From the Liveblog of
Sunday, January 28, 2024
Accusation of war crimes lodged against IDF reservists who went to The Hague
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Several IDF reserve soldiers have become the subject of a war crimes complaint submitted in Holland against the background of the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, after they traveled to The Hague to draw international attention to the crimes carried out by Hamas on October 7, Channel 12 reports.
According to the report, the reservists, who were released from fighting in Gaza in order to attend Friday’s ruling on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, gave a series of interviews to international media outlets in defense of the war against the Hamas terror group.
After a social media post from one of the reservists came to light, in which he referenced the Amalekites, the biblical enemy of the ancient Israelites, in relation to Hamas, a complaint was lodged with Dutch prosecutors for the reservists to be investigated.
A quote from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the Amalekites was cited by the South African legal team in its genocide allegations against Israel two weeks ago. In response, the Prime Minister’s Office said that when Netanyahu used the biblical quotation “Remember what Amalek did to you,” he was using it as a way of describing the savage Hamas attack of October 7, and certainly not as a call for wanton killings. The PMO pointed out that the same phrase appears in a permanent exhibit at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, as well at a memorial in The Hague itself for Dutch Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
The reservists were reportedly advised to lie low following the incident and have since returned to Israel.
In a statement, the IDF’s spokesperson’s unit says the reservists were “given standard instructions for this type of incident,” and adds that they “returned on a pre-scheduled flight.”
The Times of Israel Community.