12 complaints said filed against IDF soldiers abroad over alleged war crimes in Gaza

The Foreign Ministry knows of at least twelve cases in which complaints have been filed abroad against Israel Defense Forces soldiers accusing them of war crimes in Gaza, Channel 12 news reported Sunday, amid reports of Israelis being urged to leave various countries to avoid potential prosecution, including in Brazil on Sunday.

Such complaints have been filed in Brazil, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Belgium, the Netherlands, Serbia, Ireland and Cyprus, the report said, citing figures presented in a ministerial meeting. According to the Haaretz daily, the list also includes South Africa and France.

Channel 12 noted that in most cases, the complaints did not result in an investigation, and in none of them was anyone arrested, though is said the Brazil incident had come close to becoming a diplomatic crisis.

The network reported that during the same ministerial meeting Sunday, data was presented showing that in the second half of 2024, physical antisemitic attacks rose by 104 percent, while online antisemitic cases rose by 63%. The meeting’s objective was reportedly to devise procedures for dealing with cases similar to Sunday’s Brazil case.

Meanwhile, Haaretz reported Sunday that a joint desk has been set up by the Military Advocate General, the Foreign Ministry, the National Security Council, and the Shin Bet to assess legal threats to soldiers abroad.

The reports come amid a campaign by the Hind Rajab Foundation, a nonprofit based in Belgium, to identify Israeli soldiers who have published videos to social media in which they commit, claim to have committed, or appear to endorse committing potential war crimes, and to file complaints against the soldiers on that basis.

The organization, which proclaims that it is “devoted to ending Israeli impunity and achieving justice for Hind Rajab and all the victims of the Gaza Genocide,” is named after six-year-old Hind Rajab, who was killed in Gaza in February. Her death was blamed on the IDF, but an initial probe conducted by the army said that there were no troops in the area at the time.

An Israel Defense Forces soldier who survived Hamas’s massacre at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, hurriedly ended his vacation in Brazil on Sunday morning after the country’s Federal Court ordered police to open a war crimes investigation on him, according to Brazilian media.

He was being investigated under suspicion that he was involved “in the destruction of a residential building in the Gaza Strip while using explosives outside of combat” in November, the Brazilian Metrópoles news outlet reported.

The Foreign Ministry said that Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar had ordered the ministry’s Consular Section and the embassy in Brazil to contact the man and his family, who “accompanied him throughout the event until his swift and safe departure from Brazil.”

“The Foreign Ministry draws the attention of Israelis to posts on social media about their military service, and to the fact that anti-Israeli elements may exploit these posts to initiate futile legal proceedings against them,” the Foreign Ministry added.

“The State of Israel is dealing today with an organized campaign by pro-Palestinian organizations that are trying to gather materials that soldiers have posted over the course of the war, and to use them to try to have those soldiers arrested,” explained Israeli Ambassador to Brazil Daniel Zonshine to Channel 12 on Sunday.

Yuval Kaplinski, former head of the International Division of the State Attorney’s Office, told the network: “If a soldier posts a video in which you see destroyed houses, or posts [a video of] a demolition of houses, and he says: ‘We’re going to blow up all the houses in Gaza, and kill civilians, and settle there, and destroy all of Gaza and all the Gazans,’ he is, essentially, declaring that he is carrying out a war crime.”