Read the full article to understand the depth of sickness in Israeli society.
EXCERPT (emphasis added)
Until last week, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was the Israeli army’s top lawyer. Now she is behind bars and at the center of a scandal rocking the country after a bizarre sequence of events that included her abrupt resignation, a brief disappearance and a frantic search that led authorities to find her on a Tel Aviv beach.
The soap opera-worthy saga was touched off last week by Tomer-Yerushalmi’s explosive admission that she approved the leak of a surveillance video at the center of a politically divisive investigation into allegations of severe abuse against a Palestinian at a notorious Israeli military prison.
By leaking the video last year, Tomer-Yerushalmi aimed to expose the seriousness of the allegations her office was investigating. Instead, it triggered fierce criticism from Israel’s hard-line political leaders.
The fury over the leaked video reveals the depth of polarization in Israel — and at least for the moment, keeps the media and the public focused on the leak and not the allegations of abuse.
The video, which has been aired by Israeli news, shows soldiers taking a detainee into an area they cordoned off with shields in an apparent attempt to hide their actions. The indictment said the soldiers assaulted the Palestinian prisoner and sodomized him with a knife, causing multiple injuries.
A medical staffer familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety said the detainee arrived at a civilian hospital in life-threatening condition with blunt trauma to the abdomen and the chest and fractured ribs.
He said the detainee underwent surgery for a perforated rectum and was released back to Sde Teiman days later. The staffer said it was the most extreme abuse case he was familiar with from Sde Teiman.
When military police came to Sde Teiman in July to detain the soldiers suspected of abuse, they scuffled with protesters opposed to the arrests. Later, hundreds of violent protesters broke into the detention center.
Tomer-Yerushalmi wrote that the military had a “duty to investigate when there is reasonable suspicion of violence against a detainee.
“Unfortunately, this basic understanding — that there are actions which must never be taken even against the vilest of detainees — no longer convinces everyone,” she wrote.
A protester waves the Israeli national flag in support of soldiers being questioned for detainee abuse outside of the Sde Teiman military base July 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)
A frame grab from a leaked video, the full video contains evidence of IDF soldiers gang raping a Palestinian prisoner with a knife.
and no doubt … raped