Jakarta –
Videos of Gaza prisoners stripped, tied and blindfolded have been posted online by Israeli soldiers. The video violates international law, legal experts say.
According to international law, detainees must not be excessively insulted or humiliated and subjected to public consumption.
BBC Verify examined hundreds of videos publicly shared by Israeli soldiers in Gaza since November 2023. We verified eight videos showing Palestinian prisoners.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had dismissed the members we had identified. They added that such videos do not represent their values. However, the IDF declined to provide further comment.
Dr Mark Ellis, the UN’s leading adviser on international criminal justice, said the video footage of Israeli soldiers we showed him could be said to violate rules on how to treat prisoners of war.
Active military
Most of the videos we analyzed showed scenes of fighting and soldiers looking into abandoned houses.
One video shows soldiers firing guns while wearing dinosaur costumes. Another video shows them setting up a pizza restaurant in an empty Palestinian house.
Eight videos recorded and shared with the public, according to legal experts, show poor treatment of Palestinian detainees.
All of the videos were uploaded by people who currently serve or previously served in the Israeli army. They didn’t even hide their identities.
AFP Photo Illustration: Israeli soldiers inside a school building run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza City.
We discovered the account of the video owner from analyzing an image of a Palestinian prisoner that was shared widely online earlier this week.
Image search results show the video comes from a YouTube account belonging to an Israeli soldier named Yossi Gamzoo Letova.
He has posted several videos from Gaza since early December, including footage of his troops, which he calls the 932nd Granite Battalion, which is part of the IDF’s Nahal Brigade.
In a video uploaded on December 24, 2023, the Palestinian prisoner in the footage is shown naked and bleeding with his hands tied and sitting on a chair while being interrogated.
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We identified the location as Gaza College, a school in the northern part of Gaza – based on the distinctive decoration as well as the institution’s logo seen in the video and we matched it to its Facebook page.
Then in the same video, prisoners are seen walking in a row barefoot through the streets of Gaza.
In a statement, the IDF said: “The image was taken during a field interrogation. The suspect was not injured. A reservist photographed and uploaded the image contrary to IDF orders and values.
“It was recently decided, [tentara] dismissed from his duties.”
A number of videos were deleted
The same day, Letova shared another YouTube video showing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners gathered on a sports field. We analyzed the video using geolocation and verified the pitch as Gaza’s Yarmouk Stadium.
Most of the prisoners in the video have been stripped naked and only wear underwear. Some were blindfolded and knelt on the ground in orderly rows, while Israeli soldiers watched.
At one point, a group of three female prisoners appeared blindfolded and knelt behind a soccer goal with an Israeli flag flying above it.
YouTube The prisoners are seen in a video uploaded online by an IDF soldier.
An Israeli soldier appears several times in the video. He seemed aware that he was being recorded.
By comparing the soldier’s uniform and insignia with images of other IDF uniforms publicly available on the internet, we identified him as a lieutenant colonel or battalion commander.
Both videos were immediately removed from Letova’s public YouTube page after the BBC contacted the IDF.
Applicable code of ethics
Two videos uploaded to TikTok by other IDF soldiers include photos of blindfolded Gaza prisoners, interspersed with photos of IDF soldiers posing with weapons.
A video uploaded on December 14, accompanied by a song rap Israel, showing blindfolded prisoners being loaded into a pick-up truck with a soldier posing next to them with both thumbs up.
We identified the soldier from his social media accounts as Ilya Blank.
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Ilya uploaded a second video showing a blindfolded man on the floor and apparently surrounded by three IDF soldiers.
We have discovered a number of photos included in the video are located in northern Gaza.
After we contacted IDF and TikTok, the videos were removed.
In Article 13 of the Third Geneva Convention, it is stated that prisoners must be protected at all times, especially from acts of violence or intimidation and not be subjected to “public humiliation and consumption”.
Dr Ellis says the key lies in “not making [tawanan perang] public spectacle” and not “demean them or embarrass them.”
He added: “The concept of taking people in their underwear, filming it and sharing it with the public certainly violates that provision.
“The rules in force cannot – in any way allow this type of conduct to occur.”
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Prof Asa Kasher, an Israeli academic who helped write the IDF’s first code of ethics, called the practice of sharing photos of half-naked people against the IDF’s code of ethics.
He said there may be a need for the military to temporarily strip prisoners to check whether they are carrying weapons.
However, he couldn’t find a reason to “take such pictures and share them with the public.”
“The reason for holding them half-naked is to humiliate them,” he said.
Human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield said the footage should be reviewed by a UN tribunal.
“There are very strict regulations regarding how to deal with people held as prisoners of war in the middle of a war or conflict, which is clearly what is happening here.
“And the provisions here really require that you have to treat detainees with respect,” he said.
We submitted six videos to TikTok, which confirmed they all violated their community guidelines.
They state in their guidelines that content “that seeks to denigrate victims of violent tragedies” is not tolerated. All the videos have disappeared from the social media platform.
A spokesperson for YouTube said they had removed tens of thousands of harmful videos and terminated thousands of accounts during the Israel-Gaza conflict, and that they had teams working around the clock to monitor the circulation of harmful videos.
Additional reporting by: Paul Brown, Alex Murray, Paul Myers, Richard Irvine-Brown, and Daniele Palumbo.
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2024-02-15 02:15:55
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