Israel’s ‘Morpheus’ AI System: Monitoring Social Media or Blocking Evidence of War Crimes?

The Israeli military announced plans to implement a new artificial intelligence system named Morpheus, designed to monitor soldiers' social media activity and validate all shared content—ranging from text and images to videos.

Army Radio reported that the decision comes after claims that Hamas gathered details about the military and its operations prior to the October 7, 2023, attacks by tracking soldiers’ publicly accessible accounts on various platforms. The initiative is intended to address what the army considers “a significant vulnerability,” the broadcaster said.

The system “learns through AI to examine posts and determine whether they expose sensitive details, such as locations of bases, weapons or any other information,” the radio said. If a post is deemed a threat to “national security,” the system issues an automated alert directing the soldier to remove it. In more severe instances, an information security officer follows up with a phone call to the soldier.

Israel Monitors Soldiers’ Social Media after Oct. 7 Events

The army anticipates that Morpheus will secure full legal approval and intends to start full operation in early December. It will oversee roughly 170,000 soldiers with public social media accounts, while excluding private accounts and reservists due to legal constraints.

The report stated that Morpheus ran a four‑month trial, overseeing 45,000 soldiers’ accounts. During the trial, multiple posts prompted alerts, and the information security contacted soldiers to delete them.

The military admitted that the measure “goes beyond standard discipline rules and restricts soldiers’ privacy,” but emphasized it is essential to avoid a recurrence of the October 7 events, it added.

Legal Complaints Target Soldiers’ Online Evidence

Since the war began, the IOF has failed to enforce its combat-zone phone rules during the war, and even after the measures were taken, they still failed to curb the circulation of social media footage, a joint Shomrim–Channel 12 investigation revealed.

The IOF has repeatedly cautioned soldiers against sharing battlefield videos on social media and updated its rules for interviews, instructing journalists to protect the identities of soldiers.

However, the launch of Morpheus highlights Israel’s heightened concern over the legal risks stemming from soldiers’ online activity, which may serve as evidence in international courts. The move follows months of work by pro-Palestinian groups, including Belgium’s Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), aimed at pursuing international prosecutions of Israeli soldiers for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

This month, The Hind Rajab Foundation filed a criminal complaint with the Czech Republic’s Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office, accusing an Israeli soldier of participation in atrocities in Gaza. The HRF stated that the complaint, filed in Prague by lawyer Jan Taubl, is based on an extensive report describing Noam Tsuriely’s role in war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and public celebrations of Israeli atrocities through his musical performances.

According to the HRF, Tsuriely’s social media activity appears to document repeated entries into Gaza, several deployment cycles, and involvement in destructive operations.

The NGO reviews and analyzes videos, images, and posts that Israeli soldiers upload to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and similar platforms, using this material as evidence in legal cases across various countries.

Moreover, HRF submitted a complaint to the International Criminal Court in October 2024, accusing 1000 Israeli personnel of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide. The case was supported by more than 8,000 documents, including social media footage, forensic reports, and eyewitness testimony.

In February, South Africa presented a dossier to the United Nations Security Council, asserting that it holds “openly available evidence on the State of Israel’s acts of genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.” The document cites hundreds of social media videos featuring soldiers.

A New Digital Battlefield After the Gaza War

Two pages on X,“Israel Exposed” and “Zionism Exposed” have centralized all the videos of war crimes of the Israeli army, documented by various reputable newsgroups on X and Telegram and several journalists from Gaza. According to an article published by Times of Israel last April, Israel Exposed has released an extensive collection of videos posted online by Israeli soldiers, purportedly showing their unlawful conduct in Gaza and the West Bank. Some footage might aid legal efforts accusing Israeli soldiers of war crimes, whereas other content could be used for “doxing,” meaning the release of private information (e.g., address, phone number, marital status), which could allow anti-Israel activists to identify and harass soldiers.

Israel Exposed announced on X that it had submitted the database to the International Criminal Court in The Hague and to the Hind Rajab Foundation’s legal team.

Israel Exposed’s database includes backups of clip collections from sites like TikTokGenocide.com, as well as videos gathered and organized by the group’s activists through what they describe as a collaborative effort coordinated on Discord, a platform popular among gamers. The group stated that the database was built with contributions from hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists who organized and categorized them via Discord. It also preserves established collections from groups that track Israeli soldiers’ social media activity.

Through this extensive database, the group aims to preserve soldiers’ social media videos in the public record, even if attempts are made to erase evidence of the IOF’s activities in Gaza from their personal accounts.

Israel’s War on Gaza and Databases Secured with Encryption Technology

This initiative is part of a broader wave of recent efforts by online groups to collect soldiers’ footage and make it searchable. A recently launched database provides a catalog of videos capturing Israeli soldiers’ activities in Gaza, sourced both from their own social media posts and from Palestinian contributors.

The footage is sorted into categories such as “playing with children’s toys” and “use of Palestinians as human shields” and further cross-referenced by the soldiers’ unit, such as the weapons involved, and the precise geographic location indicated by their tags. The database records the names of the soldiers who first posted the videos on social media.

Moreover, certain databases concentrate on soldiers with dual citizenship, aiming to pressure foreign authorities into pursuing legal cases against them outside Israel. Other databases extend beyond soldiers who fought in Gaza, with organizations reporting that they are assembling lists of Israeli journalists connected to the military or major Jewish institutions.

Another initiative focused on Israel’s war in Gaza uses blockchain technology to preserve soldiers’ social media footage in a decentralized ledger, reducing the risk of censorship by major platforms like X and Facebook if they attempt to restrict such content.

IOF Tightens Phone Restrictions for Officers amid Hacking Concerns

This growing dependence on digital surveillance reaches beyond ordinary soldiers, extending into the upper levels of military command.

Israeli Army Radio said Wednesday that the new policy will require all commanders from the rank of lieutenant colonel upward to conduct official communications solely on Apple iPhones, a step meant to reduce hacking risks for high-level officers.

The policy is designed to reduce the risk of accidental leaks through social platforms and messaging apps, where even casual activity can expose behavioral patterns or sensitive operational information.

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