Israel rocked by scandal as prime army lawyer is thrown into jail : NPR

JERUSALEM — Till final week, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was the Israeli military’s prime lawyer. Now she is behind bars and on the heart of a scandal rocking the nation after a weird sequence of occasions that included her abrupt resignation, a short disappearance and a frantic search that led authorities to seek out her on a Tel Aviv seaside.

The cleaning soap opera-worthy saga was touched off final week by Tomer-Yerushalmi’s explosive admission that she authorized the leak of a surveillance video on the heart of a politically divisive investigation into allegations of extreme abuse in opposition to a Palestinian at a infamous Israeli army jail.

The video exhibits a part of an assault by which Israeli troopers are accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee.

By leaking the video final 12 months, Tomer-Yerushalmi aimed to show the seriousness of the allegations her workplace was investigating. As an alternative, it triggered fierce criticism from Israel’s hard-line political leaders. After Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned beneath stress final week, her critics continued to heave private insults.

She left a cryptic be aware for her household and deserted her automotive close to a seaside. That led to fears she had taken her personal life and prompted an intensive search that included using army drones.

She was discovered alive on the seaside Sunday night time, at which level extra vitriol in opposition to her was unleashed.

“We will resume the lynch,” right-wing TV character Yinon Magal, an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, posted on X with a winking-face emoji.

After it was revealed that one in every of Tomer-Yerushalmi’s telephones had disappeared, right-wing politicians and commentators started to accuse her of staging a suicide try as a approach to destroy potential proof.

The extraordinary episode exhibits two years of devastating conflict have accomplished little to heal a rustic that was deeply divided even earlier than Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, assault. It additionally makes Tomer-Yerushalmi the newest in an extended line of prime safety officers who’ve both left workplace or been compelled out, most of them to get replaced by individuals thought of loyal to Netanyahu and his hardline authorities.

Anger over leak distracts from extreme abuse at coronary heart of case

At a courtroom listening to Monday, the decide stated Tomer-Yerushalmi’s detention can be prolonged till Wednesday on suspicion of committing fraud, breach of belief and obstruction of justice. Whereas the investigation into her actions continues, she is being held at a girls’s jail in central Israel.

Israeli media reported that former chief army prosecutor Col. Matan Solomesh was additionally arrested in reference to the leak investigation. The prime minister’s workplace has refused to touch upon Solomesh’s arrest.

The fury over the leaked video reveals the depth of polarization in Israel — and at the very least for the second, retains the media and the general public targeted on the leak and never the allegations of abuse.

The assault occurred on July 5, 2024, on the Sde Teiman army jail, in keeping with the indictment in opposition to the accused troopers. The AP has investigated allegations of inhumane remedy and abuse at Sde Teiman that predate these within the surveillance video.

The video, which has been aired by Israeli information, exhibits troopers taking a detainee into an space they cordoned off with shields in an obvious try to cover their actions. The indictment stated the troopers assaulted the Palestinian prisoner and sodomized him with a knife, inflicting a number of accidents.

A medical staffer conversant in the case who spoke on situation of anonymity out of worry for his security stated the detainee arrived at a civilian hospital in life-threatening situation with blunt trauma to the stomach and the chest and fractured ribs.

He stated the detainee underwent surgical procedure for a perforated rectum and was launched again to Sde Teiman days later. The staffer stated it was essentially the most excessive abuse case he was conversant in from Sde Teiman.

When army police got here to Sde Teiman in July to detain the troopers suspected of abuse, they scuffled with protesters against the arrests. Later, lots of of violent protesters broke into the detention heart.

In her resignation letter, Tomer-Yerushalmi wrote that she had uncovered proof of the abuse to counter the concept that the army was unfairly focusing on its personal troopers. That concept was making a hazard to the army’s regulation enforcement, she stated, citing the break-in.

She wrote that the army had a “obligation to analyze when there may be affordable suspicion of violence in opposition to a detainee.

“Sadly, this fundamental understanding — that there are actions which must not ever be taken even in opposition to the vilest of detainees — not convinces everybody,” she wrote.

The Palestinian detainee who was the topic of the alleged abuse within the video was launched again to Gaza final month as a part of an trade between dwelling hostages and Palestinian prisoners, in keeping with paperwork from the army prosecutor’s workplace obtained by the AP.

The case continues to be pending earlier than the army courtroom.

An online of authorized points

Three separate authorized points have to be sorted out as a part of Israel’s investigation into what occurred at Sde Teiman, stated Yohanan Plesner, the president of the Jerusalem-based assume tank Israel Democracy Institute.

The primary pertains to proof that Israeli troopers abused Palestinian detainees whereas they had been in detention. The second is whether or not Israeli civilians, together with members of parliament, tried to disrupt the investigation by breaking into the army base the place the troopers accused of the actions had been being held. The third is whether or not Tomer-Yerushalmi allegedly dedicated a bunch of offenses, together with fraud, to undermine the investigation into how the surveillance video was leaked to the media.

The extraordinary rhetoric over the previous few days is harking back to what it was like in Israel instantly earlier than the Oct. 7 assault that launched the conflict in Gaza, Plesner stated. On the time, the general public was deeply divided over Netanyahu’s push to overtake the judiciary.

The priority for just a few hours Sunday night time about Tomer-Yerushalmi’s destiny ought to function a “cease signal” to the Israeli public — and particularly to commentators who derided her personally, Plesner stated.

“It was very unhappy to see how the interior discourse can result in such probably tragic end result on a private stage,” Plesner stated.

It felt particularly symbolic, he stated, that Tomer-Yerushalmi was in courtroom whereas the Israeli authorities held its official memorial ceremony marking the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Many regard the assassination as Israel’s lowest level when it comes to divisions and incitement among the many Israeli public, and fear that the dramatic occasions of the weekend foreshadow Israel’s return to an analogous interval of inside strife.

“It was very unhappy to see how the interior discourse can result in such probably tragic end result on a private stage,” Plesner stated. “There is a manner how one can debate our variations in a democratic society.”