IDF Rolls Out Anti-Kidnap App To Help Keep Soldiers Safe

This article was first published by The Times of Israel and is re-posted with permission.

The 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers — Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Fraenkel, and Gil-ad Shaer — rocked the nation.

Recognizing that he and the other two had been abducted by the people who picked them up at a hitchhiking post, one of the teens called the police and whispered, “We’ve been kidnapped.” The call was transferred immediately to a senior officer, who continued to ask questions but received no reply. The call lasted for 2:09 minutes and was then cut off. The officer called the number eight more times but received three busy signals and reached voicemail five times.

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The kidnappers, apparently realizing that a call had been made, shot the three teens dead at that point in the backseat of the car, military sources said.

“After the kidnapping event, the IDF came to the conclusion that there must be a way to respond to soldiers who are in distress,” said IDF Major Itay Almog, manager of the army’s “Distress Signal” project, which was set up in 2016.

Last week, the army started rolling out a new app that does just that. All soldiers, whether in regular service or career officers, and civilians working for the army will be getting text messages from the army, inviting them to download a new app onto their smartphones that will allow them to alert authorities about emergency situations — terror attacks, kidnappings, natural disasters, or any other dire situation they are witness to.

“Within a minute, operational war rooms will know what is happening,” Almog said. “Our target population is all of our soldiers, and the aim is to improve the tactical response the IDF can give in a case of distress.”

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