Earlier this year, Shomrim published a comprehensive investigation in Hebrew with the headline “Burning Up the Internet: The IDF Struggles to Curb Soldiers' Smartphone Use in Gaza.” The investigation, which was also published on the N12 Magazine website, revealed the massive damage that videos taken by IDF soldiers on the Gaza front and subsequently uploaded to social media are causing to Israel’s international public diplomacy efforts. Videos with titles like “May your village burn” and “Sex on the beach in Gaza” have been shared on soldiers’ TikTok accounts and have been uncovered by pro-Palestinian activists who use them to attack Israel’s operations in Gaza and – even worse – to identify the soldiers and threaten them with prosecution for war crimes. This is known as doxing and is an issue that Shomrim has also covered extensively.

Now the issue has also reached the mainstream media in the Arab world. Al Jazeera, the Qatari-run satellite news station, recently aired a comprehensive investigation into what it called “the war crimes that the IDF is committing in Gaza.” The article was largely based on videos shared by IDF soldiers themselves on social media platforms and often included the names of the soldiers and their units. As Shomrim has warned in the past, this opens the door to potential doxing and possible ramifications on the international front, including the possibility that soldiers with dual nationality could be put on trial.

Indeed, just a few days ago, an organization in Belgium sent the names of more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, accusing them of “war crimes” and “genocide in Gaza.” The list included soldiers with dual nationalities from France, the United States and other countries. This is one of the largest mass complaints that has ever been submitted to the ICC and it is based primarily on videos and images taken from social media. The organization also called on several countries, including South Africa, Spain and Ireland, to issue Interpol arrest warrants for these soldiers, which would restrict their ability to travel overseas.

Even though Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesman, has tried to bring an end to the phenomenon – explicitly warning soldiers that “it is forbidden to take videos which are not part of the operational mission” – the IDF has no practical way of enforcing the ban. Since publication of the original article by Shomrim, and similar articles in various news outlets across the world, including the New York Times, the phenomenon has only grown. In a kind of inevitable rite of passage, soldiers serving in Gaza who are given even the briefest of furloughs use the opportunity to share videos and images they captured of private homes in Gaza. In some of these photos, they can be seen, along with their comrades-in-arms, laughing, looting and opening fire at random – without seeming to take into account the regulations regarding the use of live and fire and danger of friendly fire.

Among Israeli soldiers serving in Gaza, the zeitgeist and the unwritten order of the day appears to be "If it’s not on Instagram, it did not happen.” Posts that are accompanied by hashtags and geographical location can be used to identify these soldiers, including their names, the units they serve in and often even more revealing personal information.

Dr. Idit Shafran Gittleman believes that “the overall feeling during this war is that the IDF is not supposed to take questions of morality or international law into account. Many soldiers and officers believe that it is important to humiliate the enemy, that this is the only thing he understands.”

No more ‘humanitarian considerations’

David Binyamin, an attorney specializing in international law and former senior officer with the Military Advocate General, believes that “Israel must investigate on some level everything that was revealed in the Al Jazeera article and the soldiers should be punished. I am not arguing that everything they did was a war crime, but just by taking their cell phones into Gaza they were violating military regulations.”

Binyamin points out that the IDF’s best defense against legal complaints overseas – both in terms of the International Criminal Court itself and when it comes to the possibility that individual soldiers will be arrested, is for the Israeli military to deal with the issue itself “by means of a genuine investigation and, if needed, legal proceedings right here, at home.” Dealing with these incidents within the Israeli legal system would make it clear that these phenomena do not represent the orders given to troops or IDF policy. However, he adds, “to do so will require a certain degree of courage, since the moment we try to investigate soldiers for improper behavior there is always a significant public response” – as evidenced in the recent incident at the Sde Teiman army base.

Attorney David Binyamin: "Dealing with these incidents within the Israeli legal system would make it clear that these phenomena do not represent the orders given to troops or IDF policy. However, to do so will require a certain degree of courage."

What’s happening in Gaza is also happening in Lebanon

Perhaps because soldiers are more apprehensive about their operation against Hezbollah, which is perceived as a better-trained enemy than Hamas, or perhaps because there is less of a sense of vengeance compared to fighting against Hamas in the aftermath of October 7th, but the ground operation in Lebanon at first produced far fewer of these videos compared to the campaign in Gaza. Several weeks have passed since the operation began, however, and the IDF is operating deep within Lebanese territory. Now, more and more videos from the frontline are appearing on the social media accounts of soldiers serving in southern Lebanon.

What is the IDF doing about the situation? Even now, more than one year into the war, the military is only dealing with individual instances and on a case-by-case basis. “All of the videos you submitted are indeed indicative of improper conduct and are being dealt with by the soldiers’ commanders,” the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit told Shomrim. But the army does not have an overall policy for dealing with these cases, so each video will be treated differently, “but if military regulations were violated, the case will be handled by the Military Advocate General.” This response suggests that the IDF does not understand or has not internalized how social media works and the massive potential for damage on the individual level for the soldier and on the national level of the State of Israel.

Dr. Idit Shafran Gittleman, a senior researcher from the Institute of National Security Studies who specializes in the ethics of war, believes that “the overall feeling during this war is that the IDF is not supposed to take questions of morality or international law into account. Many soldiers and officers believe that it is important to humiliate the enemy, that this is the only thing he understands; since that is how the enemy has been fighting, we should fight that way too and forget about all those humanitarian considerations.”

In light of this prevalent sentiment, Shafran Gittelman explains that the tendency among soldiers seems to be to ignore orders from senior officers such as Hagari, and that some officers in the field prefer not to waste focus and energy on this issue at the expense of missions they consider more urgent.

In some of the videos from Lebanon that have been most widely shared, soldiers can be seen hoisting an Israeli flag in Maroun El Ras or flattening public spaces with their tanks. In another video, which Shomrim has opted not to share a link to, a soldier dedicated the next massive explosion “to all the cute children in Metula.”

In other instances, soldiers have published videos and images of themselves patrolling close to the border, thereby potentially exposing their locations. Others proudly filmed themselves holding Hezbollah flags or holding up to the camera the ID cards of Lebanese civilians who apparently fled in a hurry.

Continued disregard for IDF regulation when it comes to the use of cell phones in Lebanon and Gaza will undoubtedly lead to further investigations into war crimes in the international arena, based on the videos filmed and shared by the soldiers themselves.