Israeli legal advocacy group Shurat HaDin has launched a new app designed to protect Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veterans from efforts to arrest them while traveling abroad, with the organization’s president warning that pro-Palestinian groups are actively tracking Israeli soldiers and pursuing legal action against them in foreign countries.
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, founder and president of Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, told Breitbart News that the threat has become serious enough that Israeli diplomatic officials are regularly warning veterans about potential efforts to detain them.
“It’s a real danger because pro-Palestinian organizations, like Hind Rajab or the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, are tracing IDF soldiers,” Darshan-Leitner said. “Every week there are soldiers who get warnings from the Israeli consulate or the Israeli ambassador to leave a certain country because of an arrest warrant that these organizations are seeking against them.”
Shurat HaDin launched the app, called Shachpatz — Hebrew for “bulletproof vest” — in late August to give veterans a centralized system for preparing to travel, receiving warnings while abroad, and obtaining assistance if they encounter legal trouble.
The app incorporates travel warnings and alerts from Israel’s Foreign Ministry and IDF, legal information, emergency and diplomatic contacts, a pre-travel checklist, and instructions explaining what travelers should do if questioned or detained.
Darshan-Leitner said the organization has also assembled a “war room” of more than 600 lawyers across 17 countries prepared to provide emergency legal assistance.
“If something happens, we put it on the app. If somebody else hears about it, they immediately put it on the app,” she explained. “It has instructions on what to do to try to avoid such an incident, how to take care of yourself before you travel, what to be alert to when you travel, and what to do if you get interrogated or arrested.”
Travelers can also report their own experiences, allowing Israelis to alert one another about hostile incidents or identify destinations where they have been treated particularly well.
“You know, they protected us, so now we have to protect them,” Darshan-Leitner said. The goal, she added, is to create “a community of travelers from Israel” capable of warning one another when problems arise.
Darshan-Leitner identified Belgium, South Africa, Canada, Thailand, and the Netherlands among countries where she believes Israeli veterans face heightened legal risks, pointing particularly to countries whose legal systems recognize forms of universal jurisdiction.
She sharply rejected the premise that foreign courts should be policing the conduct of Israeli soldiers, arguing that Israel maintains its own system for investigating allegations of misconduct by its forces.
“Israel does not need a foreign country to govern its soldiers,” she said. “Israel has a very strong law-enforcement system that prosecutes soldiers if they need to.”
Darshan-Leitner argued that the groups pursuing Israeli veterans are ultimately interested less in securing convictions than in generating the spectacle of an Israeli soldier being detained abroad.
“All they need to claim a victory is a photo of an IDF soldier arrested in a foreign airport,” she said.
Such an arrest, she warned, could have repercussions far beyond the individual involved by making reservists reluctant to travel and potentially causing young Israelis preparing for military service to reconsider joining combat units.
“People who served in reserve 300 days or 600 days and now want to go on vacation to chill out shouldn’t be afraid to go everywhere in the world,” she said.
Shurat HaDin’s involvement in the issue predates the current war. Darshan-Leitner said the organization has spent roughly 15 years fighting legal actions targeting Israeli soldiers and officials, including proceedings involving the International Criminal Court.
The organization has also pursued legal actions of its own against Hamas and Palestinian Authority officials and challenged international legal proceedings against Israeli officials.
Earlier this year, Shurat HaDin filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court against Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and other senior Spanish officials, alleging that Madrid enabled Iran’s “terror machine” through the export of dual-use components to the Islamic Republic.
Darshan-Leitner described Shachpatz as an extension of that broader legal campaign, but one aimed directly at protecting individual Israelis before an attempted detention can become an international incident.
“This time, the act is actually an act of self-defense,” she said, “to defend the IDF soldiers and do anything possible in order to prevent such arrest warrants.”
Because Shachpatz had been available for only about a week when Darshan-Leitner spoke with Breitbart News, the app itself had not yet been used to intervene in an attempted arrest, although Shurat HaDin had previously assisted Israelis facing legal threats abroad through its existing network.
Thousands of people had already downloaded the app, she said.
“We don’t want to see it happen,” Darshan-Leitner said of an arrest attempt requiring the app’s emergency resources, “but I’m sure it will become handy, unfortunately.”
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.