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.
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.
