IDF Pics on Facebook

Does uploading pictures to your Facebook profile harm Israel’s national security?

This is the question that I was faced with when I added photos from my reserve army service to my Facebook Page. As soon as I uploaded them I received angry tweets telling me that I was hurting the IDF.

I decided to attempt to find the official IDF position on this matter via a Google search but came up with nothing official on the matter. What I did find was the IDF’s own Facebook page and their official blog. On one page they have some incredible video of the most elite units in the IDF conducting training and showing off some of their capabilities on camera for the world to see.

I think that all of the information being posted online by the IDF makes a mockery of any calls from the IDF for others not to post their own photos up. I am sure that there are pieces of equipment that are sensitive and that would make officers somewhat nervous but then again up until the video of Lotar Eilat was posted on the IDF blog I was under the impression that the mere mention of them was forbidden and yet there they are on the blog.

In this day and age when social media has become an important part of people’s (social) lives I think that it is important that the IDF makes it’s own feelings on the matter really clear and also accessible so that people don’t inadvertently find themselves getting into trouble. I would also hope that they hold a nuanced position with regards to this. After all it isn’t just the IDF main website that post pictures online, my old unit Orev Tzanhanim has its own site where I even found pictures of myself and my team mates posted. Not to mention pics of TOW missiles which I always left out of my publicly displayed photos (despite the fact that the missiles we shoot are often older than I am).

Seeing them on the official site of my unit makes me ask myself why I’m not posting them.

I think that posting pictures gives the army a human face and I also feel that there are a lot of supporters of the IDF who want to see them and clearly the IDF feels the same way, after all they have publicised a lot more than I have on the inner workings of the army.

I haven’t posted anything that is anywhere near as sensitive on my page as the IDF has on theirs and so until someone officially tells me otherwise I think I am going to continue to post my pics.