When casually swiping on dating apps in Israel, users are frequently inundated with images of soldiers in Gaza.
“It's like every third profile at least,” Karmen, who only wanted her first name used, told The New Arab. Karmen is now collecting screenshots of soldiers’ dating profiles and shared some of the pictures with TNA.
The images range from soldiers smiling in uniform and brandishing rifles in front of sunsets to more sadistic content like soldiers snapping selfies next to rubble.
Israelis have long showcased their military service on dating apps, but the scale and severity of the photos have intensified since Israel’s war on Gaza began nearly seven months ago.
Most profiles feature men in uniform with guns strapped to their chests, but some have put the battlefield on blast. Snipers pose candidly in front of the camera. Some soldiers walk with their troops amidst the wreckage.
Others take a smoke break in an abandoned home now scrawled with graffiti. Some stand next to bulldozers and mounds of earth against a silhouette of shelled-out apartments.
In one photo, a soldier smiles in front of a burning building and a planted Israeli flag. In another, a soldier poses in front of a collection of lingerie hung on the wall of a Palestinian home, the residents of which have presumably been forcibly displaced, or at worst, killed.
“It just feels more and more that people that go to reserves are abusing the war to get laid,” an activist with New Profile, an Israeli feminist movement opposing militarism, told TNA. The activist, who wished to remain anonymous, said women are also participating in the cross-platform trend, although this is to a lesser degree.
“I saw posts of people doing a selfie saying, ‘Hey, I am coming back home after four months in Gaza. I'm looking for someone or would you be willing to do me a favour?’” the New Profile activist said. “Have sex as a favour. ‘I protect the country and so I deserve your [body].’”
Mona Shtaya, a non-resident fellow at The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and digital rights expert, explained this phenomenon isn’t new, however.
“Even before the war, Israeli soldiers have been recording short videos and spreading that on different social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok and bragging about their weapons,” Shtaya said.
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Sharing these photos on their dating profiles adds another layer, Shtaya explained, suggesting it amplifies Israeli feelings of superiority over Palestinians.
“When you are on stolen land during war and you’re just posting those pictures on dating apps, it means that you are dehumanising Gazan people, normalising war crimes, genocide, and being on stolen land,” Shtatya said.
“If anything, this tells us, in this ongoing war, the power imbalance between the occupier and the occupied.”
TNA contacted dating apps Tinder and Hinge to inquire if the content posted by Israeli soldiers violates the companies’ guidelines.
A Tinder spokesperson told TNA, "Our community helps keep Tinder a safe place, and all members are encouraged to report any and all behavior that violates our Community Guidelines", but refused to comment on specific profiles or answer if the soldiers' content violates Tinder's rules. Hinge did not respond by the time of publication.
Both Tinder and Hinge state in their user terms that violent content is prohibited on their platforms. Tinder’s guidelines state it doesn’t “tolerate any sort of violent content that contains gore, death, images or descriptions of violent acts (against humans or animals), use of weapons”.
Hinge says it forbids content that “could reasonably be deemed to be offensive or to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm…or facilitates any illegal activity including, without limitation, terrorism, inciting racial hatred or the submission of which in itself constitutes committing a criminal offense”.
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International law experts say knowingly bombing civilian structures, vandalism, and theft - all depicted on these dating profiles - are war crimes.
TNA also reached out to the Israeli military for comment on whether these images violate protocol. “The IDF has acted and continues to act to identify unusual cases that deviate from what is expected of IDF soldiers,” it said in a statement to TNA.
“Those cases will be arbitrated, and significant command measures will be taken against the soldiers involved," it added.
'War criminals into war heroes'
Guns have flooded the streets of Israel since the war began. At least 100,000 Israelis have obtained gun licenses since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, with nearly 200,000 waiting to be approved to carry.
Though she lives in a neighbourhood populated by Jews, Palestinians, and leftists, Karmen said, “Even in my tiny bubble, we see weapons all the time”.
This extreme militarisation has seeped into online dating as well, where being in uniform is seen as a badge of honour.
“The whole country is under collective psychosis,” B.M., an independent researcher who did not want to be named, said. “Even soldiers who are not in the field post photos of themselves with their uniforms so they can be perceived as cool heroes.”
From New Profile’s perspective, Israeli society has become more right-wing in the last decade, so violence is now even easier to accept.
“People are just sitting down comfortably with genocide being done an hour away from them,” the New Profile activist said.
The most right-wing government coalition in Israel’s history took office in 2022, with openly anti-Palestinian and homophobic lawmakers holding key positions.
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The Israel settler movement has expanded, with half a million now residing in the occupied West Bank, and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich vowing to increase that population to a million.
And Israeli settler watchdog, Yesh Din, deemed 2023 the most violent year on record for settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.
With violent behaviour - on and offline - so commonplace in Israel, footage from a war zone is now not only ordinary but fetishised.
“When you normalise it - like making war criminals into war heroes - then of course girls will be attracted to that,” Karmen said.
Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist covering Palestine and Israel. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The National, and Gulf News.
Follow her on Twitter: @jess_buxbaum