Declassified UK: British national smiling in front of a burning building in Gaza.
Posted: 13th October 2026
In June, I was handed a photo of a British national smiling in front of a burning building in Gaza.
Over the past four months with my colleagues at Declassified, we’ve taken that photo – and others posted on the man’s private Instagram account and shared by a seriously concerned source – to dig deeper and find out what exactly he was doing.
We’ve learned that the man, Jonathan Burman, who is in his mid-20s and from Manchester, was fighting for a unit in the Israeli army which repeatedly destroyed residential buildings in Gaza.
The burning building that he is smiling in front of was a UN school that sheltered dozens of Palestinians who had fled their homes under Israeli bombardment – until the Israeli army moved in and took it.
A former Israeli soldier who served in the same battalion as Burman and left Gaza on ethical grounds told Declassified that fighting in the enclave was an “absolute apocalypse”.
“You could just go and do whatever you want…You could burn down those houses and have no consequences whatsoever,” he said.
The damage to the school is not the only incident of concern that Burman might have been involved with.
Another photo he posted and captioned “Khan Yunis” shows him on one knee with a rifle in his hand, amid the rubble of residential houses with a bed strewn on its side and a partially buried toddler bike.
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The revelations about Burman come as a UN commission has said that any Israeli soldier who fought in Gaza after October 2023 should be considered as a war crimes suspect.
UN commissioner Chris Sidoti told us: “The methodology that Declassified UK has used is exactly the methodology that we use in conducting our own investigations.
“The boastfulness of these soldiers is quite incredible but they produce material like the material that you describe that put themselves at places where war crimes have been committed or at least serious events have occurred”, adding “it’s almost confessional information”.
You can read the full investigation here, and watch the full film now. It includes interviews from witnesses in Gaza, a veteran who fought in the same battalion as Burman, and those who are calling for further investigations into the actions of Britons like Burman fighting overseas.
In solidarity,
Hamza.
Hamza Yusuf
Regular Contributor
Declassified UK
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