A former Israeli general running for prime minister allegedly used stolen Palestinian footage for a series of campaign ads in which he boasted of sending parts of Gaza “back to the Stone Age” during the 2014 war.
Benny Gantz was the head of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) during the 2014 conflict but has now entered politics and is running against Benjamin Netanyahu in April’s elections.
The 59-year-old has said little about his political positions so far but released a series of videos burnishing his military credentials.
One boasts of killing 1,364 Palestinian terrorists during the war, while another says that under Mr Gantz’s command “parts of Gaza were sent back to the Stone Age.” The videos make no mention of the 1,462 civilians killed during the conflict, according to a UN count.
A third video features drone footage showing the scale of destruction in Gaza after the war. The footage was shot by Media Town, a Palestinian film company based in Gaza, and the group said Mr Gantz’s campaign had stolen the footage and used it without permission.
“These stolen images were used to boast about the murder and destruction Gantz committed in Gaza,” said Ashraf Mashharawi, the chief executive of Media Town. “It is inhuman to destroy people’s lives and then say you are proud of it.”
Mr Gantz’s campaign video:
Media Town’s original footage:
He said his company had made a formal complaint to Youtube over copyright infringement but that Mr Gantz’s video remained up. Mr Gantz’s campaign declined to comment on where it got the drone footage from.
Mr Mashharawi said his firm had been the first to use drone video to chart the damage in Gaza after the 2014 war. He said Media Town had sold the footage to the BBC but under a license that would not allow it to be sold on without permission.
Mr Gantz has said little in public since launching his Israel Resilience Party last month, but his videos suggest he plans to run towards the centre as an experienced military leader who is prepared to try for peace talks with the Palestinians.
“It’s not shameful to be striving for peace,” he says in one video, which shows past Israeli leaders meeting with the king of Jordan and the president of Egypt, the only two Arab countries with which Israel has diplomatic relations.
“In another 25 years do we still want to be sending our children to fight? No,” Mr Gantz said. “I can’t accept that there will be a entire generation here without hope,” he said. “It can be different here.”
Polls show Mr Gantz tied for second place with the centrist Yesh Atid party and winning around 13 seats in the Israeli parliament. Mr Netanyahu’s Likud Party will win around 30 seats, according to current polling.
Mr Gantz will formally launch his campaign this week with a major speech on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, an minister from Mr Netanyahu’s Likud released a video boasting that he had been endorsed by Elor Azaria, an Israeli soldier who spent nine months in prison for executing a wounded Palestinian attacker.
The teenage soldier became a polarizing figure after he was filmed killing the incapacitated Palestinian, who had earlier stabbed an Israeli soldier.
Many Israelis, along with the military leadership, were horrified by the killing but Azaria became a folk hero to some on the Right, who said it was wrong to jail the soldier for killing a terrorist even if he was unarmed.
Yaron Mazuz, a deputy environment minister, released a video where he sat next to a smiling Azaria and shook his hand.