IDF and Police
IDF and PoliceIsrael news photo: Flash 90

The Israel Defense Forces launched a new campaign on Sunday aimed at urging soldiers to refrain from hitchhiking, in an effort to prevent abductions.

Billboards with the campaign’s slogan, “Don’t catch a hike. The hike might catch you,” [the Hebrew expression for hitchhiking is "litpos tremp" literally "catching a hike", ed.] will appear at military bases, on trains, buses and main roads. The campaign will last for the next two weeks and will be re-launched again in a month and a half. It is intended to reach all IDF soldiers, combat and non-combat, as well as their families.

The IDF set up a website for the campaign, featuring a movie of a kidnapped soldier reading his abductors’ demands to release all of the “freedom fighters” in Israeli prisons.

The soldier is last seen saying, “Sorry, mother.”

“This campaign is the first in many years that we are leading in this area. The goal of the campaign is to inspire changes to the travel habits of soldiers, by having them understand the risk directly and from their families,” explained IDF Spokesperson, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai.

“The main channels being used are New Media outlets, with the understanding that these are the main outlets that soldiers and the public use,” he added. “The campaign will be focused on the IDF’s official website and on the IDF’s official Facebook and Twitter accounts.”