The Hind Rajab Foundation recently filed a complaint with authorities in Sri Lanka against an Israeli-American IDF soldier who is visiting the country, the group announced on Friday, accusing him of war crimes allegedly committed in the Gaza Strip.
The foundation, a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel legal group based in Belgium and named for a 6-year-old Gazan girl killed in January 2024, has filed dozens of criminal complaints against Israeli soldiers and officials who are visiting or stationed abroad over the past two years.
According to the group, the soldier, a dual national of Israel and the United States, is currently travelling in Sri Lanka following the end of his army service.
The complaint alleges that the recently released soldier, a member of the 603rd Combat Engineering Battalion, voluntarily enlisted to the IDF in the wake of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre, and was deployed to Gaza.
The 603rd Combat Engineering Battalion is a “central operational unit in the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure across Gaza,” the foundation claimed in its statement. “While nominally tasked with engineering functions such as mine clearance and fortification, its activities in practice have consisted of the systematic demolition of civilian areas.”
The foundation claimed to have established a “direct connection” between the ex-soldier and “at least one incident of unlawful destruction in Khan Younis in October-November 2025.”
The soldier, it said, had published “visual evidence” of his activities in Gaza on social media, including an image where he can be seen “holding a detonation cable inside a destroyed civilian building alongside fellow soldiers, indicating active participation in a controlled demolition.”
It further asserted that as a member of the battalion, the soldier carried out a number of actions that could “constitute multiple war crimes under international law,” including intentionally attacking civilian areas and property and unjustified destruction of property.
Israel vehemently denies it has committed war crimes or genocide in Gaza, and says it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities, stressing that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Since the released soldier is currently in Sri Lanka, the group said it had urged the country to take “appropriate legal action” against him.
“States have a duty to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute individuals suspected of committing grave breaches of international humanitarian law,” it asserted. “The presence of such individuals on their territory engages their responsibility to act.”
There was no immediate response from Sri Lankan authorities.
According to the foundation, the case of the US-Israeli soldier is not “isolated,” but rather “part of a broader pattern of conduct by members of the 603rd Combat Engineering Battalion and other units operating in Gaza.”
Israel vehemently denies it has committed war crimes or genocide in Gaza, and says it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities, stressing that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Beginning in 2024, the Hind Rajab Foundation has used social media posts by Israeli soldiers, officers, and reservists to locate them in an attempt to have them arrested for alleged war crimes when they travel abroad. The group has sparked alarm within Israel, prompting the IDF to create new rules to better protect troops’ privacy and keep them from being victims of doxxing — the practice of publishing someone’s personal information online to expose them.
While the group has spurred European authorities to detain a number of IDF soldiers and forced a soldier visiting Brazil to flee back to Israel fearing arrest, it has been unsuccessful in court, and no soldier targeted by the group has been prosecuted for war crimes or any other alleged offenses committed in Gaza.
