram account with the username @itamar_meiri13, claiming to be Israeli soldier Itamar Meiri of the Givati brigade, uploaded an image that appears to show three Palestinians in their underwear raising their arms. The caption reads in Hebrew: “Mohammed is dead” – a phrase often used in anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Another Instagram account with the username ​@liad_ohayon.6, claiming to be Liad Ohayon also from the Givati brigade, shared a photo in April appearing to show a group of Palestinians in degrading positions.

An Instagram account with the username @gol.d_films, claiming to be the photography account of soldier Ofek Pazz, posted photos showing dozens of Palestinians at the Indonesian Hospital near the Jabalia Refugee Camp stripped to their underwear and arms tied behind their backs. The hospital, which served as a shelter for Palestinians hoping to escape the death trap the refugee camp became, was partially destroyed and stormed by the Israeli military late last year.

Pazz doesn’t even try to hide the fact that those pictured include civilians. “Here we start dealing with civilians,” he writes in the caption in Hebrew. Referring to the images, Pazz adds they are, in his opinion, “insanely difficult in what they represent… I have no idea if I feel good about them or not. You be the judge."

The images we found reflect a greater trend of the dehumanization of Palestinians – by Israeli soldiers, Western media, and across Israeli society. Apologists for Israel’s conduct claim that stripping Palestinians, as in the pictures above, is done for security purposes. It’s a pretext also seemingly used to justify handcuffing them, covering their eyes, and holding them in humiliating positions. But it’s unclear how posting the photos to social media serves any security purposes. To us, it appears soldiers feel encouraged to post such photos for the likes. “King,” “Big Brother,” and “Professional,” read some of the comments on the posts we uncovered.

A Policy In Name Only

The Israeli military’s policy prohibits “inappropriate behavior” by soldiers on social media that “deviates from the IDF values or harms human dignity,” which “affects the IDF’s image and public perception,” or harms national security. “Such behavior may lead to disciplinary or criminal measures,” the policy, translated from Hebrew, adds.  

Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the Israeli military’s top lawyer, issued a warning to commanders in February, highlighting cases of behavior that deviated from IDF values and protocol carried out by troops in the Gaza Strip. Tomer-Yerushalmi said that the cases included “inappropriate statements that encourage unacceptable phenomena; unjustified use of force, including against detainees; looting, which includes the use or removal of private property for non-operational purposes; and destruction of civilian property contrary to protocols.”

But while monitoring the social media accounts of Israeli soldiers as they pushed into Gaza, it becomes clear that the policy is largely in name only.

In one post we uncovered, an Israeli soldier kicks up his feet, appearing to pretend to smoke shisha in a Palestinian’s home. In another, a soldier poses smiling with a mannequin. Soldiers in one image appear to eat from buckets of Nutella. The family whose kitchen the Nutella presumably came from, if still alive, is likely among those suffering from starvation as Israel continues to block aid from entering the Strip. In other images, soldiers play with toys and wear Palestinian women’s clothing. These incidents are not confined to a specific battalion but span across various units engaged in military offensives in Gaza. 

Taking over civilian homes for military needs is not a rare phenomenon in military history. But, as is apparent from Israeli soldiers’ social media feeds, they use the houses and everything they contain for purposes that go far beyond “military necessity.”

Gil Rivlin of the Givati brigade posted a photo on his Instagram account of himself holding a red thong found in a Palestinian home. “There was no message of threat here, only the irony of where they place their weapons and how it has become the norm for them alongside the rest of their lives,” he claimed in a message to Zeteo in May. Yet, there is no operational necessity or rationale for posting such a photo on social media. The UN Human Rights Office spokesperson has previously described such posts as “demeaning to Palestinian women and all women.” Rivlin’s Instagram account appeared to have been deactivated not long after we reached out to the Israeli military for comment. 

An Israeli military spokesperson told Zeteo in a statement that “all the videos, images, and social media posts” we pointed to “are inconsistent with the values of the IDF and do not reflect its policy.” 

The spokesperson noted that “in a number of the examined cases, it appears that the expression or behavior of the soldiers in the footage is inappropriate, and that they have been handled accordingly.” But the spokesperson added that “the documented act, by which the statement is accompanied, was carried out for military purposes and in accordance with the orders (for instance, in the case of the destruction of enemy infrastructure).” 

According to the spokesperson, the “relevant authorities were familiar with several of the incidents listed in the query, which were examined, and dealt with at the disciplinary and command level prior to [the] query’s submission.” The Israeli military did not elaborate on what specifically the disciplinary action entailed. “Those cases which were not previously known, have now been transferred for further examination and handling,” the spokesperson said. 

The soldiers’ behavior and posts during the war on Gaza may reflect “inappropriate” and undisciplined behavior and a lack of moral values, but in our view, there is a more pronounced aspect to these posts: They convey a message of ownership – of total disregard to the Palestinians whose home, food, clothing, and toys they photograph. Soldiers express ease and nonchalance, sitting relaxed on a chair or standing proudly, holding belongings as if they were at home. What is absent from these photos are the former occupants of the homes, who likely ran for their lives into a hellscape. The soldiers’ posts send the message that this land, this home, is theirs. It seems that to the soldiers, the Palestinians who live there have already been erased. 

Calls to Resettle

It’s not just an implicit message. We uncovered more than a dozen posts with videos and pictures showing orange flags, symbolizing the Gush Katif movement that calls for the resettlement of Gaza. Gush Katif was a bloc of over a dozen Israeli settlements that stood in southern Gaza until Israel’s disengagement in 2005. 

Major Benyaho Hochman shared a video on his Facebook account in December, in which he passionately advocates for the creation of settlements on the ruins of Palestinian homes. “I was asked if the Zionist dream is over,” he says in the video in Hebrew. “We are now returning to Netzarim… Netzarim will be rebuilt and re-established,” he adds, referring to one of the Israeli settlements inside Gaza before disengagement. The video is captioned: “On the sands of Netzarim. We came back home...”

On Dec. 21, an Instagram account with the username @afikhajaj1, claiming to be soldier Afik Hajaj of the Givati Brigade, shared a video showing soldiers in the heart of Gaza City. “This is Gaza City… in the future, Nova Beach,” one of the soldiers says in English, using the word, “Nova,” which describes the music festival where dozens of Israelis were killed in the Hamas attacks. “No, Hajaj Beach,” another soldier says.

The call to resettle Gaza has been mostly a fringe idea since Israel’s disengagement from the Strip in 2005. But the fringe has moved more toward the mainstream as Israel’s government moved more toward the far right. Ultranationalist Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, officials known for their xenophobic and racist rhetoric, have pushed for more settlements across the occupied territories. Just last month, National Security Minister Ben Gvir said he’d be “very happy” to live in Gaza after the war ends. 

Still, a sizable segment of Israeli society opposes settlement in Gaza. A recent poll found that less than a quarter of Jewish Israelis believe Israel should reestablish settlements in the enclave. Opponents draw lessons from the past – when thousands of settlers illegally resided in Gaza for decades. That endeavor ended, however, in 2005 after the Israeli military and settlers suffered significant losses due to Palestinian resistance, as well as escalating defense and security expenditures. 

The opposition also stems from animosity between many liberal Israelis and the settlers residing in the occupied West Bank who now seek to settle Gaza as well. According to many in the Israeli public, the latter requires a disproportionate share of state budgets, burdens the Israeli military in safeguarding their settlements, and undermines Israel's international reputation. 

In other words, the discourse between the Israeli right and left regarding settlements in Gaza focuses entirely on the benefits and harms to Israelis – the Israeli military, Israeli economy, Israel's global image, and the security of Israelis. The arguments are completely devoid of the fact that Gaza is home to more than 2 million Palestinians and is Palestinian land. Any resettlement of Gaza by Israel would likely further imperil the security, freedom of movement, and economy of the Palestinians in the Strip. In terms of discourse, Gaza is already ethnically cleansed. This helps explain why within Israel, advocating for building settlements in Gaza appears to be more controversial than advocating for genocide against Gazans. The average Israeli, considered moderate politically, is indifferent to tens of thousands of casualties, starvation, and destruction, but draws the line at constructing new settlements. This does not necessarily mean that such settlements will not eventually be established. At least a dozen government ministers, including three from Netanyahu’s Likud party, reportedly attended a conference calling for the resettlement of the enclave. For his part, Netanyahu has claimed he’s not interested in resettling the Gaza Strip.

Resisting Desensitization 

The picture the posts we uncovered paint is one of destruction, dehumanization, and detachment. For every bombed hospital, every destroyed university and kindergarten, every individual buried under the rubble, and every person deprived of food and clean drinking water, Palestinians are expected to suppress their outrage because Israel claims it’s all done for security reasons. But, then why are soldiers who claim to be focused on neutralizing “threats” sidetracked by documenting apparently non-threatening aspects of their deployment – Palestinians in degrading positions, their fellow soldiers wearing women’s lingerie, the food, clothing, and toys left behind? The emphasis on these moments, the urge to capture them and share them with friends, appears to illustrate a desire for domination and the belief that Palestinians are less than human. The pretext of security is a mirage that Israel not only casts over the abducted Palestinians in Gaza but also over all its actions in the Strip. 

After viewing hundreds of photos and videos, hearing the soldiers’ laughter and joyous shouts, translating the contemptuous and derogatory remarks towards Palestinians and their homes and properties, and scrolling endlessly through the supportive comments that soldiers receive from their friends and fellow soldiers, it has gotten harder and harder to resist becoming desensitized. We shared the collected materials and their translations among ourselves, and after several such exchanges, they no longer elicited the emotional response they initially did. The muscle shock that is supposed to remind us that we are witnessing something extraordinarily abnormal has faded.

Not becoming desensitized is an ongoing task, particularly for those who care. Therefore, we continue to watch more and more content emerging from Gaza with the intention of remembering that every injured or killed Palestinian is a son, sister, husband, or mother; every bombed building was a home, an office, a clinic, a school, a university; and every call for the further “flattening” of Gaza on soldiers’ social media or by the public is a call to eliminate every possibility of family life, community, and nationhood – to erase accumulated memories and extinguish all potential futures.

In part two of this series, we dive deeper and analyze the genocidal rhetoric we uncovered in the social media posts of Israeli soldiers deployed to Gaza. You can read part two here:  "May Gaza burn": The flood of genocidal rhetoric from Israel's soldiers

Editor’s note: We have blurred the faces of Palestinian detainees in the posts.