Boundaries Pushed: An Israeli Soldier’s Instagram Account

People will always push boundaries, regardless of the venue. Comedians push boundaries daily, but it’s what we expect. The same goes for writers, musicians, movies and television and so many other things we live with on the daily. If an artist doesn’t push boundaries, we often question their motivation and skills and ask why are they even doing art. It’s within that area when a regular person pushes boundaries that we tend to pause and question whether or not what they did was wrong.

An Israeli soldier posted a picture on Instagram of the back of a Palestinian boy’s head in the cross-hairs of his sniper rifle. This obviously garnered worldwide outrage and pushed those boundaries in the wrong direction.

“This is what occupation looks like. This is what military control over a civilian population looks like,” a member of the organization, Breaking the Silence, said of the image and other images like this on their Facebook page. Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran Israeli combat soldiers campaigning to raise awareness about life in the West Bank.

The image has been the catalyst for articles regarding this subject:

I guess one takeaway is that when these boundaries were pushed in this instance they quickly brought to the attention of all media sources. The IDF released a statement and stated that Ostrovski’s actions (posting the picture to his Instagram account) “are not in accordance with the spirit of the IDF or its values.” I suppose that’s a step, but will this be the last time something like this happens? And what can we do about it?

Image via Guardian