Israel is internally embroiled over a cascade of events stemming from the disclosure of a video allegedly showing five IDF soldiers torturing a Palestinian terrorist.
The terrorist himself was reportedly deported back to Gaza as part of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal last month.
The controvery in Israel is threefold:
• Was the Palestinian terrorist tortured, and if he was, was this an isolated case or part of a pattern?
• Are the soldiers accused of abusing the terrorists unfairly arrested, since the alleged vistim is unavailable to testify, or should the soldiers be tried on the basis of the available evidence?
• Is Military Advocate General Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, who leaked the video, a hero or a goat? Did her leak constitute the most severe propaganda attack Israel has experienced since its founding, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu charged, or did her leak, which was illegal, highlight a lapse in Israeli prison conduct?
Israel’s Justice Minister Yariv Levin announced on Nov. 4 his plan to appoint a retired judge as a special prosecutor to lead the investigation into Tomer-Yerushalmi.
Levin said Judge Asher Kula — the country’s State Ombudsman for Judges — would take over from Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, whom he says cannot participate due to a conflict of interest.
Tomer-Yerushalmi, who recently resigned as the Israel Defense Forces’ top legal officer, is accused of fraud, breach of trust, abuse of office, obstruction of justice, and unlawful disclosure of classified material in what has become known as the Sde Teiman leak scandal.
Sde Teiman is the name of the prison in the Negev where the alleged torture took place.
Baharav-Miara dismissed Levin’s claims of a conflict of interest as unfounded and insisted the Justice Minister lacks the authority to bypass her office.
Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned on Oct. 31 and was arrested Nov. 2 after disappearing for hours along the Tel Aviv coastline. Police continue to search for her phone, prompting suspicion that she staged a suicide attempt to destroy evidence —her phone.
Following her arrest, she underwent medical and psychological evaluations before being taken to Neve Tirza Women’s Prison in Ramla.
Five IDF reservists from the Force 100 Military Police unit were indicted in February for assault and causing severe injury.
“We have just received the notice that the terrorist is no longer held in an Israeli prison. We therefore call upon the IDF Military Prosecutor’s Office to immediately cancel the indictment,” attorneys for several of the suspects said in a statement cited by Israel National News.
“From day one, we told the military court that if the terrorist would be brought to testify, the case would collapse,” the defense team said.
“It is time to release the soldiers from the heavy burden that has weighed on their shoulders and allow them to return to anonymity and normal life.”
In July, 2024, IDF Military Police arrested nine soldiers as part of the probe into an incident of alleged abuse of terrorists imprisoned at the Sde Teiman makeshift detention center, located in the Negev Desert.
“Following a suspicion of serious abuse of a detainee who was held in the prison facility, an investigation by the Military Police was opened by order of the Military Advocate General’s Office,” the IDF said at the time.
In August, 2024, a medical opinion submitted to the court suggested the soldiers could be innocent. Prof. Alon Pikarsky, director of general surgery at Jerusalem’s Hadassah-University Medical Center, said the terrorist had possibly injured himself by inserting a foreign body.
The Sde Teiman facility, established in southern Israel after the outbreak of the Gaza war, has held more than 1,000 detainees from Gaza suspected of involvement in terrorist activity.
The IJN and JNS contributed to this story.
