Avraham Zarbiv, an Israeli army reservist and rabbinical judge who has become internationally known for videos documenting the destruction of Palestinian homes in Gaza, has been selected to light one of twelve torches at Israel's independence day ceremony on Tuesday evening. The honour, held at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, is among the most prestigious in the country, with torch-lighters chosen each year for what organisers describe as their "extraordinary contribution to society and the state."

Zarbiv, 54, first gained widespread attention in early 2024 when footage of him demolishing homes in Gaza's Khan Younis circulated on social media. He has since posted multiple videos of himself operating a D9 armoured bulldozer — a heavily armoured military engineering vehicle — through residential neighbourhoods in Gaza, often accompanied by inflammatory commentary. "You will have nothing left," he says in one video, as the camera pans across a landscape of rubble. "We will flatten you and destroy you." His activities spread so widely that his surname entered Hebrew slang: "to Zarbiv" now means to obliterate or flatten. In January 2025, he boasted of demolishing "50 homes a week" in Gaza, adding that entire families had been left with nothing — no documents, no photographs, no shelter. He has also filmed himself taking part in demolitions in southern Lebanon. Israel's military leadership has publicly distanced itself from him, with a brigadier general stating last week that Zarbiv "was not selected in coordination with the IDF" and does not represent the army at the ceremony.

Transport Minister Miriam Regev, who nominated Zarbiv, praised what she called his "inspirational" combination of religious and military leadership — "between the book and the sword." However, the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem condemned the selection as a "state-level endorsement of the complete dehumanisation of Palestinians," saying it sent a message that "genocide, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes are the 'spirit of the nation'." Haaretz, one of Israel's main daily newspapers, published an editorial arguing that Zarbiv's selection undermines Israel's legal defence against genocide charges in international courts. In January 2025, the Belgian-based Hind Rajab Foundation filed a complaint against Zarbiv with the International Criminal Court, citing his recorded statements and actions as potential breaches of the Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute. Separately, Israel's own judicial ethics commissioner ruled earlier this year that Zarbiv had violated the code of conduct for judges.

Adding a further layer of controversy, the land monitoring group Kerem Navot confirmed that Zarbiv's own home is built illegally on private Palestinian land in the Beit El settlement in the occupied West Bank, and has been under a demolition order since 2000 — an order that has never been enforced. The broader context of destruction in Gaza is stark: UN figures show that nine in ten homes across the territory have been destroyed or damaged since October 2023, with schools, hospitals, mosques, and other civilian infrastructure also targeted. Some legal scholars have begun calling for the scale of structural destruction to be recognised as a distinct war crime — "domicide." Rights groups argue that honouring Zarbiv at a national ceremony signals not an aberration, but a deliberate embrace of that destruction as a point of national pride.