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New Lawfare Tactic Threatens all Israelis Who Serve in IDF
Yuval Vagdani. Photo: Courtesy.
JNS.org – The specter of her sons and daughters being hauled before foreign courts on war crimes charges has shaken Israel.
The lawfare tactic came to the public’s attention this week with the drama of a reservist in the Israel Defense Forces on vacation in Brazil being forced to flee the country, aided by the personal intervention of Israel’s foreign minister.
Yuval Vagdani, 21, a soldier in the IDF’s Givati Brigade, found himself in the crosshairs of the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), a Belgium-based NGO that targets Israeli soldiers for legal action.
Its modus operandi is to monitor the social networks of soldiers for posts about their service—for HRF, service in Gaza appears to be prima facie evidence of war crimes—and then to launch a suit in the countries those soldiers visit, typically on holiday.
It signals an aggressive shift in anti-Israel legal strategy, Brooke Goldstein, founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project, a group dedicated to defending Jewish civil rights, told JNS.
“Previous failed efforts to prosecute Israelis for alleged war crimes have focused primarily on political and military leaders rather than rank-and-file soldiers. The move to target lower-level personnel, like the IDF soldier in Brazil, represents a major escalation in legal and advocacy strategies,” she said.
HRF lawsuits started from a handful, rising as of last count to 28 in multiple countries, including Sri Lanka, Thailand, Holland, Ireland and South Africa. It brought two complaints in Argentina this past week. Israelis fear the number of cases will become an avalanche.
“Given Israel’s mandatory military service … this tactic poses a threat to the broader Israeli population, effectively putting all citizens at risk of legal action,” noted Goldstein.
HRF’s success in convincing a federal Brazilian court to accept the case is unfortunately a shot in the arm for the group, agreed Jonathan Turner, chief executive of U.K. Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), which works to “combat the use and abuse of law” by Israel’s enemies.
“I think there will be a lot more cases coming up of this nature,” he told JNS.
In July of last year, Turner’s group filed a challenge to the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, predicting that the warrants against Israel’s leaders would encourage a wave of suits against ordinary Israelis.
“One of our observations to the International Criminal Court was [that] it would make it more likely that arrest warrants could be issued secretly against a multitude of other Israelis,” Turner said.
The ICC warrants made war crimes charges against Israelis seem credible, leading national authorities to be more willing to investigate, he said. “The completely bogus allegations made by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, are now liable to be treated as reasonable grounds for courts to issue arrest warrants against other Israelis.”
Worth noting is that no country has yet actually charged an Israeli (even in the Brazil case a court only asked the police to open an investigation). The Israeli government is clearly determined to keep it that way. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar convened a team of Security Cabinet ministers on Sunday, the first of a series of planned meetings to build inter-ministerial cooperation to deal with the emerging threat.
Sa’ar instructed the army to brief soldiers against uploading anything to the Internet related to their operational activities. Turner agreed with the approach. He also “strongly advised” Israelis who have served in the IDF in recent years not to post information about their travel plans as that gives Israel’s enemies “an opportunity to locate them and contact the authorities in that country.”
This happened in the case of Vagdani, the soldier forced to flee Brazil. Interviewed by Israeli radio station Kan Reshet Bet on Wednesday, he said that HRF claimed he had “murdered thousands of children, and turned it into a 500-page document. All that was there was a picture of me in uniform in Gaza.”
Adding insult to injury is that Vagdani is a survivor of the Nova music festival massacre, where Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, slaughtered more than 350 people.
Vagdani praised the work of Israel’s Foreign Ministry. On Jan. 4, “I woke up in the morning, opened the phone and suddenly saw eight calls— the Foreign Ministry, my brothers, my mother, consuls,” he said. He was on a plane out of Brazil the next day.
The vacation was to have been his “dream trip,” one which he had planned for four years. “I was in the best place of my life, with my friends. I thanked God for every moment there,” he told Israeli radio.
While the Foreign Ministry acted with alacrity in this case and has woken up to the danger, with Minister Sa’ar calling for setting up an information hotline and instructing staff to monitor NGOs acting against IDF soldiers abroad, Turner said Israel’s government has “not handled the information war particularly well, unfortunately, and that has made fighting the lawfare war more difficult.”
Israel could act more aggressively on the lawfare front, he said, providing several examples, including Israel’s failure to challenge the bias of the current president of the International Court of Justice, Judge Nawaf Salam, a former Lebanese ambassador to the United Nations, “backed by Hezbollah to be a candidate for prime minister of Lebanon.”
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, president of Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, an Israel-based group focused on fighting lawfare, told JNS that Israel must take a multi-pronged approach to counter the newest tool in the campaign to “delegitimize and demonize our nation.”
First, Israel should brief and prepare soldiers traveling abroad, so they know what to do when facing such situations, she said.
Second, should they be arrested, it should deploy “every legal and diplomatic resource to secure their release and uphold their rights,” she continued.
Third, it should target pro-Palestinian groups and countries that “arrogate international jurisdiction to themselves, masquerading as champions of justice while blatantly advancing biased political agendas.”
UKLFI’s Turner expressed doubt that groups like HRF could be easily targeted, though he noted a determined U.S. president and Congress might impose sanctions on and target the financing of such groups.
HRF is so new, having been established late last year, that little is known of its financing, said Yona Schiffmiller, director of research at NGO Monitor. “I don’t think that information has been made public yet,” he told JNS.
“The fact that it was founded in September of 2024 is very much indicative of the fact that the organization’s whole purpose is simply to go after Israeli soldiers and Israelis,” he added.
Other groups are engaging in the same lawfare tactics, he noted, referring to DAWN (Democracy for the Arab World Now), a U.S.-based organization that has been submitting names of Israeli soldiers to the ICC and to American authorities.
Despite Israelis’ concerns, The Lawfare Project’s Goldstein expressed confidence Israel is up to the challenge. “This strategy is destined to fail. Israel will always prioritize the protection of its citizens, no matter the cost. We, the Jewish people, have survived centuries of attempts to delegitimize us.”
The post New Lawfare Tactic Threatens all Israelis Who Serve in IDF first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Toronto Film Festival CEO Apologizes Again for Canceling, Then Rescheduling Screening of Oct. 7 Documentary
Skyline of Toronto, Canada. Photo Credit: Aaron Davis, Wikimedia Commons, June 2020.
The CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has apologized again for the festival’s decision to cancel and then reschedule the screening of a documentary about the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“I want to apologize for any hurt, frustration, or disappointment that our communication about the film has caused, and for any mischaracterizations that have taken root,” Cameron Bailey said at a pre-festival event on Wednesday, according to The Canadian Press. “We’re working now — and we will be for a while — to clarify things and to repair relationships.”
Bailey made the comments during his first public appearance since the festival stirred controversy last week when it removed the documentary “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue” from its official lineup of films. Directed by Canadian filmmaker Barry Avrich, the documentary recounts how retired Israeli Army general Noam Tibon traveled from his home in Tel Aviv to the Nahal Oz kibbutz to rescue his son and his family from Hamas terrorists during the Oct. 7 attack. The film combines news interviews with footage from the deadly massacre.
Bailey said on Wednesday that TIFF originally wanted to showcase the film out of “a desire to share a painful but important story with audiences who choose to witness it,” as reported by The Canadian Press. “That commitment to challenging, relevant screen storytelling remains strong,” he added.
Festival organizers pulled the film last week because of issues with “legal clearance of all footage.” The move sparked widespread outrage from Jewish groups, entertainment industry leaders, and politicians. In response, Bailey apologized on Aug. 13 for disinviting the film and said TIFF was committed to working with the filmmakers to meet the festival’s screening requirements.
The next day, Bailey and Avrich announced in a joint statement that the film has officially rejoined the festival. They reached a resolution that clears up “important safety, legal, and programming concerns” regarding the film after hearing “pain and frustration” from the public, according to their statement.
“TIFF’s communication around [the film’s] requirements did not clearly articulate the concerns and roadblocks that arose and for that, we are sorry,” Bailet and Avrich said. “Both TIFF and the filmmakers have always been committed to presenting diverse perspectives and a belief in the power of storytelling to spark and encourage dialogue and understanding. We thank our audiences and community for their passion, honesty and belief in the importance of film.”
“The Road Between Us” is now slated to make its world premiere at TIFF on Sept. 10 at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. Tickets go on sale for the public on Monday. TIFF will run from Sept. 4-14.
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Arizona Man Charged With Threatening Synagogues to Take Out ‘Jew Government’
Kevin Charles Pyles, 32, Glendale, Arizona, man accused of threatening violence against Jews. Photo: Screenshot.
Law enforcement officials in Arizona have arraigned a man from city of Glendale who is accused of threatening to commit antisemitic hate crimes and mass casualty events, according to local media reports.
Over four months, Kevin Charles Pyles, 32, declared to his social media followers that he hates Jews, people of color, and the state of Israel, adding that he believes the US is a “Jew government.” As Pyles’ delusions grew, so did his ambitions, and before long threatened to detonate explosives outside the local Sha’arei Shalom Congregation synagogue by shooting propane tanks.
According to a CBS affiliate, the disturbing tirades caught the attention of the Secure Community Network (SCN) — a nonprofit organization which partners with law enforcement to promote safety and thwart imminent threats to the Jewish community — which reported Pyles to Phoenix police.
“This is very painful. It’s not right to do that,” Rabbi Pinhas Nisanov of Sha’arei Shalom Congregation told KTVK-3TV in a statement. “We have to respect each, and each other, even other religions.”
In another statement to the outlet, Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz of Arizona Jews for Justice said, “Hatred is growing and antisemitism is growing, and we all have to call it out wherever we see it. Wherever we see stereotypes and bias and hate, we have to call it out.”
Antisemitic activity across the country continues to challenge a once ironclad consensus that the US is a safe haven for the Jewish people.
On Monday, a telecenter operator who was, until Tuesday, employed by Fidelity Investments launched a volley of antisemitic insults at a Jewish journalist via social media after learning that her children attend a summer camp which fosters pride in Zionism.
“F—k you and f—k your kid who goes to Nazi summer camp!” Danielle Gordon, the now-former employee, wrote to Bethany Mandel, author and contributor to the “Mom Wars” Substack. “Free Palestine from you sick f—ks!”
The exchange began when Mandel publicly discussed the presence of a paraglider over the camp’s property which, due to lingering trauma caused by the memory of the use of paragliders in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel — which preceded an explosion of antisemitic incidents across the US — appeared to pose an imminent security threat. Gordon seemingly took umbrage at Mandel’s concern for Jewish life and the lives of her children, and hastily fired off the messages from an account which listed her legal name.
“I found it troubling that she sent such antisemitic vitriol when she’s just a working class, college educated white woman living in Denver — that is how far this rot has spread,” Mandel told The Algemeiner on Monday after her sharing of Gordon’s messages amassed over a million views on X. “Antisemitism has become normative discourse for people of her demographic.”
Mandel continued, “That word, Zionist, triggered her very much, and she had no qualms about coming at me, coming at my kids … There should be consequences for talking like this.”
This incident came just weeks after another sudden outburst of hatred against Jews.
Earlier this month, Eden Deckerhoff — a female student at Florida State University (FSU) — allegedly assaulted a Jewish male classmate at the Leach Student Recreation Center after noticing his wearing apparel issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
“F—k Israel, Free Palestine. Put it [the video] on Barstool FSU. I really don’t give a f—k,” the woman said before shoving the man, according to video taken by the victim. “You’re an ignorant son of a b—h.” Deckerhoff has since been charged with misdemeanor battery.
According to the Tallahassee Democrat, Deckerhoff has denied assaulting the student when questioned by investigators, telling them, “No I did not shove him at all; I never put my hands on him.” However, law enforcement charged her with misdemeanor battery and described the incident in court documents as seen in viral footage of the incident, acknowledging that Deckerhoff “appears to touch [the man’s] left shoulder.” Despite her denial, the Democrat noted, she has offered to apologize.
Days later, an unknown person or group graffitied swastikas and other hateful messages on the grounds of the Israeli-American Council’s (IAC) national headquarters in Los Angeles, underscoring the severity of the antisemitism crisis in the US.
“F—k Jews,” one cluster of graffiti said.
“BDS,” the message added, referring to the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel.
The wave of hate follows a pattern of year-on-year surges in acts of anti-Jewish bigotry.
In 2024, according to newly released FBI statistics, hate crimes perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups noted that this surge, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.
A striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims were targeted the next highest amount as the victims of 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Netanyahu Says Israel to Begin Gaza Ceasefire Negotiations to End War, Release Hostages
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the US Independence Day reception, known as the annual “Fourth of July” celebration, hosted by Newsmax, in Jerusalem, Aug. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/Pool
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he had directed the immediate initiation of negotiations for the release of all hostages in Gaza and the conclusion of the war there on terms acceptable to Israel.