Complaint for War Crimes and Genocide Lodged Against Israeli Givati Brigade Soldier Before Romania’s High Prosecutor’s Office

Benyaish (left) and Vagdani (right) posing in front of the home of one of the plaintiffs before blowing it up

​Bucharest, March 31, 2025
Today, the Hind Rajab Foundation, through its legal representative, has filed a criminal complaint before the Romanian Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice against Orel Benyaish, an Israeli soldier from the 432nd Battalion of the Givati Brigade. He is accused of committing war crimes and acts of genocide during Israel’s ongoing military operations in the Gaza Strip.

The evidence submitted includes images and videos posted by Benyaish himself, showing his direct involvement in the destruction of residential buildings in the Netzarim corridor—a heavily targeted area where thousands of Palestinian civilians were forcibly displaced. He appears in uniform, smiling in front of homes rigged with explosives. In these same images is fellow soldier Yuval Vagdani, also of the Givati Brigade, who was photographed in the moment explosives were being placed for a controlled demolition. The two acted together, knowingly and deliberately, in destroying civilian homes without any military justification.
This is not a matter of battlefield tragedy. It is the calculated and boastful destruction of civilian life, carried out with impunity and celebrated in social media posts. The detonation, which reduced entire homes to rubble, is not only a war crime under international humanitarian law—it is an expression of genocidal intent. These actions were not part of legitimate combat. They were designed to humiliate, terrorize, and annihilate a people, in flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute, and the most fundamental norms of human dignity.
Last December in Brazil, a judge issued a probe order against Yuval Vagdani for his role in this same crime. The Romanian complaint is therefore not isolated, but part of a broader international legal effort to end the impunity of soldiers who participate in the collective punishment and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population.
Romania, as a party to the Rome Statute and the Geneva Conventions, bears not only the legal competence but the moral obligation to act. When war criminals walk freely on foreign soil, justice demands intervention. The principle of universal jurisdiction exists precisely for such moments—when those responsible for atrocities are beyond the reach of justice in their own countries.
The international community has long borne witness to the structural impunity enjoyed by Israeli military personnel. This impunity has emboldened perpetrators to commit unspeakable crimes—openly, proudly, and without fear of consequence. It is time for this cycle to end.
We call on Romanian authorities to take urgent action: to launch a full criminal investigation, to prevent the suspect from leaving the country, to secure all relevant digital and physical evidence, and to cooperate with other jurisdictions pursuing related cases. Anything less would be a betrayal of the legal and ethical commitments that bind all nations in the defense of humanity.
Justice must not remain hostage to political considerations. When the machinery of state is used to carry out acts of ethnic destruction, it falls on all people of conscience, and all states of law, to say: not in our name.

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