The IDF in recent months has repeatedly warned Israeli soldiers against posting videos from the battlefield on social media, and updated guidelines regarding interviews with soldiers, asking journalists to conceal servicemen’s identities. The advices comes after months of efforts by pro-Palestinian organizations –  such as the Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation, whose activities were exposed in a Shomrim investigation earlier this year – to prosecute Israeli soldiers anywhere in the world and charge them for potential war crimes committed in Gaza. 

As Shomrim previously exposed in a series of articles in collaboration with Israeli Channel 12, the IDF has failed to enforce its own directives regarding phone use on the battlefield since the war began, highlighting the army’s broader difficulty in ensuring military discipline in its own ranks. And even when the IDF eventually took action, it was unable to stop the phenomenon, and the spread of social media footage.

In recent weeks, another group, called Israel Exposed, has uploaded a massive database of videos posted to social media by Israeli soldiers, documenting their alleged illegal actions in Gaza and in the West Bank. The database contains more than 350 gigabytes of information and is freely accessible for anyone to download. Some of the videos could be used to back legal cases arguing that Israeli soldiers committed alleged war crimes, while other footage could be used to “dox” soldiers, a term for publishing someone’s personal details, including their home addresses and marital status, allowing pro-Palestinian activists to potentially track and harass soldiers. 

Earlier in March, South Africa submitted a dossier to the United Nation Security Council which it claimed contain “openly available evidence on the State of Israel’s acts of genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.” The file includes hundreds of references to social media videos of soldiers gathered by pro-Palestian activists. 

According to Israel Exposed, the database was put together by hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists, who gathered and sorted out the videos on Discord – a social chat app popular among video gamers. The database includes archives collected by various organizations which monitor soldiers’ own social media accounts, where soldiers upload footage from the war on a daily-basis. With this large database, the organization seeks to ensure that soldiers’ social media videos will never be erased, even after soldiers attempt to delete videos and evidence from their own social media accounts, leaving a long-lasting legacy of the IDF’s actions in Gaza.

Israel Exposed said on its social media page that it handed the database over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, as well as to the legal team at the Hind Rajab Foundation.

Databases with encryption technology

This initiative is only one of several recent efforts by other online groups to gather soldiers' footage, and post it online in a searchable manner. Similar projects over recent years have gathered material from various conflict zones, especially following the Russian invasion of Ukraine with footage of the war’s horrors spreading quickly online.

Another initiative in the context of Israel's war in Gaza relies on blockchain technology, with Ethereum, a digital currency, and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) of soldiers’ social media footage, to ensure that the data is stored in a decentralized manner, and less vulnerable to potential censorship from social media companies and tech giants should platforms such as X and Facebook try to block their operations.

A third recently launched database presents a catalogue of videos of Israeli soldiers organized into different genres including “playing with children’s toys,” and “use of Palestinians as human shields.” The videos are cross-categorized with the soldiers’ military unit, the type of weapon used, and the exact geographical setting of the incident based on soldiers’ location tags. One section dedicated to the Givati brigade contains over 50 clips, showing soldiers “desecrating the Quran” and “shooting indiscriminately into Gaza.” The database includes the name of the soldiers who exposed themselves by originally uploading the videos to social media.

The problems facing dual citizens

Some of these databases focus on dual national soldiers, with the goal of putting pressure on foreign authorities to open court cases against them. Dual nationals are particularly at risk, as Shomrim reported in an earlier investigation. Canadian journalist Davide Mastracci, for example, put together a database using media reports and social media posts of some 85 Canadian citizens who served in the IDF. One of the Canadian citizens mentioned in the database is Ben Mizrahi, who grew up in Vancouver, moved to Israel and served as a lone soldier in the Paratroopers. Mizrahi was murdered on October 7 at the Nova music festival at the age of 22.

Mastracci’s apparent goal of his initiative is to pressure the Canadian government to ban citizens from joining the IDF. At the same time, the Canadian Jewish community raised concerns that the database could be used to physically threaten anyone whose name appears in it. Writing on X, Paul Hirschson – Israel’s Consul General in Montreal – said that “We know what ‘Jew lists’ means to Mastracci’s type.”

Other databases go beyond soldiers who served in Gaza with organizations indicating that they are in the process of compiling lists of Israeli journalists linked to the military or prominent Jewish organizations, including Barak Ravid from Axios, who once served in the IDF as part of his mandatory service.

Need to Leave Right Away? The Plane Ticket is on You

Israeli authorities have so far  struggled to provide an answer for the challenges of this digital battlefield.  Earlier this year, after an Israeli soldier was threatened with arrest during a trip to Brazil, the Foreign Ministry rushed to put out a statement saying that “Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar immediately deployed all of the Ministry resources to ensure that the Israeli was not in any danger.” 

Yet, in practice, it is whether the ministry has taken sufficient steps to protect its servicemen abroad. When asked whether the soldier in Brazil paid for his own emergency ticket back to Israel, a spokesperson from the ministry did not confirm or deny whether his office did, or is planning to, cover such expenses.

One answer to the question came in the form of an advertisement by the Israeli travel insurance company, PassportCard which recently launched a campaign to insure soldiers in case they need to flee.

“Out of a deep sense of commitment to the security and liberty of IDF reservists and soldiers, we have established a special $1 million fund to cover the expense of emergency plane tickets up to $1,500 for any of our customers who are forced to alter the itinerary of their trip or leave the country they are in against the backdrop of demands for an overseas arrest warrant due to their involvement in Operation Swords of Iron,” Passport Card said in an email.

Last month, the Times of Israel reported that PassportCard paid for emergency flights back from Amsterdam for two vacationing soldiers after pro-Palestinian groups mobilized to have arrest warrants issued against them.

Shomrim did not receive a response from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for this article.