Hebron, 20 miles south of Jerusalem and home to 250,000 Palestinians and about 700 Jewish settlers, is a source of frequent clashes. Under a 1997 agreement, the Israeli military directly controls one-fifth of the city, including the burial site of biblical patriarchs where Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish doctor from a nearby settlement, killed 29 Muslim worshipers in a 1994 massacre. The rest of the city is the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority.

A decade ago, former soldiers from the Nahal Brigade who had been stationed on the same hot Hebron streets founded Breaking the Silence, an anti-occupation group that records soldiers sharing horror stories from their service and then uses the stories in lectures and guided tours.

“If you really understand the story, these things are the norms, and not exceptions, because that’s how you behave there, that’s the reality of military occupation,” Yehuda Shaul, one of the founders of Breaking the Silence, said in an interview Thursday. “If you’re a real combat soldier, if you are on the ground, you know that this is the way things are, and sadly, we don’t debate these things enough and we don’t confront them enough.”

Issa Amro, a spokesman for Youth Against Settlements, the group that posted the video, said that Sunday was “not the first time” Mr. Adamov had confronted activists from the group. Mr. Amro said the group had also recorded and posted video of the commander of the Nahal Brigade arresting a Palestinian boy “in a very, very violent way.”

“If the two-star commander did something like that, misbehaved, I think the soldiers will feel like, ‘O.K., we can do whatever we want,’ ” Mr. Amro said. “This unit is, until now, detaining kids, invading houses, going around in the Palestinian neighborhood.”

The creator of the Facebook page supporting Mr. Adamov wrote on the page that soldiers “find themselves handcuffed (figuratively) and confused” by military policy. “Should I take the chance that I will be humiliated, wounded and even risk my life, but I will know that the system will not be able to harass me?” the author asks in the unsigned posting. “Or do I use the means at my disposal,” and “take the chance that I will be in a different movie entirely: of a criminal in court for just doing my job?”

Most of the posts from supporters do not delve deeply into the nuances of military policy and punishment, but simply show people standing up in virtual support of the newly iconic soldier. Many but not all of those in uniform hid their faces. One had carved “We are with David the Nahlawi” into his close-cropped hair. Two scrawled the slogan on their bare backs. It was spelled out in pebbles on dirt, lit up in flames, and held by a baby in a bouncy seat.