Israel army admits to running snuff psyop channel on Telegram 

The Israeli occupation army has admitted to running a Telegram channel showcasing extreme, graphic content and gore, or snuff films, glorifying the violence and war crimes carried out against the people of Gaza.

According to a report by Haaretz, the occupation army’s psychological warfare unit, the “Operations Directorate’s Influencing Department” has been operating a Telegram channel called “72 Virgins – Uncensored,” aimed at Israeli audiences and shows the bodies of Palestinians with the promise of “shattering the terrorists’ fantasy.”

In an exposé published in December, the Israeli outlet revealed that the channel, which boasts “exclusive content from the Gaza Strip” and has published over 700 posts, images and videos of Palestinians being killed and of destruction in the Strip, encourages thousands of followers to share the content so that “everyone can see that we’re screwing them.”

At the time, the Israeli military denied any connection to the channel, but a senior military official speaking on condition of anonymity disclosed to Haaretz that the army is indeed responsible for operating it.

However, in a follow-up report on Sunday, the newspaper said the army had admitted to running the channel, after the earlier report led to an internal investigation.

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In a written response to Haaretz, the Israeli army’s Spokesperson’s Unit said that after the probe, “it was found that the Telegram page was operated by the IDF without authorization and without authority. The incident has been dealt with.”

The IDF has been running a Telegram channel featuring homemade snuff films in which Gazans are brutally murdered by Israeli forces, captioned with celebrations of the gore and pain therein. One of those times where Israel is so awful you're sure you must be misreading the report.

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) February 5, 2024

The channel was created 9 October, two days after the war began, as “The Avengers.” The next day the name was changed to “Azazel,”  based on the Hebrew pronunciation of “Gaza” and a word for hell, before being changed to its current name.

One entry posted on 11 October reads: “Burning their mother … You won’t believe the video we got! You can hear the crunch of their bones. We’ll upload it right away, get ready.”

Images of Palestinian captives and corpses were captioned “Exterminating the roaches … exterminating the Hamas rats. … Share this beauty.” In another instance, the following caption accompanied a video of an Israeli soldier allegedly dipping machine gun bullets in pork fat: “What a man!!!!! Lubricates bullets with lard. You won’t get your virgins.” And: “Garbage juice!!!! Another dead terrorist!! You have to watch it with the sound, you’ll die laughing.”

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