Israeli Military Condemns Troops' T-Shirts

The Israel Defense Forces today came out against a series of outrage-inducing T-shirts worn by its soldiers, the AP reports. The shirts, first reported by Haaretz, featured crude jokes about killing Palestinians—one depicts a child in cross-hairs along with the slogan, “The smaller they are, the harder it is,” while another shows a soldier blowing up a mosque as Palestinian women weep over a gravestone.

Soldiers ordered the shirts to celebrate graduating from various military courses, but they weren’t made or sanctioned by the military, the IDF said, calling them “simply tasteless.” It promised disciplinary action against anyone caught wearing the shirts. A Hamas spokesman, meanwhile, said the shirts demonstrate “the brutal mentality among the Zionist soldiers and the Zionist society.” (More Israel stories.)