In early 2024, a nineteen year old boy puts on his military uniform at a training center in Israel. Like all new recruits, he is required to give a blood sample, and X-rays are taken of his teeth so he can be identified if anything happens to him. All men whose hair is considered too long have it cut.

Earlier, he completed the entry tests for the Paratroopers Brigade of the Israel Defence Force (IDF), one of the army’s most demanding admission exams. The tess include running with sand bags and stretchers, as well as assessments of responsibility, initiative, and the ability to improvise. He is accepted. At the start of the training, ten young recruits pose for a photograph, stood in between rows of bunk beds. They hold their rifles across their chests and clench their newly earned insignia between their teeth. The cloth badge, bearing a bright green snake, will soon be sewn onto their uniforms.

The Paratroopers, April 2024

The training lasts eight grueling months. Among other things, the recruits must complete parachute jumps from an aircraft while carrying their full combat gear. At the end of the course, they face ‘War Week,’ a realistic combat exercise in which they simulate battlefield conditions, barely sleeping at night. The final challenge is the masa kumta (‘Beret March’ in Hebrew): a 90-kilometer march from Tel Nof airbase to Ammunition Hill in East-Jerusalem, carrying equipment weighing dozens of kilograms through the cold of night and the blazing daytime sun. In early November of 2024, the young soldier arrives in East Jerusalem. There, together with the other recruits, he is presented the brigade’s distinctive red beret. Standing arm in arm with his fellow soldiers, he smiles proudly at the camera. From that moment on, he is officially a paratrooper.

As he joins the Israeli military, the violence in the war against Hamas in Gaza escalates rapidly. By early January 2024, an estimated 22.000 Palestinians have been killed and 57.000 wounded. That same month, the International Court of Justice orders Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent acts of genocide. In the months that follow, however, an ever more reports emerge of airstrikes on refugee tent camps and hospitals, mass killings at food distribution sites, and allegations that Israeli snipers deliberately targeted Palestinian children.

As early as 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the then-minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the war in Gaza.
Unlike most new recruits in the Israeli military, who are Israeli citizens serving under compulsory military service, this paratrooper did not grow up in Israel. He is Dutch. After completing his training, he is deployed as a sniper to some of the areas where the IDF are engaged in their most intense combat operations: Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Areas where Israel has also faced extensive allegations of violations of international humanitarian law and international law.

For the Dutch weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer, newspaper Trouw and investigative platform Investico, we followed his journey. Drawing on hundreds of Instagram posts, television reports, and interviews with military commanders – primarily in Israeli media – we reconstructed the path taken by this Dutch sniper since 2024. To protect his safety, and that of those close to him, we are do not disclose his identity. Throughout this article, we refer to him as X.

The collected evidence offers a rare glimpse into one of the world’s most closed institutions. While numerous accounts have emerged documenting the victims of the immense violence inflicted by the IDF in Gaza and on the West Bank, the IDF itself – and Israel as a state – remain largely anonymous perpetrators. Little is known about the individuals serving there or about how the military functions from within. The young man’s story therefore raises an immediate question: is he legally allowed to do this?

Under Dutch law, serving in a foreign military is not forbidden, provided that the country in question is not at war with the Netherlands. The legal boundary is crossed when an individual becomes involved in international crimes, a category that includes the gravest violations of international law, such as genocide, apartheid, torture and war crimes. The Dutch Public Prosecution Service has a specialized unit that investigates suspects of such crimes, committed in conflicts around the world. To open an investigation, prosecutors say they need a ‘strong indication’ that an individual was directly involved in international crimes.
As we follow the Dutch sniper for months through Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, one question becomes increasingly pressing: when is that threshold crossed? And at what point does the public prosecutor decide to act?

Lebanon, December 2024

A purple and pink sky is visible from a balcony that overlooks a bombed-out street. The sun hovers low behind the mountains in the distance. Everywhere you look, you see debris, with facades blown off buildings. The image is part of a collection of photos and videos posted on Instagram by Z. - a member of X. his batallion - on the 12th of December 2024. It’s accompanied by an emoji of the Lebanese flag.

One of the images shows three young soldiers on a red sofa. A fourth young man is right next to them, sat on a plastic chair. They’re in a ransacked house. One of them is slumped deep into the sofa, resting. The others are lighting cigarettes, holding up small objects they found in the house: a little pot, a football, a toy train - probably possessions of the people who originally lived in the house. Behind the sofa, a huge hole in the wall reveals a kitchen behind it. The Instagram post’s location tag reads ‘The Maldives’. It’s a common joke: IDF soldiers often post footage of their deployments and tag them with holiday locations. The song 2 Of Amerikaz Most Wanted, by Tupac, plays along with the imagery.

X. does not appear in these images of his unit. The first photograph we find of him after the beret ceremony was posted on December 10, 2024. Standing with Y. in a parking lot, the two casually hold their rifles up in the air. The Instagram geotag – a location label that users can add themselves – simply reads: Lebanon.

We wondered why the unit had been deployed to Lebanon and came across an interview with Lieutenant Colonel M., commander of X.’s 101st batallion, published in the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom in September 2025. Looking back on several deployments, he described the battalion’s operations in Lebanon. Referring to the mission, he said: ‘We went where it hurt the enemy most.’ The paratroopers penetrated deep into southern Lebanon, reaching areas that the Israeli army had not entered even during the Second Lebanon War.

In January of 2025, X. briefly returns to the Netherlands. He is accompanied by Y., another soldier from his battalion, who documents their visit on Instagram, posting, among other things, photos of the two of them going for a run in the town where X. grew up. After the visit, the two young men return to Israel to begin the next phase of their military service.
After completing basic training, recruits usually move on to a specialisation, depending on their performance. X. proves to be an excellent marksman and is selected for sniper training – a highly sought-after position.

How we got access

We were able to reconstruct all of this by going undercover on Instagram, as members of the Israeli military. We created a profile and, one by one, sent follow requests to the often private accounts connected to the Dutch sniper. Some belonged to individual soldiers; others were run by battalions or companies.

Gradually, and somewhat surprisingly, more and more accounts grant us access. On public accounts – such as the Paratroopers Brigade’s official Instagram page – the faces of soldiers in photographs are blurred or otherwise obscured. But on private profiles, sensitive information is shared freely: faces, names, deployment locations, photographs of bombed-out homes, and images of soldiers carrying weapons.

Gradually, we learn to recognize their way of communicating and to decode the jokes and emojis in their profile descriptions. A parachute emoji? That means they serve in the Paratroopers Brigade, nicknamed the ‘Flying Serpent,’ a brigade of several thousand soldiers. A green snake alongside it identifies their batallion, known as the ‘Cobra,’ with roughly six hundred troops. A red cross emoji indicates their company, comprising about one hundred soldiers. And a ghost emoji? That indicates the Ghost Unit, a small group of around twenty soldiers.

We also come across numerous images of what appears to be ceremonial gatherings. In preparation, the young soldiers erect towering structures several meters high, from which the flags of the various platoons hang. In the background of the videos, the sound of drums can be heard. One by one, members of the battalion are called onto the stage to give a speech. The soldiers embrace one another, shout, and sing while wearing their platoon’s flag like a cape and climbing onto each other’s shoulders in celebration.

Guy Ben Yehuda Berlfein, a researcher at Breaking the Silence – an organisation of former IDF soldiers that collects testimonies about the military’s operations in the occupied territories – explains that the Israeli military has a strong culture of seniority. The longer soldiers serve, the more priviliges they’re awarded. What we are seeing, he says, is known as a ‘Scream Ceremony.’ During these events, soldiers celebrate having completed another stage of their service and their advancement in seniority within the unit.

Gaza, May – August 2025

In January 2025, a ceasefire takes effect in Gaza. Under the agreement, Hamas and Israel are to exchange prisoners and hostages, Israel is to allow humanitarian aid back into Gaza, and the IDF are to halt their attacks and gradually withdraw from the territory. By that point, the United Nations estimate that around 14.500 children have been killed in Gaza since October 7. The ceasefire soon begins to unravel. Israel once again blocks all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza and cuts off the territory’s electricity supply. In the early hours of March 18, the Israeli Air Force launches a surprise attack, bombing large parts of the Gaza Strip. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, around 400 people are killed within the first twenty-four hours. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu descibes the offensive as ‘only the beginning.’

In the weeks that follow, Israel further intensifies its offensive. The IDF demolishes the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital. On March 23, Israeli forces kill fifteen paramedics and UN personnel in what has been described as an ambush, burying them overnight in a mass grave alongside their vehicles. Soon afterward, the UN World Food Programme is forced to shut down its last remaining bakeries because of Israel’s total blockade of humanitarian aid. By early May, the UN warns that famine is imminent, while the director of the Dutch Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD) describes the IDF its campaign in Gaza as ‘genocidal violence.’

In mid-May, the Israeli military launches Operation Gideon’s Chariots, a large-scale ground offensive. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that Israel intends to ‘take control of the entire Gaza Strip.’ Another objective is to relocate the population of northern Gaza to the south, toward the Egyptian border. Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, immediately warns that the offensive ‘tantamount to ethnic cleansing.’

‘Gaza and in between there’

Around the same time, X.’s sniper unit begins posting photos that mention Gaza as their location. In a ransacked house, six men are lying down on sofas and a few chairs. Across the walls, they’ve written names and times, noting the timetable for who has to keep watch. On the table between them, a deck of playing cards lies inbetween empty drink cans and an overflowing ashtray. Somewhere in the middle of July, we see X. appear on photos of this same space - slouched on the sofa.

A few of the photos note Khan Younis as a location tag. It’s a city in the south of Gaza, and we want to establish whether the photos were actually taken there. One photo in particular catches our attention, posted later in the year on X. his sniper unit’s Instagram account. The accompanying description reads: ‘Gaza and in between there’. The photo shows a bare wall, a window frame, and below it two improvised, large holes made just above floor level. In front of each hole is a sniper rifle, aimed outwards.

The snipers look out on a completely destroyed neighbourhood. There’s a street, running from left to right, with large pieces of debris strewn across the damaged road surface. One building is still standing, just across the road, with several enormous holes dotting its exterior walls. Around it, there’s nothing but rubble. No sign of life is discernible anywhere.

To determine exactly where the photograph was taken, we collaborated with Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism. They put us in touch with a local journalist in Gaza, who asked to remain anonymous because more than 200 journalists in the territory have been killed by the IDF. Together, we compared satellite imagery with the photographs and videos we had collected and tried to contact the owners of the houses where the snipers had been staying. That proved difficult. The area is too dangerous to enter, while the residents and property owners have been displaced and are now living in refugee camps in southern Gaza.

There is, however, one grim advantage to photographs taken later in the war: so much of the area has been reduced to rubble that identifying locations becomes easier, using the few buildings still left standing as reference points. In the end, we succeed. We identify the house from which the snipers were operating. It is located along the main road between the southern Gazan cities of Khan Younis and Deir Al Balah, in the small town of Al-Qarara.

A dangerous place for Palestinians

We are unable to determine exactly what the Dutch soldier and his batallion did during their deployment in Gaza. What we have been able to establish, however, is the precise location where this photograph – and another photograph and video posted by members of his company – were taken: a specific neighbourhood in Al-Qarara. We then set out to determine what was reported about that area during the summer of that year.

At the time, the town had become a dangerous place for Palestinian civilians. One of the few public sources documenting conditions there was the Facebook page of a local news outlet called The Pulse of Al-Qarara. Before October 7, the page mainly covered everyday life, posting updates such as the opening hours of the local vegetable market, the results of football tournaments, and plans for a new road. By the spring of 2025, however, its content had changed dramatically. Warnings about IDF attacks alternated with obituaries for residents who had been killed.

We find a post dated July 28. ‘A number of young men were killed while trying to reach Al-Qarara,’ it reads, announcing the deaths of four men. Through the local journalist, we locate the relatives of sixteen-year old Hadi Aby Lehya, who was among the four that were killed. Before the war, he had lived in the town, but he and his parents, sisters and younger brother had fled the violence. ‘We took almost nothing when we left’, his father tells our local partner journalist.

One day, late July, Hadi left for Al-Qarara together with another young man, to collect a few things from his old house. ‘We didn’t hear from him anymore… The next day, people found his body’, the father says. ‘His body was full of shrapnel, and he was shot twice, in the head and in the back.’ Hadi’s death certificate - which Investico has seen - confirms his date of death and that he died of gunshot wounds.

In early August, the Instagram account of X.’s company posts: ‘Our departure from Gaza is a bit delayed. Last part of this war! We are still alive!’ The post contains a series of photographs, including one featuring X. Back at the military base, another ceremonial celebration is taking place. For the occasion, sniper Y. paints a purple, hooded sniper on a large white panel. Beneath it he writes a list titled ‘Young Snipers.’ X.’s name appears on it as well.

Prosecution: What are the Dutch authorities doing?

Earlier this year, media reported that at least 645 Dutch nationals were serving in the IDF in early 2025. In February, investigative platform Investico, together with weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer and newspaper Trouw, also revealed that at least 21 Dutch citizens had voluntarily traveled from the Netherlands to join the IDF as lone soldiers over the past three years.

Since October 7, the actions of the Israeli military have come under intense scrutiny from NGOs, journalists, and prosecutors. Throughout the war, investigators have been collecting material from social media, and compiling it into online databases. Combined with reporting and eyewitness testimony from Gaza and the West Bank, this material is being used to reconstruct how the IDF has operated and to document possible violations of international law.

In these databases and witness testimonies, we encounter disturbing images and accounts from the war: soldiers filming themselves shooting civilians, using Palestinians in Gaza as human shields while moving through combat zones, and deliberately targeting children.
Some of the cases emerging from these images and investigations come close to the unit we have been examining. A human rights organisation has filed a criminal complaint against a member of the sniper unit of Batallion 202 – a comparable unit in another batallion of the Paratroopers – who is a German citizen. He is accused of committing war crimes between 2023 and March 2024, including the alleged execution of Palestinian civilians. According to the complaint, he and his unit deliberately opened fire on unarmed civilians near two hospitals in Gaza.

The reports about hundreds of IDF soldiers with the Dutch nationality, similar criminal cases, and the genocide allegations against Israel have not, however, prompted the Dutch public prosecutor to open an investigation. ‘It makes no difference to us whether there is media coverage or not,’ says Mirjam Blom, a prosecutor with the international crimes unit, the team responsible for investigating and prosecuting war crimes and other international crimes.

The public prosecutor is not allowed to initiate an investigation by itself, as they require someone to file a police report first. Another option is that the prosecutor opens a file ‘ex officio’, Blom says. In practice, this still means they have to wait for a report by a third party about an alleged crime. ‘For example through an anonymous tip-off, or because we received information from a war crimes unit abroad. Or maybe from an NGO, or an immigration authority.

First and foremost, the prosecutor needs to have jurisdiction, for which a suspect requires the Dutch nationality or at least has to be located in the Netherlands. Second, it needs to be likely that the investigation can result in a prosecution ‘within a reasonable time frame’. Lastly, there has to be ‘a strong indication’ of individual involvement in a so-called international crime, with a ‘reasonable assumption of guilt.’

Police reports have been filed’

The Dutch public prosecutor declined to comment on the case of the Dutch sniper. More generally, it does not disclose whether any investigations are ongoing and stresses that serving in a foreign military is not, in itself, illegal under Dutch law, provided that the country in question is not at war with the Netherlands.

The possible war crimes committed by Dutch nationals in service of the IDF do ‘very much have our attention’, they say. ‘Police reports have been filed.’ There are no indications that any of them have led to prosecution. According to the prosecutor, that’s mostly due to the lack of evidence of individual involvement in a crime.

If the prosecutor, however, cannot open preliminary investigations on their own initiative, and there are no prior cases regarding Gaza from which to draw evidence, how could the team ever reach the point of prosecuting war crimes in an ongoing conflict such as this?One of the most effective ways of gathering such evidence is through participation in international cooperation mechanisms established to investigate and prosecute serious crimes committed abroad. The Dutch authorities, for example, have worked with other European countries to investigate crimes committed by the Islamic State, the Syrian regime, and Russia.

‘It is a model that has proven to lead to prosecutions,’ says Marieke de Hoon, professor of International Criminal Law at the University of Amsterdam, whose research focuses on the prosecution of international crimes. ‘One of its key advantages is that not every country has to reinvent the wheel,’ she explains. ‘As was the case with ISIS, you often find several individuals from different European countries serving in the same IDF unit. Much of the evidence collected in one case can therefore be relevant to cases being investigated in multiple jurisdictions.’

An international investigative effort would therefore appear to be a logical way to examine alleged crimes committed by an IDF unit. So far, however, no such cooperation has materialized. According to De Hoon, the idea is not even being discussed. ’That ultimately comes down to political will,’ she says.

‘So many judicial authorities, legal scholars, and the United Nations have presented well-established evidence that Israel is committing genocide and other international crimes,’ De Hoon says. ‘In my view the conditions for international criminal collaboration have therefore been met. We call ourselves the capital of international justice’, she emphasises, referring to the way the Netherlands presents itself. ‘And the promotion of the international legal order is enshrined in our Constitution. So why was this possible in the case of ISIS, but not now, when it comes to the IDF?’

West Bank, August – November 2025

Sniper Y., who accompanied X. during his visit to the Netherlands, stands on the roof of an apartment building. He peers through the scope of his rifle at the brightly lit streets below. The rooftop is in Nablus, a major Palestinian city in the northern West Bank. The photograph was posted in late October 2025. With the help of Aziza Nofal, a local investigative journalist, we identify the exact building where the photo was taken, in eastern Nablus. Through her, we also make contact with one of the building’s residents who’s willing to speak to us anonymously. He tells us that, because of its elevation, the building has become a strategic observation point for the IDF. During September and October 2025, he says, soldiers forced him and his family to leave their home several times a month so they take up a sniper position on the roof.

The IDF used the building to keep watch over the area. The rooftop offers a direct view of the Tomb of Joseph, a religious site that settlers from all over the West Bank regularly pour into, in order to hold ceremonies and prayer sessions. Busloads of settlers drive into the Palestinian city, and meanwhile its residents flow out, Nofal tells us, which we corroborated through videos found on social media. As a security measure for the settlers, the Israeli army evacuates the neighbourhood around the Tomb of Joseph, cordoning off the area and evicting all residents.

The man who lives in the tower block tells us how his family was regularly woken up in the middle of the night, in the cold winter, to be thrown out into the street with their four kids. ‘Our youngest is five’, he says, ‘and she’s very scared.’ When they’d return, often the doors they’d locked had been forced open, he recounts. Money, phones and chargers they had left in the house would be stolen.

Nine sniper rifles are presented neatly on a raised platform. Right behind it stands a high table, with a large, purple flag hanging from it. The Hebrew text reads ‘Kingdom of Snipers,’ above the emblem of the Ghost sniper unit. X. stands proudly behind the table, alongside eight fellow snipers. The autumn sun hangs high in a clear blue sky, casting shadows across their faces. The group has clearly put effort into the photo shoot: their equipment is meticulously arranged, and the men stand in formation, legs apart, wearing full uniform and body armor. It is the only photograph we have found showing X. in the West Bank.

We ask former soldiers, activists and local journalists if they recognize the location, but none of them are able to identify the military base.

After spending weeks meticulously examining satellite imagery of the hills surrounding Nablus, we finally find a match. On the edge of the illegal settlement of Kedumim lies a military compound that matches the photographs and video of the base exactly. A local source visits the location and corroborates our information. The base practically borders the Palestinian village Jit, which is a mere five hundred meters to the north.

We show the location to Guy Ben Yehuda Berlfein of Breaking the Silence. ‘Bases in this region serve to protect the settlements’, he says. ‘This is a large base, probably the battalion command in the region. It is a logical place for snipers to be: if something happens in the area, the snipers will be a first reaction team. They also can act as ‘crowd control’, as the IDF calls it. That is often violent, sometimes fatal.’

Easier to prosecute

Remarkably, it might be easier to prosecute Dutch nationals for their activities in the West Bank than, for example, their deployments to Gaza, says says legal expert De Hoon. ‘In 2024, the International Court of Justice said that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is illegal, and that Israel’s policies there amount to apartheid.’
‘If you as a Dutch national serve in the IDF in the area, and you’re involved in enforcing Israel’s settlement policy, you’re very likely contributing to apartheid’, she explains. ‘Because if you’re standing there, with your firearm, and prevent a Palestinian from accessing an area where an Israeli can go freely, then you’re enforcing Israel’s policy - which amounts to apartheid.’ Under the Dutch International Crimes Act, the principal legal framework used by the Dutch public prosecutor in such cases, apartheid is explicitly listed as an international crime that can be prosecuted.

Over the course of several months, we were able to reconstruct large parts of X.’s career in the IDF, including his deployment to the West Bank. It would therefore seem worthwhile for the prosecutor to examine the involvement of Dutch nationals in Israel’s military occupation of the territory.

Asked whether Dutch nationals who serve in the West Bank could be prosecuted, Mirjam Blom declined to comment. She reiterates that there are strict limits on what she can say publicly. Above all, she stresses, these investigations require patience. ‘I mean, we are currently still investigating people in relation to the genocide in Rwanda, which happened 32 years ago. That’s no issue: there’s no statute of limitations on cases like this.’

On April 29, 2026, one of the snipers posts a series of videos, showing the young men from the company at a sun-drenched villa. They have just returned from another deployment in southern Lebanon. The purple unit flag hangs beside the swimming pool, while rows of set tables stand among the palm trees. On a serving tray, twenty-five shot glasses are arranged in the shape of a large cross – the emblem of X.’s company. Beside them stands an empty bottle of a liquor produced in Israel’s Negev desert. The men are given a brief chance to unwind. Before long, however, they will pack their gear once again. Their next destination is Gaza.

We repeatedly sought comment from the Dutch sniper and his family through multiple channels, as well as from sniper Y. Neither was available for comment.

Throughout this article, the Dutch sniper and his fellow soldiers are identified by fictionalised initials.

For security reasons, the journalist in Gaza and the resident of the apartment building in Nablus are quoted anonymously. Their identities are known to the editors-in-chief.