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For decades, members of Israel’s military faced little if any international prosecution for war crimes committed against Palestinians during previous outbreaks of violence, but following the news of the arrest, interrogation, and ongoing investigation of two members of the IDF accused of war crimes suggests that attitudes may finally be changing.
The genocide in Gaza has seen nearly 60,000 Gazans, mostly civilians, killed, tens of thousands more wounded, hundreds of thousands more missing presumed dead, and more than 70% of all civilian infrastructure destroyed.
The violence, at times indiscriminate, at others shockingly discriminate, has often been documented on soldiers’ social media accounts—the primary source of evidence presented by the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) and the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) in a legal complaint against two IDF soldiers who were in Belgium attending the Tomorrowland music festival.
The men were arrested, taken into a police station, interrogated, and released pending an investigation into potential war crimes.
Both HRF and GLAN took it as a major step towards holding Israel accountable for its ongoing genocide of the Palestinians.
“Within the framework of the long fight for accountability, this is a major milestone,” HRF director Dyab Abou Jahjah told Middle East Eye. “This is the first time that a European country acknowledges universal jurisdiction against Israeli soldiers and acts upon it in a forceful way, arrests them, and brings them to a police station to interrogate them”.
Universal jurisdiction refers to a nation’s right to enforce crimes committed in other countries based on international law that nation adheres to.
Dearblah Minogue, GLAN’s legal representative on the complaint case, called it “the biggest step for accountability since the beginning of the genocide, because law enforcement in Europe actually took action and arrested some suspects”.
“One of them posted videos of his unit blowing up property in Gaza and Lebanon,” Minogue said. “The other posed next to a Palestinian who was being used as a human shield by his unit”.
Something has begun
HRF was formed and named in the memory of a 5-year-old girl from Gaza whose pained pleas to emergency services after she was wounded in an instance of Gaza bombing, managed to become available to the public. She died after the IDF held up the ambulance at a checkpoint for 3 hours before other soldiers later fired upon it, killing the paramedics and destroying the vehicle.
In a statement on their website, HRF said that it didn’t believe “justice has been served,” but that “something important has begun”.
As it happened, a new judicial mechanism that entered into force in Belgium merely 15 months ago provided the country’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office with the jurisdiction to arrest the soldiers. Middle East Eye said the mechanism grants Belgian courts jurisdiction over crimes committed outside Belgium based on the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Convention against Torture of 1984.
A week earlier, HRF became aware that an IDF sniper named Dani Adega was in Portugal, and filed a complaint against him on account of suspected war crimes in Gaza.
Adega, HRF states, is “a sniper affiliated with the 8114th Battalion of the Israeli army, served in Gaza under the 252nd Division, commanded by Brigadier General Yehuda Vach. This division has been widely condemned for establishing the Netzarim Corridor “kill zone,” a deadly passage through central Gaza where civilians—many of them children—were systematically shot on sight by sniper teams and armored patrols”.
Like the two men in Belgium, Adega used his social media account to exhibit actions that could constitute war crimes, including the shooting of civilians in the corridor. For example, in a post made during the ceasefire in early 2025, Adega wrote “4 rounds, 0 misses 🎯🔥” whilst posing with his sniper rifle. 170 civilians were killed during the ceasefire, with sniper fire forming a large proportion of those killings.
“This is not only a matter of justice for Gaza—this is a test for Portugal,” said a spokesperson for the Hind Rajab Foundation. “Adega is not hiding. He is walking freely in a European capital after boasting about sniper kills committed during a ceasefire. Portugal must act”.
Portuguese human rights lawyer Carmo Afonso filed a formal complaint on behalf of the organization. Israeli news outlet Ynet said Adega is one soldier out of “dozens” against whom HRF has filed legal complaints against in 8 different countries.
Other measures
Up until now, almost all pressure on Israel has come in the form of sanctions, suspending of existing agreements or trade relations, and other such measures aimed at disrupting the Jewish state’s service-heavy, import-dependent economy.
On July 18th, 30 nations gathered in Bogota, Colombia, to discuss and draft a strict international pressure campaign against Israel, with 12 nations ultimately agreeing to implement it. Of the 12, few would be able to bring any meaningful pressure to bear, consisting as they did of Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Namibia, Nicaragua, Oman, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and South Africa.
“It is a significant moment in history beginning the process of action-oriented commitment by states in their national capacity, so that this is a spark that hopefully will be followed by tens of other countries to commit,” Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told Mid East Eye.
Elsewhere, the European Court of Justice received a case on July 17th from French and Belgian jurists against the European Union itself, after the bloc failed to agree at a recent summit to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement. The straightforward argument claims Israel has deliberately failed to uphold the human rights requirements of the agreement. A date for a future hearing has not been set for the case. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: Many IDF soldiers document themselves committing possible war crimes on social media, like this post showing an IDF member holding a Palestinian ID card and a knife in a destroyed civilian structure. PC: Israel Genocide Tracker, via X.
