In apparent snafu, IDF broadcasts classified papers, intel assessments

The army this week published unedited footage of a visit by the IDF chief of staff to southern Israel last week on its official YouTube page, including shots of classified documents and an intelligence officer’s assessment of last week’s Gaza rocket fire, in an apparent slip-up.

The military removed the video from its Hebrew-language YouTube page once it was alerted to the apparent mistaken broadcast. By that point it had already been watched by at least 60 people.

The video was from a visit made by IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot to areas near the Gaza Strip on May 29, amid heavy cross-border fighting.

As some 200 mortar shells and rockets were fired at southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, Eisenkot visited the surrounding area, meeting with senior officers and the heads of local governments.

Later in the day, the military released footage of the visit, though it had heavily edited and redacted the video, cutting it down to 24 seconds, removing the audio, and blurring the classified documents and computer screens.

On Monday, the Israel Defense Forces livestreamed approximately six unedited minutes of footage from this visit to the Gaza Division.

The last minute and a half of the footage was filmed inside a control center in the Gaza Division.

A lieutenant colonel in Military Intelligence could be seen and heard telling Eisenkot that the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas terrorist groups were responsible for the rocket fire, information that the IDF later made public.

The intelligence officer also said the commander of Hamas’s elite Nukhba Force was involved, something the IDF had not said publicly before.

In the shot were classified documents, screens showing IDF operational computer programs, a map, the faces of other intelligence officers, and a white board covered in what appeared to be codewords for different Gaza regions — all things that the military, as a matter of policy, blurs before publishing in order to prevent the information from being seen by foreign intelligence.

The military also blurs the faces of intelligence officers, out of concerns that they could be identified and targeted.

In a statement, the military blamed the broadcast on a “technical malfunction.”

“Due to a technical malfunction, wrong materials were broadcast on YouTube. The incident has been investigated and learned from, and protocols on the issue have been clarified,” the army said.

This was the second time in less than a month that the military livestreamed something accidentally on its YouTube page.

On May 24, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit broadcast footage from an event for parents of soldiers in its visual media branch, also apparently accidentally.

In that case, however, no sensitive information appeared to be revealed.

In both cases, the IDF was only alerted to the mistaken broadcasts when The Times of Israel called for comment.