Amid efforts abroad to prosecute combat soldiers, IDF to try to conceal their identities
Troops under rank of brigadier general to have faces blurred, names hidden when interviewed, but no action taken against core source of info — social media posts by soldiers themselves
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
Amid efforts by pro-Palestinian organizations to get Israeli soldiers traveling abroad arrested and prosecuted for war crimes, the Israel Defense Forces decided on Wednesday to try to conceal the identities of all troops who participate in combat.
It is not clear, however, that the new regulations it is introducing will have a significant effect.
Under the IDF’s new guidelines for the media, any interview with officers under the rank of brigadier general will be held with their face blurred or from the back, and their full name hidden, similar to the current conduct when interviewing members of special forces and pilots.
The guidelines will apply to all soldiers, especially those with foreign citizenship, as they are at a heightened risk of prosecution should they travel abroad.
Soldiers being interviewed may also not be “linked” to a specific incident of combat under the new guidelines.
Senior officers above the rank of brigadier general, or officers whose names are already public, will be allowed to show their faces and full names in interviews.
Before any interview with the media, members of the Military Advocate General’s Department of International Law will brief officers, and the footage will need to be approved by the IDF’s Military Censor and Information Security Department.
The new guidelines seemed unlikely to significantly affect efforts to have IDF soldiers tried for war crimes.
The organizations behind the attempts generally identify soldiers via social media content that they themselves post while operating in Gaza, and rarely from news media content.
The Israeli military has done little to stop soldiers from sharing unauthorized content from operations online, with the phenomenon remaining widespread in the 15th month of the war.
The military’s new directives come amid a campaign by the Hind Rajab Foundation, a nonprofit based in Belgium, to identify Israeli soldiers who have published videos to social media in which they commit, claim to have committed, or appear to endorse committing potential war crimes, and to alert local law enforcement when they travel abroad in an attempt to get them arrested and prosecuted.
The organization, which proclaims that it is “devoted to ending Israeli impunity and achieving justice for Hind Rajab and all the victims of the Gaza Genocide,” is named after six-year-old Hind Rajab, who was killed in Gaza in January. Her death was blamed on the IDF, but an initial probe conducted by the army said that there were no troops in the area at the time.
The Belgium-based group said it had filed evidence of alleged war crimes with the International Criminal Court against 1,000 Israelis, including video and audio reports, forensic reports and other documentation. The ICC confirmed it had received a filing and said it would “analyze the materials submitted, as appropriate.”
The IDF does not bar soldiers from traveling abroad, but it does conduct a “risk assessment” for troops who served in Gaza before approving their request. IDF reservists who fought in Gaza are being advised to first check with the Foreign Ministry regarding the level of danger in any country they wish to visit.
On Sunday, the Foreign Ministry said that it “draws the attention of Israelis to posts on social media about their military service, and to the fact that anti-Israeli elements may exploit these posts to initiate futile legal proceedings against them.”
So far, none of the Hind Rajab Foundation’s accusations have resulted in any arrests, although its actions are of concern to the Foreign Ministry.
