Inside the Hind Rajab Foundation, the organization hunting Israeli war criminals around the globe
Israeli soldiers stand next to their military vehicles just outside the Gaza Strip, on 10 March 2024.
David Kattenburg reports in Mondoweiss on 29 January 2025:
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Hind Rajab was killed one year ago today. She was six years old.
Now, a foundation established in Hind’s name is seeking justice, not just for Hind, but for the countless Palestinians killed by Israel in contravention of international law.
But the foundation isn’t going after Israel as a state, it’s taking a different approach – going after Israeli soldiers themselves.
In an October 8 filing to the International Criminal Court, in The Hague, the Brussels-based Hind Rajab Foundation has identified a thousand Israeli soldiers it thinks the court should prosecute, based on 8,000 pieces of evidence, including the soldiers’ own social media posts from ravaged Gaza.
Among the acts Israeli recruits and officers have crowed about on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Telegram and other social media networks: indiscriminate bombing; targeted killing of non-combatants, including medical personnel, journalists, and civilians waving white flags; wanton destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, markets, and mosques; forcible starvation, and looting.
A Google search for ‘Israeli soldiers cheer as they blow up building” yields this and this and this, among many other posts of the same sort.
“Israeli soldiers set fire to Aqsa University library in Gaza City and took pictures of themselves in front of the flames,” journalist Younis Tirawi reported on X on May 23. Tirawi showed evidence that photo was shared on social media by Israeli soldier Tair Glisko. 424th Battalion, Givati Brigade, who later made his account private.
The callousness with which Israeli soldiers have openly and publicly celebrated their war crimes, probably thinking they would get away with it, is precisely what the Hind Rajab Foundation is banking on to hold these soldiers to account.