A former top Israeli army lawyer has been arrested as the video leak scandal deepens

A former top Israeli army lawyer has been arrested as political confrontation deepens over the leaking of a video allegedly showing the brutal abuse of a Palestinian detainee by Israeli soldiers.

Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) military attorney general last week, saying he took full responsibility for the leak.

On Sunday, the story took a darker turn when she was reported missing, with police searching for hours on a beach north of Tel Aviv.

She was later found alive and well, police said, but has since been taken into custody.

The fallout from the leaked video is growing stronger by the day.

Aired in August 2024 on an Israeli news channel, the footage showed reservists at the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel taking a detainee aside, then surrounding him with riot shields to block the view as he was allegedly beaten and stabbed in the rectum with a sharp object.

The detainee was subsequently treated for serious injuries.

Five reservists were subsequently charged with aggravated assault and grievous bodily harm to detainees. They denied the allegations and were not named.

On Sunday, four of the reservists wore black balaclavas to hide their faces when they appeared at a news conference outside the High Court in Jerusalem with their lawyers, who asked for the trial against them to be dropped.

Adi Keidar, a lawyer from the right-wing legal aid organization Honenu, said his clients had been subjected to a “flawed, biased and completely cooked-up trial”.

It emerged on Monday that the detainee at the center of the case was released in Gaza in October as part of a swap with Hamas of convicted prisoners and detainees held without charge by Israel for hostages held by Hamas since October 7, 2023.

A criminal investigation into the leak of the video began last week.

General Tomer-Yerushalmi has been placed on leave pending the investigation.

On Friday, Defense Minister Israel Katz said she would not be allowed to return to her post.

Shortly thereafter, General Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned.

In her resignation letter, she said she took full responsibility for any material that was released to the media by the unit.

“I approved the release of material to the media in an effort to counter false propaganda against military law enforcement,” she said.

This is a reference to efforts by some right-wing political figures in Israel to claim that allegations of ill-treatment of the Palestinian detainee are fabricated.

She added: “It is our duty to investigate whenever there are reasonable suspicions of acts of violence against a detainee.”

After her resignation, Katz strongly condemned her behavior.

“Anyone who spreads blood libels against IS troops is not fit to wear an army uniform,” he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed the words of his defense minister on Sunday, saying the Sde Teiman incident was “perhaps the most serious public relations attack the State of Israel has experienced since its inception.”

Hours later, the first reports began to appear in the Israeli media that General Tomer-Yerushalmi had disappeared, sparking fears that a political scandal had turned into a tragedy.

A massive manhunt began. A few hours later, she was found “safe and in good health” in the coastal area of ​​Herzliya, Israeli police said.

Overnight, a police spokesman announced that two people had been arrested on suspicion of “leaking information and other serious offences” as part of an investigation.

Israeli media reported that the two were General Tomer-Yerushalmi and former Chief Military Prosecutor Colonel Matan Solomosh.

The Sde Teiman incident was a lightning rod for the left-right divide in Israel.

On the right, the leak of the video has been condemned as libel against the Israeli military, which hardly constitutes an act of treason.

After Israeli military police went to Sde Teiman to question 11 reservists over the July 2024 incident, far-right protesters – including at least three lawmakers from Netanyahu’s ruling coalition – stormed the facility to show their support.

On the left, General Tomer-Yerushalmi’s decision to allow the footage to be released is seen as the only time she fulfilled the responsibilities of her position.

The video is seen by the left as concrete evidence supporting multiple reports of abuse of Palestinian detainees following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel.

Last October, a report by a UN commission of inquiry alleged that thousands of detained Gazan children and adults were “subjected to widespread and systematic ill-treatment, physical and psychological abuse, and sexual and gender-based violence amounting to the war crime and crime against humanity of torture and the war crime of rape and other forms of sexual violence.”

Israel’s government said it rejected allegations of widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees and insisted it was “fully committed to international legal standards”. He also said he conducted thorough investigations into each complaint.