Back on December 12, Ha'aretz published a story accusing the IDF of running a snuff channel called "72 Virgins - Uncensored" on Telegram. They of course denied it at the time. Yesterday they had a different story. Turns out, yes - the IDF was indeed running a snuff channel. but it was "unauthorized" - just some rogue senior officers in the "Influencing Unit" of the IDF Operations Directorate. Anyways, Israel has said that they have dealt with the matter. Apparently someone is going to be asked to retire! What more consequences can there be than that?
For clarity - that channel is now defunct and I have never seen the videos on it. I call it a "snuff channel" based on the reporting of the shit that was posted. You can look it up yourself if you want to check but I'm not going into any more depth about what was on there.
EDIT: I've reconsidered this point. The labour people have put in to investigating and documenting this behaviour should not be ignored. And while I did cite Ha'aretz earlier and they should be recognized for highlighting these things as a newspaper in Israel, there are others it is also important to recognize. In particular, there's one Twitter account that I think is very important - so here is their thread on this channel from Dec. 12. /EDIT
Some points I'd like to make. Firstly - the IDF lies. They do. All the time. These claims that they weren't involved, followed by a reversal later - this is just incredibly common. The one that gets cited a lot is the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh, where IDF denials of any involvement were supplemented by a faked video. The IDF is just a fountain of propaganda and disinformation - and they are absolutely 100% shameless about it. When they toured the BBC through Al Shifa Hospital - you know, the Hamas Pentagon where they found a box of dates - the one "go bag" hidden behind an MRI machine (yes, that should have been enough to confirm that this was pure bullshit) had it's contents changed from an earlier video. When confronted with this, the IDF admitted to putting more stuff in there. The evidence they were citing to justify attacking a hospital - they just casually admitted to tampering with and expected no one to care.
Secondly - Israel's military operations including psych warfare aimed at their own citizens - has no restrictions. The IDF was running a snuff channel but the matter has been "dealt with" - by having one guy maybe retire early. Maybe - the reports I've read are just that someone is expected to retire. Or with Abu Akleh? Israel admitted that they likely killed her. There were no consequences - not even a reprimand. Even when it is the one crime that Israel itself sees as so vile that it warrants genocide - the crime of killing Israeli civilians - there are no consequences if the accused is with the IDF. The countless Israeli victims of IDF hellfire missiles on October 7 - killed by the IDF? Well apparently, it would be immoral to even look into it. The guys that shot the escaped hostages? No punishment. One of the reasons why IDF soldiers keep posting TikToks of their war crimes is because they are encouraged to do so and there is zero penalty for it.
Relatedly - Israel claimed at the ICJ hearing that the proper place to look at any possible misconduct by IDF soldiers is in their robust and independent judicial system. It is a testament to the professionalism of South Africa's legal team that this claim was not met with outright laughter.
Thirdly - that IDF channel wasn't the biggest one. Nor the worst. IDF soldiers post snuff videos - it's just a thing they do (but don't you dare call it genocide). And are continuing to do. And yet - there is no reporting on it. I opened this post noting that the IDF was accused of running a snuff channel - and then had to reverse their denial. There are snuff videos coming out of Gaza.
I remember when Abu Ghraib made the news. It really made the news. Soldiers filming themselves doing war crimes was newsworthy. This apparently is no longer true.
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