The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has admitted that its Influencing Department has been illegally running a Telegram channel that has been posting and sharing gory images of killings from the Gaza Strip as part of the ongoing war while also sharing inside information from IDF investigations to the group’s followers.
After Haaretz, one of Israel’s largest circulated newspapers, exposed the Telegram group, called ’72 Virgins – Uncensored’ in the second week of December last year, IDF denied running any such online group. However, reversing its earlier statement, IDF admitted on Febrary 4 that the group is operated by members of a department of the Israel Defense Forces’ Operations Directorate.
Starting on October 9, the Telegram group has been sharing hundreds of grotesque still images and videos of dying Palestinians with captions accompanying them that describe Palestinians as “roaches”, calling for their “extermination”. The intention of the racist channel appears to be the propagation of hate among common Israelis against Palestinians, in line with the propaganda of the far-right government in Tel Aviv.
The channel prided itself on sharing “exclusive content from the Gaza Strip” and published over 700 posts, images and videos of terrorists being killed and of destruction in the Strip until December 12, 2023. It urged its 5,300 followers (as on December 12, 2023) to share the content so that “everyone can see that we’re screwing them (Palestinians).”
Sample some of these posts from the channel: Every day, the channel posted graphic content, such as images of the dead bodies of Hamas terrorists, captioned “Shatter the terrorists’ fantasy”. Another post said, “Burning their mother… You won’t believe the video we got! You can hear their bones crunch. We’ll post it right away, get ready.” There was another post that was captioned, “Exterminating the roaches… exterminating the Hamas rats… Share this beauty.”
On October 14, the channel posted a video with the caption, “Exclusive video of a good night, don’t forget to share and repost”. The video was of an Israeli vehicle repeatedly driving over the body of a terrorist. “Very good, Gershon!!! Run him over run him over!!!! Screw the bastards! Flatten them,” the accompanying text read.
When the story was first published by Haaretz on December 12, 2023, a senior military official, on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that it was those in the military who were running the Telegram group.
“There is no reason for the IDF to conduct influence campaigns on Israeli citizens of Israel,” the official had said. “The messages there are problematic. It doesn’t look like an awareness campaign of an army like the IDF, but more like talking points for [far-right rapper] The Shadow, and the fact that soldiers operate such a problematic page is egregious.”
Following the denial, the military establishment launched a probe under the supervision of Maj. Gen. Oded Basyuk, head of the Operations Directorate, only to find that the channel was indeed operated by or on behalf of the army.
“It was found that the Telegram page was operated by the IDF without authorisation and without authority. The incident has been dealt with,” IDF told Haaretz in a written statement.
According to the Hamas-run health ministry, so far at least 27,840 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7. The figures reported by the ministry do not differentiate between fighters and civilians.