Israeli soldier visiting UK faces war crimes complaint

The Hind Rajab Foundation has filed a criminal complaint in the United Kingdom against Lidor Dafna, an Israeli reservist believed to be visiting the country, over alleged war crimes committed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Dafna, who served in the 603rd Combat Engineering Battalion, is accused of participating in the demolition of a flour-producing facility in May 2025 at a time when Israel’s blockade of Gaza was leading to widespread starvation.

The foundation said footage posted by Dafna on social media shows an Israeli military bulldozer demolishing wheat silos in southern Gaza.

The filing is the latest move by the Brussels-based organisation, named after Hind Rajab, a five-year-old girl killed alongside her relatives when Israeli forces fired on their vehicle in Gaza City in January 2024.

By transforming self-published digital content into evidence for criminal complaints, the foundation is testing whether legal systems in other countries may be used to hold Israeli soldiers accountable for alleged crimes.

Natacha Bracq, head of litigation at the foundation, explained the urgency of the UK filing to Al Jazeera.

“If the authorities let him leave, he [Dafna] will go back and commit more crimes. When a state waves a suspect through its airport, knowing what is documented, it is breaching its obligations to prevent and punish genocide.”

Al Jazeera has reached out to the UK’s Metropolitan Police for comment on the case but has yet to receive a response.

For the families of victims in Gaza, the pursuit of justice through international channels is a response to the failure of internal Israeli accountability mechanisms.

Speaking from Gaza, the 45-year-old grandmother and namesake of Hind dismissed internal Israeli military investigations.

“The occupation [Israel] claims that it opens criminal justice or an investigation for their soldiers, [but] we are certainly not very interested in this topic,” she stated. “They just justify their positions to the world, … but actually on the ground, I don’t think anything happens.”

The foundation’s broader goal resonates deeply with families seeking justice for children killed during the war.

“Hind is not the first child in Gaza. Hind means surely there are many crimes like hers and more,” her grandmother added. “We support anyone who speaks in the name of childhood [and always supports] the Palestinian child.”

The Hind Rajab Foundation’s methodology relies heavily on material published by Israeli soldiers themselves.

“Our starting point is simple: Israeli soldiers documented their own crimes. They’ve posted tens of thousands of photos and videos from Gaza and Lebanon on TikTok, Instagram, X and Telegram, often with their faces and names attached,” Bracq said.

This digital footprint requires rigorous processing to become potentially admissible in legal cases.

“Our collection and analysis follow the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations. Then the real work starts: verification. We geolocate every frame against satellite imagery, matching buildings, roads, water towers, destruction patterns,” Bracq said, noting that investigators then cross-reference military sources to tie a suspect to a documented act.

The Berkeley Protocol, developed by the Human Rights Center  at the University of California in Berkeley and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, sets out standards for collecting, verifying, analysing and preserving digital material.

Khaled al-Shouli, an international lawyer registered with the Jordanian Bar Association who represents Palestinian victims before the International Criminal Court (ICC), said social media material could be valuable evidence.

“Its value does not decrease simply because it is a post on the internet, nor does it become decisive simply because it has spread,” al-Shouli said.

He stressed, however, that answering fundamental questions about the source, time and place is essential.

“The crucial difference is the transition from proving the occurrence of the crime to proving the responsibility of a specific person for it as the appearance of a soldier in a place does not alone prove his commission of the crime,” he said.

Legal action across borders

The foundation’s complaints have prompted authorities in several countries to question Israeli military personnel.

Bracq pointed to a significant breakthrough in Belgium, where a complaint filed by the foundation led federal police to detain and question two Israeli soldiers. Both were subsequently released.

“That arrest matters beyond the two individuals involved. It demonstrated that universal jurisdiction is not a theoretical instrument but one that puts suspects in a police station within hours, and the Belgian federal prosecutor has since referred the case onward to the International Criminal Court,” she stated.

Similar actions have disrupted travel for an Israeli in North America. In Canada, former combat soldier Guy Hochman was detained and interrogated for six hours at Toronto Pearson Airport after a complaint was filed accusing him of war crimes and incitement to genocide. He later said his Canadian visa had been revoked.

“These are ruptures in a system of impunity: the moment Israelis calculate that travelling abroad carries a real legal risk,” Bracq emphasised.

Al-Shouli clarified the legal architecture supporting these moves, distinguishing between national courts and the ICC.

“The Palestinian case relies on a set of matters that fall under the category of territorial jurisdiction over crimes committed in the Palestinian territories and not on absolute universal jurisdiction,” he noted. “This distinction is important because the multiplicity of paths expands the opportunities for accountability and does not leave it hostage to one institution.”

Limits of legal action

A Hind Rajab Foundation complaint in Brazil highlighted both the potential and the limitations of filing cases against Israelis in the courts of other countries.

In January 2025, Brazilian authorities issued an urgent order to arrest and investigate an Israeli soldier accused of planting explosives and systematically demolishing entire civilian neighbourhoods in Gaza.

While the case attracted international attention, al-Shouli cautioned against overstating its significance. Although a Brazilian judge ordered an investigation after the foundation’s complaint, the Israeli soldier left the country with the assistance of Israeli authorities before he could be detained or questioned.

The case, he explained, highlighted “the gap between opening an investigation and the ability to secure the suspect’s attendance to the justice of the court in practice”.

Political climates heavily influence these legal instruments. Bracq acknowledged that “political will does determine whether a warrant is executed” but countered that “international crimes carry no statute of limitations.” She noted that relentless documentation ensures “no future window of opportunity finds the evidence missing.”

Al-Shouli viewed government transitions pragmatically. “Changing governments opens practical windows for accountability through improving judicial cooperation,” he noted. “But we prefer to describe them as windows to activate the law, not as loopholes in it.”

Expanding the targets

The foundation is actively expanding its legal efforts beyond individual soldiers to companies and individuals involved in supplying weapons to Israel.

“Our focus has already expanded well beyond front-line soldiers because the strategy must evolve with the genocide itself and with our evidence,” Bracq stated. “We now target the suppliers of the tools of the crime, including companies involved in producing weapons for Israel.”

She cited a recent criminal complaint in Poland against a state-owned TNT producer. “No one gets impunity, from the trigger-puller to the decision-maker to the supplier,” she declared.

For the legal teams, managing the expectations of devastated families remains paramount.

“My professional responsibility begins with not selling false hopes and fake hopes to the victims. It is not permissible for me to tell a family that lost its children that depositing a file has restored its right,” al-Shouli stated. “What we ask for is not sympathy alone but rights that can be proven, claimed and accounted for, and justice will be done.”

“Universal jurisdiction is our instrument, not our objective. Our objective is justice and accountability,” Bracq concluded.

“The generation that posted their own atrocities online now has to live with the knowledge that those posts are forever evidence and that a complaint may be waiting in the next country whose border they cross.”