While millions of people in war-torn areas rely on messaging apps like WhatsApp as their only link to the outside world, Israeli security agencies have turned this very space into a new kind of battlefield—one in which private information, local movements, collective emotions, and even a person’s contact list can be weaponized.
Software in appearance, hardware in function
WhatsApp, a free and encrypted messaging app with wide reach, is often the only communication tool available to civilians, journalists, and aid workers in conflict zones like Gaza. However, in recent years—particularly during the wars of 2021, 2023, and 2025—this space has been subject to intense and systematic surveillance and exploitation by Israel’s intelligence services. Reports and investigations suggest that Israel uses WhatsApp as a weapon of war on three levels.
The first is intelligence gathering and public opinion engineering. In times of crisis, residents of war zones receive messages from unknown numbers. These messages often include evacuation warnings, efforts to instill fear, or specially crafted notices supposedly from the Israeli army. In reality, they are less about alerting civilians and more about collecting field data, gauging social reactions, and testing channels of information penetration. A concrete example occurred during the recent attacks on Rafah in June 2025, when thousands of Palestinian civilians received messages saying, “The Israeli army warns you to leave the area immediately to save your life.” It later became clear that the areas they fled to were themselves targeted in subsequent strikes. Experts say the goal of such messages is less to inform and more to track population movements, assess reactions, and guide displaced people to locations that are easier to target.
The second level is espionage and the extraction of social data. WhatsApp, installed on many mobile phones and granted access to contacts, location, microphones, and internal storage, can easily become a gateway for surveillance into a targeted society. According to leaked documents from 2019 linked to the controversial spyware Pegasus, Israel’s military and intelligence agencies have used infected links sent through WhatsApp to infiltrate the phones of activists, journalists, and even aid workers in Gaza. These intrusions have granted access to real-time locations of rescue or resistance forces, contact networks, documents, files, internal photos, and even remote microphone activation without user consent.
The third level is the destruction of public trust and the creation of informational chaos. War doesn’t take place solely on the battlefield—it also plays out in the minds of the people and in the information space. Israel systematically targets public trust by flooding WhatsApp with false messages about evacuations, regime collapse, or fabricated betrayals. For example, during one of the 2023 offensives on Gaza, fake WhatsApp messages claimed resistance forces had retreated. Hours later, the same area was heavily bombed. During the ground offensive on Khan Younis, some civilians received messages saying that resistance groups were using them as human shields—an effort to sow social division and tarnish the image of the resistance.
Israel’s cyber arsenal: war by smartphone
It must be understood that Israel is not merely a traditional military power. It possesses one of the most advanced cyber units in the world, including the Israeli Army’s Unit 8200. This specialized division focuses on intercepting encrypted communications, analyzing user behavior on messaging apps, designing deceptive malware, and conducting social engineering campaigns driven by fear, rumors, and false information. With its global infrastructure and the heavy dependence of vulnerable communities on its services, WhatsApp is the ideal arena for such operations.
In today’s world, a smartphone is no longer just a communication device. It is a possible entry point for enemy manipulation, a surveillance mechanism, and a battlefield for psychological operations. Israel’s use of WhatsApp and other messaging apps is not merely about sending texts—it’s about locating you, manipulating your environment, and extracting critical intelligence without a single physical confrontation.
To counter these tactics, potential solutions include raising media literacy among civilians in conflict zones; establishing independent warning systems; verifying suspicious messages and tracking unlawful cyber activity; and holding tech companies legally accountable for allowing their platforms to be exploited by aggressor regimes. Only through such efforts can the manipulative strategies pursued by the Israeli regime via WhatsApp be effectively neutralized.
NOURNEWS