From sharing supervillain quotes to passing a Russian child model off as a deceased Palestinian

The Daily Beast: Noor Ibrahim

The discourse around the most recent round of fighting between Israel and Hamas was already toxic. Then, while Gaza was burning, an IDF soldier posted a video last week on TikTok lip-syncing the quote, “Huh? What was that? I should kill everyone and escape?”

The soldier, who has been featured on the IDF’s Tiktok page, was sharing a quote from Harley Quinn, the unhinged supervillainess from the 2016 film Suicide Squad, based on the DC comic. “Sorry, it’s the voices,” the quote continues, “Ahaha, I'm kidding! Jeez. That's not what they really said."

Yael Deri, the TikToker in question, has posted other videos that drew backlash on social media, including one in which she danced and smiled to a patriotic Palestinian song, plastered with emojis of the Israeli flag.

“Now I’m not going to get into the fact that this song is obviously not meant for you,” one TikTok user said in a post responding to the clip. “But the fact that you’re smiling and dancing to this song right now when your people are killing kids, innocent kids, innocent mothers, fathers, and you have a smile on your face?”

An IDF spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast asking for confirmation about Deri’s position with the Israeli military. But a video on the IDF’s official TikTok account describes her in the caption as “a fighter from the crossing battalion ‘Ta’oz’ of the military police.”

Deri, who posted sporadically on Facebook in the years before she joined Tiktok, is seen in the video wearing patches from Israeli military police and the Ta’oz battalion, which carry out law enforcement functions among IDF troops and staff checkpoints. Deri is often seen in videos on her account filming at apparent checkpoints.

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