Two Israeli soldiers on leave in Amsterdam had to cut their trip short due to safety concerns after pro-Palestine activists in the Netherlands circulated the images online, the military has confirmed.
The men, both in regular service, were contacted by officers and were told to stay in their hotel room and prepare to leave the country earlier this week, according to the Times of Israel.
Before traveling abroad, regular and reserve soldiers are advised by the army to remove any images of their service from social media profiles.
They are also instructed to make their accounts private, avoid giving strangers access to those accounts and to not post real-time location or photos from their vacations.
However, it appears that the pair’s holiday pictures were picked up by at least one pro-Palestine group and spread on social media, along with allegations that one of the soldiers was a “war criminal”.
The Hind Rajab Foundation, which organises protests and legal cases against Israelis, said on X that it planned to act “in silence” against one of the soldiers.
They later added: “After some large accounts online started tagging us with their pictures, the Israelis were alerted and immediately smuggled out of the Netherlands.”
The HRF, named after a six-year-old Gazan girl whose death last year was widely blamed on the IDF, has quickly risen to prominence in the world of anti-Israel activisim.
In January, a survivor of the Nova festival massacre was forced to leave Brazil after a federal court approved an investigation into him for war crimes following a complaint from the HRF.
Likewise, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s upcoming visit to Belgium is subject to an HRF application to the ICC for an arrest warrant against him.
If the application is accepted Belgian authorities would theoretically be required by international law to arrest Sa’ar when he arrives next week.
The evacuation of the soldiers comes after hundreds were implicated in an assault on dozens of Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam in November.
