How an Israeli soldier accused of war crimes in Gaza was tracked down in India

Eitan Gilboa was trekking along the “hummus trail”, like thousands of other Israelis who visit India every year, when he made one mistake: he posted photos online which showed where he was vacationing.

This was a break for the pro-Palestine activists who had been tracking the Israeli soldier. Gilboa’s post, which showed he was in the hill state of Himachal Pradesh, allowed the Hind Rajab Foundation to file a complaint with Indian authorities and demand his arrest.

The foundation is alleging that he committed war crimes in Gaza.

While demands to arrest Israeli soldiers deployed in the Gaza War have been made in other countries, this is the first time that it is happening in India. Scroll spoke to the lawyers and activists behind this campaign to understand how they went about putting together a case against Gilboa.

Though they argue that their complaint is legally sound, they did not expect the Indian government to act on it, given the warm ties between New Delhi and Tel Aviv.

However, they hoped that their initiative would spark a debate on whether Israeli soldiers accused of war crimes should be allowed to vacation in India. The Hind Rajab Foundation even claimed that Gilboa left India soon after they went public with the complaint.

‘Pride in destruction’

The Hind Rajab Foundation takes its name from a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed with her family in 2024 after the Israel Defense Forces reportedly attacked their car in Gaza.

Volunteers from the Belgium-based foundation track the social media accounts of Israeli soldiers and their family members. Based on the information that they collect, they prepare dossiers detailing the war crimes that these soldiers allegedly committed during their time in Gaza and other Palestinian territories.

These dossiers then form the basis of the complaints that they file against Israeli soldiers when they visit a foreign country.

Since its inception in September 2024, over 1,000 Israel Defense Forces personnel have come on the foundation’s radar. It has filed nearly 100 complaints against Israeli soldiers in as many as 30 countries.

The Hind Rajab Foundation began tracking Eitan Gilboa soon after it started its operations, its litigation head Natacha Bracq told Scroll over a phone call. It has evidence to show that he was a reservist in the Israel Defense Forces till at least May 2025. Reservists are trained, part-time soldiers whose services can be enlisted by armies in times of war or other emergencies.

The foundation’s researchers first came across photos and videos of the destruction that Gilboa had allegedly caused in Gaza on the social media profile of his mother, Tamar. While it is common for Israelis to post photos and videos of the Gaza War, Bracq suggested that the Gilboas might have had a deeper reason to do so.

The family once lived in a settlement located in Gaza but had to vacate it when Israel withdrew from the coastal strip in 2005, she added. So, when young Eitan joined the Israel Defense Forces and was posted in Gaza, it was an emotional moment for them, according to her.

“They were eager to go back,” Bracq said. “His [Eitan’s] mother wrote a book about her time in Gaza. He took that book from place to place, taking pictures where they had lived before. It is very illustrative of the current political mindset of Israelis.”

What also helped the researchers was that his mother’s social media profile was public. “It was out in the open,” Bracq explained. “She was actually expressing pride in the destruction that he [Eitan] carried out in Gaza.”

Building the case

One of the videos that Gilboa’s mother is purported to have posted online in January 2024 shows him and other Israeli soldiers cheering an explosion in Khan Younis, a city in south Gaza. “Eitan shows them what the IDF is,” she allegedly wrote in the caption, according to the foundation.

Another video from July 2024 purportedly captures Gilboa himself triggering an explosion that detonated an entire residential block in Gaza. The foundation claims that the acts of destruction recorded in some of these videos were dedicated to a slain Israeli soldier, which shows that there was no military justification for them other than retribution. Neither Eitan Gilboa nor his mother could be reached for comment.

The videos were submitted to the Indian government as part of the complaint last month. Pooja, a 31-year-old lawyer from India who requested not to be identified by her real name, played a key role in the process.

The Hind Rajab Foundation had not filed a complaint with authorities in New Delhi before this. When Pooja first met someone from the organisation at an event in Amsterdam back in March, she had walked up to them and asked why that was the case despite India being a well-known vacation destination for Israeli soldiers. She was aware of the foundation’s work and offered to help them navigate the legal system in India if needed.

Within days, she and the legal team at the foundation were on calls, discussing ways to identify Israeli soldiers accused of war crimes currently in India. And in May, she finally got a lead worth chasing. The researchers had found a video that Gilboa posted from Himachal Pradesh. But there was a problem.

“We could not really tell exactly where in Himachal Pradesh he was,” Pooja said, adding that they needed his precise location in order to file a complaint at a local police station. “I watched the clip many times.”

Eventually, she was able to decipher the name of a guesthouse from its signboard. That got her searching for all such establishments in Himachal Pradesh that have the same name. “I sat and worked on Google Maps,” she recalled. “Finally, I found it in Gondhla village.”

In the video, Pooja had also spotted a bank next to the guesthouse. She matched it with the street-view visuals for Gondhla village available on Google Maps for confirmation. “And that is how we decided to go to the Himachal Pradesh police,” she added.

The Indian hurdle

In its email complaint to the Himachal Pradesh Police, the Hind Rajab Foundation has invoked the Geneva Conventions Act, a law passed by India’s Parliament in 1960. This act gives domestic effect to New Delhi’s obligations under the four Geneva Conventions, which govern the wartime conduct of governments all over the world. India had ratified these conventions in 1950, soon after its independence.

In addition to the complaint, the foundation has written to the Bureau of Immigration, which comes under the Ministry of Home Affairs, asking it to deport Eitan Gilboa by using its powers under the Immigration and Foreigners Act of 2025.

While the Modi government has yet to comment on the issue, Pooja, the lawyer, contended that there is little by way of precedence in Indian law for something like this. The International Criminal Court also cannot intervene in the matter because New Delhi is not a party to the Rome Statute, under which the court was established.

Asked about their legal strategy, Pooja likened it to throwing darts on a board and seeing what sticks. She wanted India to follow in the footsteps of countries that have acted on similar complaints, such as Canada and Brazil. However, she acknowledged that there was no “political will” for that in India, given the friendly relations between New Delhi and Tel Aviv.

In fact, India is a rare country that has significantly expanded the scope of its relationship with Israel in recent years, in spite of the genocide in Gaza. Between 2020 and 2024, it emerged as the largest buyer of Israeli weapons.

Politically, New Delhi is more closely aligned with Tel Aviv than ever before. At the United Nations, India has repeatedly abstained from voting on resolutions seen to be censuring Israel. In February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited that country and praised its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, just days before he declared war on Iran. Netanyahu, in turn, has brought up the “absolutely crazy support” that Israel enjoys in India.

Holiday cut short?

In Canada, a complaint filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation led to the revocation of an Israeli reservist’s visa. One of the foundation’s complaints about Israeli soldiers waving military flags at a music festival in Belgium had even reached the International Criminal Court.

India has long been a favoured destination of Israeli revellers, many of whom visit the country after completing compulsory military service. The latest data released by the Ministry of Tourism shows that 47,465 Israelis visited India in 2024. Moreover, these were substantial stays: each of them spent 24 days in the country on average.

Pooja hoped that the complaint she had helped the Hind Rajab Foundation file would push the Indian government to vet the Israeli soldiers who vacation in India.

“I don’t want them to feel a sense of impunity and I don’t want India to be a safe haven [for them],” she added. “I want them to feel chased and hunted in the same way that they hunt. I want them to not come to my country. I want them to leave.”

Her wish may have come true with Gilboa. Without offering more details, Bracq from the Hind Rajab Foundation claimed that the soldier had likely left India after their complaint. In several other countries, the Israeli embassy had intervened to get soldiers out soon after the foundation filed complaints against them, she said.

Scroll was unable to confirm this information independently. Questions sent to a spokesperson of the Israeli embassy in New Delhi did not elicit a response.

“The Israelis have been very annoyed by our activities,” Bracq continued. “They know that we have evidence of the crimes that their soldiers have committed. They even told their soldiers to stop posting their crimes on social media. But it is too late.”