A former soldier who was videotaped by friends as he danced next to a blindfolded female terrorist has been threatened by Hamas. The terrorist group threatened to kidnap him.
"Many Palestinian youth in the West Bank and in Gaza are trying to find the soldier's name and address, in order to kidnap him and join him with Gilad Shalit," a statement from Hamas said. The terrorist pictured in the video, 25-year-old Ekhsan Dibabse, said she plans to file suit against the soldier. Dibabse has already filed a complaint with the left-wing Committee Against Torture.
The incident took place in 2007, as Dibabse waited at a detention center after her arrest on suspicion of membership in the Islamic Jihad terrorist group. She has since served 22 months in prison.
The affair came to light after someone uploaded the video of the soldier dancing around Dibabse to YouTube.
After the video was made public, Dibabse told media that she felt "humiliated" and "powerless" during the incident, despite the fact that she did not know what was happening at the time. "I heard music and soldiers laughing, I felt like I was being photographed," she said. She accused a different soldier of hitting her when she attempted to remove her blindfold.
The incident was condemned by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the IDF. Netanyahu said, "These types of activities and videos bring shame to the IDF and to the state of Israel, and cause heavy damage to our international image.
"The IDF is once of the most moral armies on earth, and treats prisoners with dignity. The degradation of prisoners and detainees is not the way of the state of Israel, or of the Jewish people," he added.
IDF spokesmen reported that the army is investigating the incident. "The IDF condemns behavior of the type seen in these videos, and has acted and will continue to act to put an end to it, through the briefings given to soldiers, the instructions given to their commanders, the IDF code, and punishment when necessary," they stated.
"These videos represent the exception, and not the rule," they added.