Sex Crime Allegations Among Army Soldiers Surge in Israel

Sex crime allegations in the Israeli military have doubled since 2012, reports Israeli military weekly Bamahane.

“This is a very troublesome phenomenon, and soldiers don’t understand how grave it is,” chief military prosecutor Udi Ben-Eliezer said.

The sex crimes are seen to be on the rise due to alleged use of social media. The fact that ‘infringement of privacy’ counts as a sex crime has contributed to the rise; in some incidents compromising photographs were collected and shared, making up 35 percent of cases.

Israeli officials blamed the rise in sex crimes on messaging applications such as WhatsApp, saying they were seen as a threat to both battlefield secrecy and to the privacy of women soldiers.

The journal cited, as one example, a soldier who photo-shopped the face of a female comrade onto an image of another woman's nude body and compelled her into having sex with him by threatening to circulate the image.

In another case, a non-commissioned officer was accused of covertly photographing women in the shower.

Earlier, reports revealed a rise in the sexual harassment of female soldiers in the Israeli army. One out of eight female soldiers has reportedly been subjected to sexual assault.