A new advertising campaign by Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, an Israeli military company, has triggered widespread anger and condemnation after the company used real footage showing the assassination of an unarmed young Palestinian man in northern Gaza. A Spike FireFly loitering munition drone killed the man, all featured as part of a promotional video marketing Rafael’s weapons to international buyers.
The video, which circulated widely on social media, sparked an outpouring of outrage across platforms. Palestinian and Arab commentators condemned what they described as the company boasting about its “military precision” by killing a starving young man who was searching for food and attempting to flee for his life, only to be killed within the target zone.
In an official post on its X account, Rafael declared: “Spike FireFly: Proven Precision. Redefining Tactical Superiority. We celebrate two years since FireFly’s operational deployment, ushering in a new era of precision for tactical combat forces. Since its first use, FireFly has proven its worth in the most challenging environments, delivering precise strikes with minimal collateral damage, even in GPS-jammed conditions and severe weather.”
The company described FireFly as a mobile tactical munition in the Spike family — small, easily carried on the back, and simple to operate — claiming it boosts lethality while reducing risk to friendly forces, and calling it a “game-changer” for combat scenarios.
According to activists on social media, the assassination incident occurred in late 2024, when the young man was searching for food before being targeted by the drone.
Commentators described the footage as a “crime turned into marketing material,” calling it a dangerous precedent and “unprecedented madness” in the world of military advertising.
Several activists argued that Rafael exploited Palestinian blood as a promotional tool, describing what happened as “the normalisation of crime and the turning of killing into a PR scene.”
Others condemned it as an “ethical and humanitarian scandal,” with the execution of an unarmed civilian used as proof of so-called “Israeli military precision.”
One activist wrote in response: “What is this brutality? A civilian in Gaza becomes a marketing gimmick for an Israeli arms company.”
Other voices said that if Rafael indeed used this footage, it exposes a deeper, uglier reality: an arms industry thriving on perpetual conflict, where Palestinian lives are reduced to “collateral damage” in a race for market dominance.
Activists pointed out that the tragedy in Gaza has even harsher dimensions, as nearly 1.4 million displaced people are crammed into overcrowded areas, making the humanitarian situation especially harrowing.
Some commentators asked bitterly: “Where is humanity? Have Palestinian lives become so cheap that their deaths are displayed to sell weapons? What kind of cruelty is this?”
Others described the ad as direct documentation of what could be called a “war crime,” arguing that Israel no longer hides its actions but showcases them to the world as a calling card for its combat effectiveness.
Many concluded that the real scandal lies not only in the footage itself but in the normalisation of war and its transformation into a profit-making laboratory.
It is worth noting that since October 7, 2023, Israel has committed acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip, resulting in around 196,000 Palestinians killed or injured — most of them children and women — with more than 10,000 missing and hundreds of thousands displaced.
