It was only a matter of time before the chairman of the HaBayit HaYehudi Party, Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett, understood the potential of the mass protest that erupted on social media April 29 in support of David Adamov, a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Nahal Brigade, nicknamed “David the Nahlawi.”

Adamov was filmed in the West Bank town of Hebron cocking his rifle at a Palestinian youth who confronted him while holding brass knuckles. Bennett stormed onto his Facebook page, embracing David in a warm post in which he said he would have done the same. By so doing, Bennett gave the incident political overtones, appropriating David the Nahlawi for the right wing. He was joined by several Knesset members from the extreme right, such as Orit Strock and Moshe Feiglin, who "liked" the post and took pictures of themselves with signs reading "I, too, am with David the Nahlawi."

As of May 2, the number of likes on the Facebook page titled “I, too, am with David the Nahlawi” had reached 122,000, with more to come. The Nahal Brigade soldier has become a hero. The clip was filmed by a photographer on behalf of the "Youth against settlements" movement, and found its way to Israeli TV Channel 10. People assumed that Adamov, who was sentenced on the same day to 20 days in jail for violent behavior toward his commander, was punished because of the filmed incident. From that point it was only a short period of time until the IDF experienced its first outburst of digital protest.

The IDF, which was caught unprepared in the face of the tremendous wave of protest that spread on social media networks, tried to explain that David the Nahlawi was not punished at all over the incident in Hebron, but to no avail. Within a day, the soldier had turned into a symbol of the impossible reality with which younger soldiers — 18 or 20 years old — are forced to contend with in the territories.