An Israeli occupation soldier has provoked widespread outrage after posting online a photograph that apparently shows the back of the head of a Palestinian boy in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle

An Israeli occupation soldier has provoked widespread outrage after posting online a photograph that apparently shows the back of the head of a Palestinian boy in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle.

Mor Ostrovski, a 20 year-old soldier in the Israeli sniper unit, posted the photo on his personal Instagram account. The Arabic architecture of a village in the background supports the suggestion that the boy was Palestinian.

Ostrovski removed the image and closed his account over the weekend and told the Israeli military that he had found it on the Internet.

The Israeli organization “Breaking the Silence” condemned the image, with a member saying in a post on the group’s Facebook page that the image showed “what occupation looks like. This is what military control over a civilian population looks like."

The organization said the photograph revealed that not much has changed since a similar image was showcased in the group’s exhibition in 2003.

"There, too, an Israeli soldier aimed a weapon at a boy and took a picture with his camera as a memento, a gesture of an endless feeling of power that is connected to control over another people," the organization’s Facebook read.

"Ten years have passed. The devices and the applications have changed; the ways in which pictures are shared has changed. The feeling of excessive power and the clear contempt for human life and human dignity have remained," it added.