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.
People holding up a portrait of the late Hind Rajab at the 82nd International Venice Film Festival in September 2025. Credit: Stefano Rellandini/AFP 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.
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Eitan and other Israeli soldiers cheering an explosion in Younis Khan, Gaza. Credit: Hind Rajab 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 wh…
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