Israel Defence Forces use social media to prevent attacks

Past six months have witnessed an intense wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories, with 230 attacks, in which 34 Israelis and foreign tourists and 121 Palestinian attackers were killed. But things seem to be getting a little better now. Though, the bloodshed is unlikely to end anytime soon with the leaders of two states incapable of even sitting down in the same room, it may at last be ebbing.

For Israel’s security services, the challenge this time around is a unique one. Unlike in previous rounds, the Palestinians carrying out the attacks are nearly all acting on their own and unaffiliated with armed groups. “In the second intifada <2000-2005> there was a clear chain from those directing and funding the attacks, and the dispatcher and perpetrator,” says an operations officer in the Israel Defence Force (IDF). “You could pinpoint a terror cell and take them out. Now you have to look at every Palestinian as a potential suspect, which is a bad situation. You need to be able to differentiate the perpetrators from the wider Palestinian public.”

This however is much easier said than done with very few of the attackers having any previous involvement in violent activities. Attacks are mostly individual or at the most in groups of two or three friends, and in some cases they are as young as thirteen. The IDF Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Gadi Eisenkot, admitted three months ago that Israel’s security services hadn’t had advance indications of any of the attacks. That has changed, at least in part, due to an unorthodox intelligence operation.

While the political clan has been part of mud-slinging on the internet and has tried, unsuccessfully so far, to persuade companies like Facebook to remove such content from their webpages, the intelligence chamber sees the social media networks as a potential opportunity to spot attackers in advance. With the average perpetrator aged between 15 and 25, majority of them are active on Facebook and Twitter, and in hindsight are found to have given some inkling of their intentions online.

“It’s a new paradigm where not only are we dealing with individuals with no organisational affiliation, but a week or even a day before, they had no idea they were going to carry out an attack,” explains an Israeli intelligence officer. “What we can do is build in-depth profiles of past perpetrators, what motivated and inspired them, and based on what they have in common locate those with similar characteristics.”

A new type of #lifehack from our navy: how to save a sinking chopper. pic.twitter.com/D3TeHbHrTJ

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) April 17, 2016

Post feeds by young Palestinians online in their Facebook or Twitter accounts can provide ample clue to this. Typical profiles of past perpetrators include allegations that Israel is “desecrating” the al-Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, complaints about the Palestinian leadership, and declarations of how they belong to a “lost generation” or are personally enraged by a relative, friend or neighbor having been killed by Israel. This is often coupled with personal problems, such as forced marriages, debt and social exclusion. Some of the perpetrators caught alive have admitted under interrogation that they wanted to kill themselves, avoiding shame by being regarded as “martyrs”. This now termed by Israeli security people as “suicide by IDF”.

Israel Defense forces have been able to avert quite a few attacks in the recent weeks using specially developed algorithms to monitor the social media accounts of young Palestinians that had yielded a list of potential suspects. Dozens of young men and women have received “warning visits” by the Shin Bet security service, in which they and their parents are told they’re under surveillance. The names are also passed on to the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatus so they can keep tabs on them.

These methods could be of use in other societies where disaffected young people are being radicalized on the web. The same tools through which they are pushed to join jihad could help to stop them before it is too late.