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Why IDF soldiers’ official headshots only show their backs
The Israel Defense Forces official website features headshots of its service members — but their faces don’t appear in them. Instead, the portraits capture only the backs of soldiers’ heads.
The unusual presentation is no accident. In January, the IDF restricted soldiers at the rank of colonel and below from displaying their full names or faces — wary of potential legal action against Israeli reservists travelling abroad related to allegations of war crimes in Gaza.
While it’s not unprecedented that members of the military would be barred from sharing their identities online — such rules have long applied to those in classified units of the IDF — choosing to display photos of only backs is, to say the least, a perplexing choice. In recent months, the photos have gone viral on social media, acting as a visible symbol of Israel’s increasing isolation from the rest of the world.
The IDF’s reasoning
The change in media guidelines was “due to security concerns,” a spokesperson for the IDF wrote in a statement to the Forward.
Israeli soldiers face risk of prosecution under “universal jurisdiction,” a legal principle that allows countries to prosecute individuals for international crimes considered so severe that no state should be a safe haven. Israel used the principle of universal jurisdiction in 1961 to prosecute Adolf Eichmann for his role in the Holocaust; Eichmann received the death penalty.
While no IDF soldiers have been arrested overseas related to the war in Gaza, the risk is far from hypothetical.
In January, a former Israeli soldier vacationing in Brazil had his trip cut short after a federal judge opened a war crimes investigation for his alleged participation in the demolition of civilian homes in Gaza, based partly on his social media posts. Israeli authorities helped him leave the country before he could be prosecuted.
In July, Belgian police took two IDF service members who were attending a music festival in for questioning related to allegations of violating international law in Gaza. They were released shortly afterward.
The Hind Rajab Foundation, a Belgian nonprofit named for a 5-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza, has been a driving force behind the effort. The group has filed dozens of legal complaints in more than 10 countries seeking Israeli soldiers’ arrests, though only a handful have resulted in active criminal investigations.
Still, any online information, including photos, can help those seeking to prosecute these cases, according to Eran Shamir Borer, director of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Center for Security and Democracy.
“If you volunteer information about this person — their face, their name, their military affiliation — you just make it much easier for the various organizations overseas to try to mine further information about these soldiers,” Shamir Borer, who previously served as head of the IDF’s international law department, told the Forward in a phone interview.
Under international law, evidence that someone served in the IDF is not enough to open a criminal investigation; there must be documentation of misconduct on the battlefield, Shamir Borer said.
But not all countries abide by this standard. For example, South Africa has threatened to arrest dual citizens who serve in the IDF when they return home — irrespective of whether the service member has specifically been accused of war crimes.
For a war that has been broadcast on social media, the effort to conceal some identities may be too little too late. Restrictions on soldiers’ personal social media accounts have been difficult to enforce, Shamir Borer said, citing thousands of cases of soldiers uploading photos and videos of themselves in Gaza, despite IDF rules against that sort of documentation.
Still, when it comes to official headshots, he said, the state does not want to be in the position of providing easily accessible information to those looking to target Israeli soldiers.
“Now there is a better realization of the risks,” he said. “So they’re just trying to be careful.”
The reaction
On social media, many have read the images as amounting to an admission of guilt, or as a visual expression of shame. That message was echoed by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.
“Instead of advising its soldiers not to commit crimes, what (Israel) is saying is ‘cover your faces or blur your face before posting videos or try to get lawyers,’” Albanese told Anadolu, the Turkish state-run news agency.
Another reading casts the photos differently: as a stance of defiance, with Israel symbolically turning its back on its foes.
Shamir Borer said the photos represent a compromise, balancing security and legal risks with the desire to praise soldiers for their service.
“When you show people from the back, you can still see whether these are men or women, whether they’re religious or not, the units that they belong to,” he said. “It does give you some feeling of the diversity of the people that are being commemorated.”
The need to conceal their identities, he said, is a sign of the times.
“It’s another very sad indication of the challenges that Israel is facing at the international level nowadays,” he said.
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‘Marty Supreme’ and everything else Jewish at this year’s Academy Awards
At last year’s Academy Awards, Anora — a frenetic, somewhat ambiguously Jewish look at a Jewish enclave of New York, took home best picture, original screenplay, director and actress for its Jewish lead Mikey Madison. This year, we have a film that feels, in some ways, quite parallel, while cranking the Yiddishkeit to 11: Josh Safdie’s breathless picaresque Marty Supreme, set on the Lower East Side, is up for best picture and its star, Timothée Chalamet is a favorite for best actor.
There’s also Blue Moon, Richard Linklater’s portrait of Jewish lyricist Lorenz Hart’s breakup with composer Richard Rodgers (Ethan Hawke is up for best actor). And One Battle After Another, a campy and absurdist satire about the infiltration of white supremacists in the U.S. government, is poised to have a massive night, with the blockbuster Sinners serving as its main competition.
That all goes to say that it’s another great year for Jewish stories at the Oscars, with some really compelling fodder for discussion about the place that Jews occupy today in arts and media. What stories are we telling and how are they received?
Here, as ever, the Forward culture team is here to break it all down for you, live as it unfolds. Of course, we cover Jewish movies all year. But at the Academy Awards, we get to see how the rest of the world feels about these movies. We will be updating this story with our thoughts throughout the ceremony.
Traditionally, as we begin these Oscars roundtables, we discuss what we’re all wearing and eating. What’ve we got?
Olivia: brown sweater and jeans; no food but aggressively chewing mint gum. I will later be drinking some of the seltzer I got from Brooklyn’s Seltzer Fest today.
Mira: I did a bunch of cooking for the week so I have vegetarian avgolemono soup and Alison Roman’s fennel salad. (I’m obsessed with this salad.) I am proudly wearing hard pants.
PJ: I am reheating some chicken from last night. Wearing a blue sweater with a little toggle and jeans. How many of Stellan Skarsgård’s large adult sons are here? In other l’dor v’dor news, Bill Pullman just mentioned how they filmed the Spaceballs sequel with his son Lewis.
Talya: I believe I’m wearing the exact same sweater I donned for this event last year — where’s my award for consistency? And, as always, sweatpants; I cannot comprehend suffering through this event in jeans.
Discussion of Israeli-Palestinian protests on the red carpet
Mira: Love a toggle. Speaking of outfits, anyone have thoughts on Odessa A’zion’s spangled red carpet set? She is one of the only people who styles herself on the red carpet, which I do respect.
Olivia: A’Zion’s outfit kind of looks like she forgot to tie whatever was supposed to be holding it up. I don’t think it looks bad, just like it’s falling down.
PJ: It wouldn’t look out of place hanging from the window of a VW van with shag carpet and some Tibetan prayer flags.
Mira: Of note, the past several years have seen protesters approaching people on their way into the ceremony, and a lot of pins on the red carpet taking a stance on the Israel-Hamas war, largely pro-Palestinian ones. We’re seeing less of that this year — though not none. Javier Bardem posted a photo of him wearing a pin reading “no to the war” in Spanish, along with another pin featuring Handala, a cartoon boy considered a symbol of Palestinians. The team of The Voice of Hind Rajab, nominated for best foreign film, are also wearing red pins with a white dove.
PJ: Those have replaced the red hand ArtistsforCeasefire pins, which some said recalled the bloody palms of Palestinians who killed IDF soldiers in 2000.
Olivia: A reporter for ABC in a pre-recorded segment asked executive producers and showrunners for the ceremony Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan if anything would get bleeped, such as mentions of Trump, Israel and Palestine. Recently, the BBC removed director Akinola Davies Jr’s call for a “Free Palestine” from their BAFTA stream. Kapoor asserted that the night’s production team supports free speech, but we’ll see what transpires over the course of the night.
The post ‘Marty Supreme’ and everything else Jewish at this year’s Academy Awards appeared first on The Forward.
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US Sends Additional Arms to Israel to Sustain Iran Operations
The first of two Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors is launched during a successful intercept test. Photo: US Army.
i24 News – The United States has recently increased shipments of munitions to Israel to support ongoing Israeli air operations against Iran.
According to reports broadcast by the public radio network Kan Reshet Bet, several weapons deliveries have arrived in Israel in recent days as part of what officials describe as an ongoing airlift aimed at sustaining the pace of military strikes.
Since the start of the campaign, Israeli forces are believed to have dropped more than 11,000 bombs on targets across Iran.
The shipments come as reports emerge about a potential shortage of ballistic missile interceptors in Israel. US officials told the news outlet Semafor that Israel’s interceptor stockpiles have been heavily used during the conflict.
According to those sources, Washington had already been aware for months that supplies could become strained, though it remains unclear whether the United States would be willing to share its own interceptor reserves. Israeli officials have since rejected claims that such a shortage exists.
Unlike the Iron Dome, which is designed to intercept short-range rockets and projectiles, ballistic missile interceptors serve as Israel’s primary defense against long-range missile threats. Fighter jets can also be used to attempt interceptions, though this method is considered a supplementary measure to missile defense systems.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government has taken additional budgetary steps to support the war effort. During an overnight vote between Saturday and Sunday, ministers approved a roughly 1 billion shekel reduction across various ministry budgets to help finance classified military purchases linked to Operation “Roar of the Lion.”
The government had already approved a 3 percent cut in ministry budgets, a move expected to increase the defense budget by approximately 30 billion shekels as the conflict continues.
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Pope Leo Decries ‘Atrocious Violence’ in Iran War, Urges Ceasefire
Pope Leo XIV leads the Angelus prayer from a window of the Apostolic Palace, at the Vatican, March 15, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Matteo Minnella
Pope Leo made an impassioned plea on Sunday for an immediate ceasefire in the expanding Iran war, lamenting “atrocious violence” that he said had killed thousands of non-combatants and caused suffering across the region.
As the US-Israeli war on Iran enters its third week, the first US pope warned that violence would not bring the justice, stability and peace that the peoples of the region long for.
“For two weeks, the peoples of the Middle East have been suffering the atrocious violence of war,” the pope said at his weekly Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square.
“In the name of Christians in the Middle East and of all women and men of good will, I appeal to those responsible for this conflict: Cease fire!” Pope Leo said.
IDEA THAT WAR SOLVES PROBLEMS IS ‘ABSURD’
Leo added that the situation in Lebanon – ravaged by a war between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah – was also a cause of “great concern.”
“I hope for paths of dialogue that can support the country’s authorities in implementing lasting solutions to the serious crisis currently underway, for the common good of all the Lebanese people,” the pope said.
During a visit to a Rome parish later, the pope said war could never resolve problems and hit out at people who invoke God to justify killings.
“Today many of our brothers and sisters in the world are suffering because of violent conflicts, caused by the absurd claim that problems and disagreements can be resolved through war, when instead we must engage in unceasing dialogue for peace,” he said during his homily.
“Some even go so far as to invoke the name of God to justify these choices of death, but God cannot be enlisted by darkness. Rather, He always comes to bring light, hope and peace to humanity.”