The investigation team even found that the IDF posted all of its violent actions "real-time" since the start of Israel's extermination campaign on the enclave – be it videos or photos – on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube by its own soldiers.
"We live in an era of technology, and this has been described as the first live-streamed genocide in history," Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa told Al Jazeera's investigative unit (I-Unit).
The I-Unit's new documentary investigates Israeli war crimes primarily through the medium of the evidence Israeli soldiers themselves have provided. International law expert Rodney Dixon, who was featured in the film, says that the videos are "a treasure trove which you very seldom come across – something which I think prosecutors will be licking their lips at."
The almost 1.5-hour video titled "Investigating war crimes in Gaza," also includes information collected by Al Jazeera journalists working at ground zero. It also has Israeli military drone footage. The videos show evidence of IDF's murder of unarmed civilians, wanton destruction, torture of detainees and use of human shields in Gaza. According to the I-Unit, all may be violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) and war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
However, how the media outlet obtained the drone videos was not indicated.
Moreover, some of the videos showed Israeli soldiers using explosives to flatten residential buildings and houses.
"The fact that they've been able to rig these buildings up with explosives shows very clearly that there's no current threat from those buildings," Charlie Herbert, a retired major general in the British Army and researcher for the project, told the news outlet.
According to Al Jazeera, Western journalists have portrayed the war on Gaza as complex and nuanced but IDF's social media posts suggested they regarded it as anything but. So, they decided to investigate these posts.
"It expected to have to dedicate considerable resources to geolocation – the use of satellite maps and other sources to identify specific locations – and to the use of facial recognition software to scan the internet to identify the soldiers featured in the photos and videos," the probe team said. "What it found was that, for the most part, soldiers posted material in their own names on publicly accessible platforms and often gave details of when and where the incidents depicted took place."
So the I-Unit compiled a database of more than 2,500 social media accounts, which posted related videos and photos. The behavior displayed in the posts ranged from crass jokes and soldiers rifling through women's underwear drawers to what appears to be the murder of unarmed civilians, the unit indicated.
Our feature length investigation exposes Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip through the medium of photos and videos posted online by Israeli soldiers themselves during the year-long conflict.
Full film available to watch now. #GazaCrimes https://t.co/dnZLfySp3N
— Al Jazeera Investigations (@AJIunit) October 3, 2024
Gadhan Commando: IDF's most destructive military unit
According to the documentary, the 8219 Combat Engineering Battalion or the Gadhan Commando, appeared to have the most prominent videos posted online.
It claimed to have destroyed hundreds of buildings in Gaza City and then progressed to the south of the Strip between Dec. 28 and June 9. It actually destroyed Khirbet Khuza'a, a town of 13,000 people close to the fence separating Gaza from Israel.
"We … destroyed a whole village as revenge for what they did to Kibbutz Nir Oz on 7/10," wrote Captain Chai Roe Cohen of the 8219 battalion's C Company in an Instagram post on Jan. 7. (Related: Human rights activist Dan Kovalik "grills" Sen. John Fetterman in "ambush interview" for favoring Israel's genocide in Gaza, Lebanon.)
The I-Unit also looked into a video posted by a soldier called Shalom Gilbert, a member of the 202 Paratroopers Battalion, which showed three unarmed men being killed by snipers.
“Just because a civilian is walking in an area where combat is going on does not make them fair game … If they get involved in hostilities at a particular moment, yes, they lose their civilian status. They can be targeted. But then you have to show the evidence that they are presenting a threat to you … It's potentially a matter that the ICC would want to look at,” said Dixon.
But human rights activists are not letting this pass and assured that this will be looked into by the ICC.
"The revenge rhetoric that we've heard from some Israeli soldiers … is disturbing. Atrocities don’t justify atrocities," Bill Van Esveld, the associate director for the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch told Al Jazeera.
Dixon said that the ICC will look for those who are high up the chain of command. The good thing is that the pieces of evidence are coming directly from commanders about the orders that they gave and how they command and control the troops would be vital evidence.
Watch the full documentary on Israel's war crimes in Gaza below.
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