IDF War Crime T-Shirts

The IDF War Crime T-Shirts are various t-shirts worn by IDF soldiers with custom prints featuring drawings and text that "poked fun" at or celebrated the intentional and targeted killing of innocents, including pregnant woman and children.^[1]^[2]^[3] These shirts have long been a mainstay of various IDF brigades, with some t-shirt designs being banned before resurfacing in a slightly different variant variation years later.^[1]

According to several soldiers interviewed by Haaretz, the designs are typically approved by superior officers including the unit commander or the platoon sergeant, though as one soldier said, "one time they rejected some shirt that was too extreme. I don't remember what was on it."^[1]

Origins[edit | edit source]

According to Ha'aretz, the general idea of custom T-shirts with controversial designs or text began with Nahal Brigade in the 1980s, and has since spread to the rest of the IDF.^[4] Designs are specific to brigades or even divisions within brigades; the "worst perpetrators" include Nahal, Givati, and Kfir brigades and the sniper divisions are famous for having some of the designs that have gone most viral.

The original t-shirts were printed (from designs drawn by IDF soldiers) by an Israeli outlet called Adiv, located in Tel-Aviv.^[5] Other Israeli t-shirt makers later made shirts available for sale reusing these designs. ^[6]

T-Shirt Designs and Slogans[edit | edit source]

According to Haaretz,^[1] there were multiple designs all with inappropriate drawings and slogans, that were printed:

A t-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him.
A sniper's t-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills."
A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed a sniper course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it."
Kfir Brigade's Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young Palestinian woman with bruises with the slogan, "Bet you got raped!"
The Givati Brigade also wore t-shirts with the text "Let every Arab mother know that her son's fate is in my hands!" This text is a riff off the famous saying by David Ben-Gurion, "Let every Jewish mother know that the fate of her sons is in the hands of worthy commanders."^[7]
One t-shirt showed a picture of a child in the cross-hairs of a sniper's scope, with the text "the smaller they are, the harder it is!"
Several t-shirt designs celebrated the infamous IDF practice of "confirming the kill" (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range, to ensure he is dead), which the IDF officially denies performing despite repeated evidence to the contrary. One such shirt read "We won't chill 'til we confirm the kill".
Another shirt by Lavi Battalion, which spent three years in the West Bank, reads: "We came, we saw, we destroyed!" — alongside images of weapons, an angry soldier and a Palestinian village with a ruined masjid in the middle.
The "Night Predators" demolitions platoon from Golani's Battalion 13 ordered a T-shirt showing a Golani devil detonating a charge that destroys a mosque. An inscription above it says, "Only God forgives."
After Operation Cast Lead, soldiers from Golani's Battalion 13 also printed a T-shirt depicting a vulture sexually penetrating Hamas's then-prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, accompanied by "a particularly graphic slogan".^[1]
One t-shirt shows a Palestinian woman leaning against a weapon that resembles a penis, and is captioned "Whores!"^[8]
Other t-shirt designs featured targeting or blowing up religious sites, women, and children.
Still other designs feature the sexual denigration of woman in general (not specific to Palestinians) with designs and text featuring nudity, female subjugation, rape, and other exploitative content.^[4]

T-Shirt Images[edit | edit source]

While many different slogans have been reported by Israeli media (see above), only a few photographs of these t-shirt designs have accompanied the various stories. Some of them are reproduced below:

"1 shot 2 kills" while taking aim at a pregnant Palestinian woman.
"Better use Durex"
"The smaller they are, the harder the kill"
"If you believe it can be fixed, then believe it can be destroyed!"
"Let every Arab mother know that her son's fate is in my hands!"
"We won't chill 'til we confirm the kill."
"You can run, but you'll only die tired."
"You've got to run fast, run fast, run fast, before it's all over." with a drawing of an Arab mother weeping over a grave and "And afterward they cry, and afterward they cry."