Here’s one way to raise morale in wartime: Women are stripping down for sexy selfies to show their support for the Israel Defense Forces, now engaged in a ground operation in the Gaza Strip.
Submissions are pouring in from all over the world on the Standing With IDF Facebook page, with women are inscribing pro-IDF messages on their body before snapping pictures. After just two days, the page has received more than 16,000 likes on Facebook.
Most of the pictures feature women with “I <3 IDF” emblazoned on various body parts, but the page celebrated 15,000 likes by featuring a photo of a girl who had written “Fuck Hamas” on her butt cheeks.
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The page’s creator, Gavriel Beyo, 27, lives in Tel Aviv and has a background in marketing. With rocket attacks in Israel and combat casualties mounting from the IDF’s Operation Protective Edge, he remembered historic pictures showing soldiers looking at pinup girls before battle.
So on Wednesday, he started the Facebook page, thinking of it as a way to celebrate Israel’s freedom and those who fight for it.
“I was trying to romanticize IDF and Israel,” Beyo told The Daily Beast. “Everything related to Israel lately is labeled very grim…[these pictures] can serve as an ease.”
The first pictures came from his close friends—“I was blessed with a lot of great looking female friends”—and then the idea picked up steam.
The feedback that Beyo has gotten has been largely positive, he said, and he shared some messages he has received from IDF soldiers, translated from Hebrew.
“We [left] Gaza yesterday with no phones or anything…the first things my friends who stayed outside of action have told me is that I should check out those girls, they really adore us! So, really, thank you for making me forget for 10-15 minutes about the mud, sweat, sleepless nights, and being homesick,” one fan wrote.
Another wrote: “Your page [has] become the talk of the day in our army squad. You cannot even understand how much of an impact your love and support has on our reserve duty soldiers.”
Beyo also started a page for men who wanted to strip down to support the IDF, but it has drawn a lot less attention, he said, and far fewer likes.
