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 soldier Yuval Vaghdani fly out of the country on Sunday after the order was announced. It was prompted by a criminal complaint by the Hind Rajab Foundation, a Belgium-based non-profit group “focusing on offensive legal action against perpetrators, accomplices and instigators of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine”.
On Wednesday, the Israeli military announced that it would not release the names of the soldiers in the media “for fear of the soldiers being arrested abroad”.
Mr. Waghdani was stationed in Gaza following the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas that led to Israel's occupation of the territory to defeat and destroy Hamas.
According to the Indian Rajab Foundation's complaint, Mr. Waghdani posted videos and photos on social media from Gaza showing the destruction of civilian homes and other buildings. Group claims those actions were a systematic attempt to impose unbearable living conditions on civilians in violation of international law. (The Times has not independently verified this evidence.)
A Brazilian judge ruled the allegations should be investigated and referred the matter to the federal police. Several similar criminal cases have been brought against Israeli soldiers on strike in recent months, including in Cyprus, Sri Lanka, Argentina and Chile.
Mr. Wagdani, whom the Times could not reach for comment, arrived in Israel on Wednesday.
In an interview with Israel's public broadcaster Kan, he admitted that he had broadcast the video of the building being blown up. “That's what they saw and wanted to investigate me,” he said. “They turned one house into 500 pages, they thought I killed thousands of children, who knows what.”
Mr. Waghdani also told Khan that he was there Nova music festival On October 7, 2023, near the Gaza border and escaped the massacre there.
Israeli officials downplayed the seriousness of the 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 is based on open source intelligence,” said Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman.
The open source methods in question are social media posts that pro-Palestinian groups use as evidence to demand criminal charges against soldiers traveling abroad.
Universal jurisdiction
The combination of social media and international tourism – plus a very old body of law – could open up a new arena in international criminal law.
Universal jurisdiction, one of the oldest principles of international law, states that certain crimes are so serious that any country in the world can prosecute the perpetrators. In the 18th century, this rule was used for crimes such as piracy; in recent times, it has been used to prosecute genocide and war crimes.
Israel relied on universal jurisdiction to try high-ranking Nazi official Adolf Eichmann for crimes against humanity during the Holocaust. Spain relied on him to demand the extradition of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to face charges of torture and other crimes. And in more recent examples, several European countries have moved to prosecute Syrian officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Belgium tried Rwandans accused of participation in the 1994 genocide in its own courts.
For decades, these cases were relatively rare and targeted high-ranking officials. “There is a tendency to focus on higher levels to maximize impact, and also because at higher levels sometimes actually behavior is better documented than at lower levels,” says Yuval Shani, a professor of international law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
At one time, it was difficult for a local prosecutor to obtain evidence of a war crime committed in another country. With social media, that has changed. “Technology is coming to bridge the gap because once you have filmed, documented, committed a war crime, it will be easier to prosecute you, even in a court half a world away,” Mr Shani said.
Experts say that Israeli soldiers have uploaded videos and other images of themselves In Gaza saying and doing things that could be interpreted as evidence of serious crimes, including the destruction of civilian homes and property and calling for the expulsion or extermination of Palestinians.
Mr Shani said that while the social media clips could be taken out of context or misinterpreted – Israel accuses Hamas of using civilian infrastructure for military purposes – “some of them look very bad”. “There's a degree of potential liability that we haven't seen before in wars because it was so hard to create evidence.”
American University law professor and former International Criminal Court prosecution lawyer Rebecca Hamilton says social media evidence, while compelling, is unlikely to be sufficient on its own to secure a successful prosecution: “A social media post does not make a war crime case.”
A new legal strategy
The Indian Rajab Foundation claims to have collected evidence against nearly a thousand Israeli soldiers. He also tracks their foreign trips as they post about their vacations on social media and then immediately files criminal complaints against the countries they visit.
Dyab Abu Jahjah, chairman of the Hind Rajab Foundation, said that soldiers protecting international law have nothing to fear from his organization. “We are not organizing a witch hunt against Israeli soldiers,” he said. “We are opening cases against soldiers for whom we have evidence that they are individually responsible for war crimes.”
Unlike higher-ranking leaders, lower-ranking soldiers typically lack diplomatic immunity or the resources to investigate which jurisdictions might make them vulnerable to war crimes complaints.
Of course, an NGO filing a criminal complaint is not the same thing as a prosecutor actually bringing charges, rather an arrest or conviction.
The Israeli government has taken steps to show its concern about criminal complaints. The government, which insists its forces in Gaza are acting in accordance with international law, has set up an interagency team to assess the legal risk to overseas troops and reservists. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently issued a public warning to Israelis that their posts on social media may be used to open legal cases against them in other countries.
These cases may not need to see a courtroom or even result in arrests to make an impact. The prospect that soldiers cannot travel abroad without risking prison is a prospect that the public may find difficult to tolerate.
Traveling abroad is very important to Israelis, Mr. Shani said. “So I think it's really an unacceptable risk and the government-military-military needs to address it.”
Isabel Kershner and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Israel, Ephrat Livni reported from Washington, and Jack Nicas reported from Brazil.
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