I’m blown away by the amount of material posted by Israelis during their service in the Israel Defense Forces, including Facebook and YouTube. I published the story below in today’s paper and on this blog, and since then several people have drawn my attention to more material out there, stuff I think should be classified. It seems that the most incriminating stuff has been posted by soldiers on reserve duty, pretty much wanting to show off to their friends and perhaps recapture some of the glory they felt when they were in their mandatory service. These guys are literally filming their tours of duty, including weapons training, going back home and uploading their videos onto YouTube. Some are even editing them and adding music and titles. I sincerely hope that somebody is starting to take a serious look at this problem.

Michael Freund pointed out some IDF training exercises he found on YouTube. This stuff is out in the open and anyone typing in Israel and military into YouTube will find this stuff, so I don’t feel like I’m revealing state secrets here.

This video, taken by someone on reserve duty, basically shows you how an IDF infantry unit trains. Should this kind of material be publicly available?

I happen to know that filming inside a guard post is extremely illegal and extremely frowned upon in the army:

I found dozens of such videos, and I get the feeling that it is no longer necessary for Israel’s enemies to plant spies within the IDF that can observe our military training. All they need to do is go online.

On a lighter note: this next video is really funny – soldiers headbutting a ram. I’m glad there are things like this out there, not everything has to be so serious. It doesn’t show any sensitive or classified information or tell you anything you can use against the IDF. It does show you however that there are many reservists who take their video-enabled cameras on duty with them and they are filming.