By Ivan Kesic / PRESS TV

Israeli military’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, occupied West Bank and Lebanon has been accompanied by appallingly perverse behavior, which experts link to a deeply ingrained culture of depravity within Zionist settler society.

One particularly grotesque trend among Israeli occupation soldiers during the genocidal war on Gaza involved photographing and filming personal belongings looted from Palestinian homes—especially items like undergarments.

Social media has been awash with such images and videos, where Israeli soldiers shamelessly flaunted the stolen items, proudly posing for the camera and sharing them online.

These posts were often met with enthusiastic approval from Zionist settler audiences, reinforcing a disturbing cycle of dehumanization and cruelty that defines the illegitimate Zionist entity.

A particularly egregious case emerged from Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli military raids have been relentless. A viral video captured an Israeli reservist grotesquely dancing in women's lingerie – pulled over his uniform – after ransacking a Palestinian home and seizing the clothing from a bedroom.

Over the past year and a half of destruction in Gaza, such incidents reached epidemic proportions. UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani also condemned these actions, stating, “The posting of such images is demeaning to Palestinian women, and all women.”

Despite widespread criticism, these images continue to circulate on social media platforms, racking up tens of thousands – sometimes even hundreds of thousands – of views, further exposing the deep-seated moral decay within Israel’s occupation forces.

Notable cases

In March 2024, two Israeli soldiers were photographed wearing the clothing of Palestinian women inside an occupied home in Gaza. One of them had already gained notoriety for sharing similar images on TikTok, reveling in the humiliation of his victims.

A month later, eight Israeli soldiers posed, grinning, in the ruins of a Palestinian child’s bedroom. They clutched stuffed animals, a ball, and a tiny bicycle—trophies of their destruction—turning a scene of devastation into a grotesque photoshoot.

"The vulgar spectacle of these Israeli soldiers posing with the toys of dead or displaced children in their genocidal playground is grotesque. It reveals how utterly depraved and inhuman you need to be to participate in genocidal horror and keep a smile on your face," remarked Professor and Islamophobia researcher Jasmin Zine.

By late August 2024, the horrors had only escalated. Four Israeli soldiers proudly posed for photos wearing nightwear looted from a home in Gaza.

December 2024 brought one of the most chilling images yet: an Israeli soldier from the 51st Battalion of the Golani Brigade sat with his pants down, gazing over Gaza’s apocalyptic ruins.   His posture suggested a deep, perverse satisfaction, as though the sheer scale of death and destruction in the besieged Gaza Strip was a personal pleasure for him.

Israeli soldiers posing in stolen Palestinian women's dresses

That same month, deeply disturbing footage surfaced showing Israeli soldiers inside a Palestinian child’s bedroom, filming a doll and a stuffed toy dangling from a ceiling fan, turning a child's innocent playthings into a twisted display of terror.

As the year drew to a close, an unsettling image emerged of Israeli regime soldiers donning women's clothing during their occupation of southern Lebanon.

American journalist and war veteran Seth Harp, who has witnessed countless atrocities across four wars, remarked that he had never seen anything as bizarre and depraved as this.

"Dressing up in the clothes of the women and girls you’ve killed or displaced is a sick and twisted practice wholly unique to the murderous perverts of the Israeli army," he stated, underscoring the uniquely grotesque nature of the spectacle.

Jewish groups' condemnation

A group of anti-Zionist rabbis and Orthodox Jews, identifying as "Torah Judaism" and operating under the name "Voice of Rabbis" on X, has repeatedly condemned these acts as deeply immoral and perverse.

In February of the previous year, they strongly denounced Israeli soldiers who looted a home in Gaza, posing with women's underwear for social media clout.

They declared that such individuals should not even be considered Jews but rather "Zionist terrorists."

"The Israeli army is an immoral and perverted army. Israeli soldiers who entered a house in Gaza and shared the underwear of the people who used to live in the house on Instagram. Everyone should spit in the faces of these immoral, perverted Zionist soldiers. May G-d give severe punishment to these perverts as soon as possible. These are not Jews, these are Zionist terrorists," they wrote.

The same month, they issued another scathing rebuke after Israeli soldiers were seen mocking and displaying items that belonged to murdered or exiled Palestinian women from Khan Younis.

The pro-Palestine Jews urged the world to recognize the full extent of Israel’s moral corruption and refuse to support its army.

"Zionists are perverted and immoral. Just to show you how morally corrupt and depraved they are. Israeli soldiers display lingerie belonging to a displaced/killed Palestinian woman in Khan Younis. Those who support Israel and its army should see how murderous and immoral the people they support are," read one of their tweets.

They also argued that Israeli soldiers commit every form of sin forbidden by the Torah, making it impossible for them to claim a Jewish identity in any religious sense.

They accused Zionists of corrupting Judaism to justify their ideology and labeled the Israeli army as "a genocidal Nazi army that rebelled against G-d."

Their condemnation is firmly rooted in Jewish scripture, which explicitly forbids murder and theft (Exodus 20:13) as well as cross-dressing (Deuteronomy 22:5), making the actions of Israeli soldiers not just immoral, but a direct violation of divine law.

Eight Israeli soldiers smiling in the destroyed children's room of a Palestinian home, carrying children's toys

Tradition of perversion in Zionist society

The grotesque fusion of perversion and genocidal violence is not a recent phenomenon in Zionist settler society as it has been deeply ingrained since its inception.

This long-standing tradition explains the widespread nature of such acts today, as well as the brazen willingness to share them publicly.

One of the most striking historical examples of this twisted culture is the Stalag genre—disturbing literary and comic works rooted in Zionist society that emerged in the aftermath of World War II.

These works, set in the environment of concentration camps, depicted sadistic torture, rape, and murder among prison guards and inmates – fantasies unimaginable in any normal society.

This genre took direct inspiration from the successful novel of Auschwitz survivor Yehiel De-Nur, published just eight years after the war’s horrors.

The Stalag publications quickly gained immense popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s, breaking sales records before eventually being banned by the Israeli regime.
Yet, even after the ban, the demand remained so strong that the literature continued to be produced and circulated clandestinely.

At its peak, sales of this macabre fiction reached hundreds of thousands of copies in an entity that had only two million settlers – meaning it was a staple in many households.

A 1963 Hebrew University survey revealed that Stalag books were the most popular reading material among an 18-year-old Israeli settler. Decades later, this morbid genre has resurged in popularity, thanks to digital platforms that have made it more accessible than ever.

Parallels beyond Zionist society

Wartime depravity deeply ingrained in Zionist culture was also seen during World War II, particularly by Nazi soldiers, who also exhibited disturbing behaviors.

In 2018, a German book titled Soldier Studies was published, featuring hundreds of amateur photographs of Wehrmacht soldiers cross-dressing during the war.

The book was met with enthusiasm in the West, with some interpreting the phenomenon as a subtle rebellion against Nazi ideology or even a precursor to modern gender theory.

Few, however, dared to ask the obvious question: where did these soldiers obtain women's clothing in wartime conditions?

As with the recent case in Gaza, the answer is chillingly simple – stolen from murdered or ethnically cleansed Palestinians.