While Israelis are trying to pick up the pieces and return to some form of normal life, across Europe, South America, and other regions, investigations are being opened, complaints filed, and legal proceedings launched, all with one clear purpose: to turn every Israeli soldier into an easy target. This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is a coordinated, global campaign run by organizations that openly declare their intention to reach everyone and have built massive databases from soldiers' social media posts.
In the first days of the war, anti-Israel organizations realized they could not defeat Israel on the battlefield, so they shifted to the only arena where they felt strong: the information battlefield. Instead of confronting the IDF, they chose to hunt the people wearing IDF uniforms.
They built a system designed to track Israeli soldiers around the world, using photos, videos, and posts that soldiers uploaded during the fighting. They understood that an individual soldier, someone taking a short trip abroad after the war to breathe, is a far easier target than a prime minister or defense minister. And that is precisely their aim: not only Israel's leadership, but Israelis themselves.
On October 7th, dozens of anti-Israel pages online began mapping and monitoring IDF soldiers' accounts. Pages like Israel Exposed, a central hub in an openly antisemitic campaign, started collecting and sharing posts in near real time; within months, their database grew to over 900 gigabytes of photos and videos. At the same time, the Qatari-funded Al Jazeera ran a system that identified and catalogued more than 2,500 soldier accounts, including personal details, photos, and unit information. These databases are not left online; they are transferred to anti-Israel legal organizations around the world, where the material is sorted, turned into case files, and used to file complaints in multiple countries.
They did not wait for the war to end. From day one, their goal was clear: to hunt IDF soldiers globally. And this hunt is already happening on the ground.
In Prague, an Israeli soldier was detained for hours at the airport after a criminal alert sent from France based entirely on social-media footage. Another soldier was summoned for an urgent investigation in Brazil following a complaint based on a video, and had to flee to Argentina to avoid arrest. This July, two Israeli soldiers were temporarily detained at the Tomorrowland festival in Belgium after being identified by content they had uploaded during the war.
These are not rare cases or isolated mistakes. They form a clear pattern: anti-Israel organizations are using soldiers' own wartime posts to pursue them abroad.
When the State of Israel wants to act decisively, it knows how. After the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant, Israel immediately activated a wide diplomatic and legal response. Joint teams from the Foreign Ministry, Justice Ministry, Military Advocate Generals Corps, National Security Council, and others worked around the clock to counter the threat and protect Israel's leadership.
No clear system warns soldiers which countries are risky to visit
All of that is important and justified. But while senior officials receive full state mobilization, ordinary soldiers and those who actually stood on the front lines remain far more exposed. They have no clear system warning them which countries are risky to visit, no commitment from the state to fund legal defense if detained, and the current approach is almost entirely reactive: the state intervenes only once a soldier is already in trouble.
A country that sends its young people to fight cannot allow them to stand alone once they return to civilian life. A country like ours, founded precisely because Jews had nowhere else in the world to count on, cannot look away while its soldiers are hunted beyond its borders.
These are young people who spent months in uniform, slept on the floor of some blown-out house in Gaza, missed holidays, family, and entire chapters of their lives; young people who lost friends and went through experiences no one their age should ever face. Now they are trying to return to normal life, not live in fear that a short vacation abroad might end in arrest at a foreign airport.
The responsibility to end this lies with the state, and it begins with a basic truth: those who defend the state must be defended by the state.
The war may have ended, but Israel's real test begins now: will it stand by the people who stood for it? As anti-Israel organizations pursue IDF soldiers around the world, Israel cannot remain on the sidelines. We must not abandon them.
Ofir Ohayon is the CEO of DiploAct, an Israel advocacy organization.