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War on Gaza: Israeli soldier 'boasted about running over dead Palestinian man with tank'

Reservist posted video of Palestinian body through tank window, stating that he drove over the man with a 65-tonne tank
A picture taken from a position in southern Israel along the border with the Gaza Strip on 5 February 2024 (AFP/Menahem Kahana)
A picture taken from a position in southern Israel along the border with the Gaza Strip on 5 February 2024 (AFP/Menahem Kahana)

An Israeli soldier is alleged to have posted a video of a Palestinian man's body and boasted about "running over him" with a tank.

Daniel Lurie, who according to his profile on X (formerly known as Twitter) is a 22-year-old Israeli reservist, posted a video on Monday featuring the dead body of a Palestinian seen through a tank window.

Alongside the video, Lurie wrote: "A second later I accidentally ran over him with a Merkava Mark 4 tank weighing 65 tons, 1500 horse power :)".

Lurie's X account has since been deleted, but his posts were compiled together in a thread by a social media user.

It is unclear where or when the video was taken, and Middle East Eye has not been able to independently verify the information contained within the thread.

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In other posts, Lurie threatened an Israeli girl who had posted herself with a Palestinian flag that his friends would come to "tell her hello".

He also wrote: "We passed 30,000 peace meetings[,] how fun :)" in reference to Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza. 

Elsewhere, Lurie posted about the mass killing of over 100 Palestinians who had gathered in Gaza City to receive aid on Thursday. A user on X shared Israeli drone footage of the event, writing that "Each dot is another X on the gun" in reference to the Palestinians in the video, to which Lurie replied "I love you."

In another reply, responding to a question asking who would be happy about a child from Gaza starving, the reservist replied: "I am."

Crushing Palestinians with heavy vehicles

Israeli soldiers have killed many Palestinian civilians in Gaza by running them over with tanks and armoured vehicles, a report by the Euro-Med Human Rights monitor on Monday found.

War on Gaza: Israeli tanks deliberately ran over dozens of Palestinians
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According to the report, one of those killed was a Palestinian man in Gaza City's Zeitoun neighbourhood on Thursday. Eyewitnesses said the man had his hands restrained, was stripped, and that he was alive while he was run over on asphalt. 

Other similar incidents have also been carried out by the Israeli army, the rights monitor stated.

Last week, Ramy Abdu, chairman of Euro-Med Monitor, told Middle East Eye that he believed hundreds of Palestinians have been run over by Israeli tanks.

Most, he said, were in northern Gaza, in places such as Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun and Zeitoun, as well as along the coastal al-Rasheed Street that Palestinians have used to flee.

"The Israeli leaders themselves have adopted a strategy of demonising and dehumanising Palestinians, which means that even burning them alive is allowed and you see even the Israeli soldiers are competing with each other to publish stories on social media about the level of brutality they are willing to inflict on Palestinians," he said.

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