An IDF soldier visiting her parents in Turkey, who was arrested by Turkish authorities after calls by Islamic groups in Ankara to imprison her, was spirited out of the country in an under-the-radar mission on Feb. 18, Israel’s Channel 12 revealed on Wednesday.
Few details about the mission to bring the young woman home were given in the report, except that pressure by Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and the United States were key to winning her release. That pressure overcame the Islamist groups, who had filed a complaint with Turkish legal authorities and demanded that she not be allowed to leave the Anatolian country.
The soldier, a dual Turkish-Israeli citizen, had been held in jail for several hours and then remanded to house arrest for several days. The offense was serving in a foreign army.
Yaron Avraham, Channel 12’s political correspondent, said the incident raises to the fore the vulnerability of some 50,000 IDF soldiers with dual citizenship, who may face similar threats. IDF soldiers have also been targeted for arrest while on vacation.
The specter of Israeli soldiers being arrested while visiting foreign countries came to the attention of the Israeli public last year when in January 2025, an Israel Defense Forces reservist on vacation in Brazil was forced to flee the country, aided by the personal intervention of Israel’s foreign minister.
Perhaps the most active anti-Israel NGO employing this lawfare tactic is the Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF).
Its modus operandi is to monitor the social networks of soldiers for posts about their service—for HRF, service in Gaza is prima facie evidence of war crimes—and then to launch a suit in the countries those soldiers visit, typically on vacation.
Brooke Goldstein, founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project, a group dedicated to defending Jewish civil rights, told JNS at the time:
“Previous failed efforts to prosecute Israelis for alleged war crimes have focused primarily on political and military leaders rather than rank-and-file soldiers. The move to target lower-level personnel, like the IDF soldier in Brazil, represents a major escalation in legal and advocacy strategies.”
HRF also filed a brief with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, accusing more than 1,000 IDF soldiers of war crimes allegedly committed in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
In July 2025, Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism recommended barring Hind Rajab members from entering the Jewish state due to the group’s lawfare efforts against Israeli citizens.
“To date, [Hind Rajab] has filed claims against at least 28 soldiers in eight different countries,” the ministry said last year.
