Hind Rajab Foundation head says Israeli soldiers' social media posts serve as evidence of war crimes
Dyab Abou Jahjah, founder and president of the Hind Rajab Foundation, stated that Israel has been relocating its soldiers to countries such as Sri Lanka and the Netherlands in an effort to shield them from prosecution for war crimes committed in Gaza.
In an interview with Anadolu, Jahjah explained that videos and photos shared by Israeli soldiers documenting atrocities in Gaza are now being used as evidence of war crimes. The foundation is actively working to ensure these soldiers face justice through international legal mechanisms.
The foundation is named after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli soldiers. Jahjah highlighted its mission to seek justice, especially for soldiers with dual citizenship, by filing cases in the countries where they hold citizenship. “We started filing these cases in front of the national courts where these soldiers actually are citizens,” he said.
He described the legal approach as highly effective: “We realized that we are actually going into a very important strategy. So, we started studying it deeply and we realized that it fills a very important gap in international, let's say, litigation.”
- ‘It's a confession'
Jahjah emphasized how the widespread use of social media has transformed evidence collection and legal processes. He noted that Israeli officials are deeply concerned about the digital evidence shared by soldiers.
He explained that younger soldiers, despite warnings from Israeli authorities, have shared posts on social media that now serve as direct evidence of their actions.
“Somebody actually telling you, ‘look, this is the crime I'm doing and filming it and putting it into the whole world to see.' And then it makes their task very difficult to defend themselves because it's not like, ‘we suspect you because we saw somebody who saw you and he's testifying', which is the traditional way of proving things. Even that was enough back in the days to prove war crimes," he said.
“Imagine now, look, we have you on camera. You filmed that film. You put it on your own account. It's a confession.”
Jahjah added: “We have that data. We have it all. Some soldiers start deleting, stop filming. It's a bit too late for that. We have it all and we saved it and everywhere across the planet, we have like hundreds of copies of it spread from Brazil to Japan and from South Africa to Iceland.”
"So it's too late. It's gone. The evidence is out there. It's going to go to court and justice eventually will come."
- Israeli efforts to block the foundation
Jahjah criticized Israeli attempts to obstruct the foundation's work. Initially dismissed as mere propaganda, the foundation's serious legal actions have now forced Israeli authorities to act, including secretly relocating soldiers.
"Now, they are still saying that we're doing doxing, but if we were only doing doxing, they will not care about us."
"They know very well that what we're doing is serious legal work.The case in Brazil, for example, proved that when a judge actually issued a probe order against an Israeli soldier and they had to smuggle him out of Brazil. If we were just doxing, that wouldn't be necessary. They had to smuggle him because they realized legal action and maybe arrest was coming,” Jahjah explained.
He cited similar incidents in the Greek Cypriot administration, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and the Netherlands, where soldiers were quickly removed after investigations were launched.
"The same happened in Cyprus a few weeks ago, long before the Brazil case. They smuggled another soldier out of Cyprus because an investigation was opened. They did that also in Sri Lanka and they did that also in Thailand, and they did that also in the Netherlands for three soldiers."
- Preserving evidence
Jahjah noted that Israeli Major General Ghassan Alian, head of the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) Office, is currently in Italy. The foundation has informed Italian authorities about his presence, citing his role in implementing policies that violated international law.
"When the ICC issued the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, the main argument or the two pillars of these arrest warrants were the weaponization of hunger, famine as using that as a weapon of war and the policy towards hospitals, which was a very flagrant breach of international humanitarian law," he noted.
"Major General Alian is the one who applied that on the ground. He's the one who actually supervised that policy because he's head of COGAT, which is the entity within the Ministry of Defence that does coordinate these efforts. So if anyone should be arrested next to Gallant and Netanyahu, it is this person."
Preserving evidence is a key aspect of the foundation's operations, as they make important efforts to preserve the original sources and data.
Jahjah stressed the distinction between sharing evidence on social media and preparing it for legal use. Their legal team carefully prepares all evidence for prosecution.
Jahjah pointed to posts in which Israeli soldiers made genocidal remarks about the destroyed homes in Gaza, stating:
"So, in order to have a legal case, you have to first identify the soldier, be sure of the identity of the soldier. Secondly, you have to identify the location, you have to geolocate it, exactly where in Gaza. You have to also identify the exact time of the picture, when was that picture taken? And then when you have these three things, you have to start cross-referencing all this data. For example, if you have the name of the soldier, you have to know what platoon is he from, what battalion, from what brigade or division. And then when you know that, you start searching were they deployed there? So, what were they doing there? So, this is one process."
"The other process would be to cross-examine the presence of that, let's say, battalion of which the soldier is a member, cross-examine it with crimes committed around the same time that that battalion was active in that location, to see all the crimes that were committed, that were reported, you know, other destructions, killing cases, et cetera. And then you cross-reference that. So, once you do this this way, you build on the level of content, on the level of forensics, on the level of geolocation, you build a solid case," he noted.
