After an Israeli soldier on a “dream trip” was forced to flee Brazil fearing arrest, the Israel Defense Forces is taking new measures to shield the identities of its troops in light of anti-Israel groups’ efforts to have them arrested when they are traveling abroad. 

Under the IDF’s new media guidelines, which were announced on Wednesday, the names and faces of all officers below the rank of brigadier general must be concealed in any interview. Soldiers being interviewed also cannot be linked to any specific combat operation. The rules apply to both soldiers on active duty and those in the reserves. 

The policy change comes as Israeli soldiers outside of the Jewish state have been targeted by groups by calling on foreign courts to investigate the soldiers for alleged war crimes in Gaza. Last week, an IDF soldier, Yuval Vagdani, who survived Hamas’s attack at the Nova Festival on October 7 and later served in Gaza, was forced to cut his vacation in Brazil short after the Brazilian Federal Court ordered police to launch a war crimes investigation on him. 

The investigation, Brazilian news reported, was opened over suspicion of Mr. Vagdani’s involvement “in the destruction of a residential building in the Gaza strip while using explosives outside of combat.” Mr. Vagdani was able to escape Brazil with the help of the Israeli foreign ministry, which arranged for him to be “smuggled” into Argentina. From there he flew to Miami and then to Israel, Channel 12 news reports. 

Mr. Vagdani, who survived Hamas’s attack by running many miles from the festival and narrowly dodged Hamas gunfire, was in Brazil for his “dream trip” after a long run in the reserves, he told Israel’s Kan news. Being forced to flee Brazil, “felt a little like a bullet in the heart,” he said. 

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, called the incident “a systematic and antisemitic campaign aimed at denying Israel’s right to self-defense” and said that “countless international actors and many countries are complicit in this.” 

The investigation was opened after Brazilian officials received a complaint from the Hind Rajab Foundation, a group that scours social media for the identities of IDF soldiers and pursues legal action against them. When these soldiers travel abroad, the organization will notify local law enforcement in an effort to get them prosecuted for alleged war crimes. 

The foreign ministry has reported at least 12 cases in which such a complaint has been filed against an IDF soldier, including in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Belgium, the Netherlands, Serbia, Ireland, and Cyprus. So far, though, the Hind Rajab Foundation has been unsuccessful in securing any arrests.  

The group is named after a 5-year-old girl who was killed in Gaza during the war. Although her death was blamed on the IDF, a military probe has since shown that there were no Israeli soldiers in the area at the time. An NGO watchdog group, NGO monitor, has offered evidence of the Hind Rajab Foundation’s ties to terror group Hezbollah. 

Given that the Hind Rajab Foundation and other doxxing groups typically use social media platforms to source content, Israeli officials have urged IDF soldiers to be wary of what they share online. On Sunday, the foreign ministry said that the incident “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.”