How the arrest of the military’s top lawyer over a leaked abuse video has rocked Israel

Tomer-Yerushalmi likely violated the law and now faces serious legal risks, said Tal Steiner, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, a Tel Aviv-based nongovernmental organization. But, she added, the affair nonetheless forced Israelis to examine and question the actions of their military and exposed the populist sentiments that lead the charge against unelected government officials.

“This whole thing is very sad and ironic because it’s a ‘shoot the messenger’ type situation,” Steiner told NBC News on Monday. “Maybe that’s why they’re shooting the messenger right now, because he’s a mirror of Israeli society. It’s not fun to watch.”

Broadcast by an Israeli television station in August 2024, security camera footage showed several military guards pulling a detainee away from a larger group of dozens of people who were lying in a line on the floor of the Sde Teiman detention center. With a guard dog nearby, the soldiers then pushed the detainee against a wall before the entire group surrounded themselves with shields, presumably to block the view of security cameras.

What exactly happened behind their barrier is unclear in the video. But more than 10 soldiers were later arrested for mistreating the detainee, five of whom were indicted last year for “acting against the detainee with serious violence, including stabbing him in the buttocks with a sharp object, which had penetrated near the detainee’s rectum,” according to an army statement at the time. The inmate suffered from “cracked ribs, a punctured lung and an internal rectal tear,” it added. H

It was a rare case where members of the Israel Defense Forces were prosecuted for their actions during Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip, and it immediately sparked a political clash that played out along familiar battle lines dividing Israel’s increasingly polarized politicians and public.

None of them have yet been tried, but even before the video was released, a crowd of pro-military protesters led by far-right MPs broke into the Sde Teiman detention center and a nearby encampment demanding that the investigation be abandoned.

But after the video was released, right-wing politicians and commentators attacked military investigators while defending the soldiers and calling for charges against them to be dropped.

And the abuse from what some Israeli commentators have dubbed the right-wing “venom machine” has not stopped after Tomer-Yerushalmi left office.

Before a government meeting on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the leaked video “the most serious public relations attack that the State of Israel has seen since its creation. I do not remember such an attack with such intensity,” according to a statement from his office.

Defense Minister Israel Katz also accused Tomer-Yerushalmi of spreading “blood libel” against the troops.

Within hours, reports began emerging in Israeli media that Tomer-Yerushalmi had disappeared after leaving a cryptic message for her family and abandoning her car near a beach, sparking fears that she had committed suicide and intensive searches.

But after she was found alive on Sunday evening, the controversies began again.

“We can resume lynching,” right-wing personality Yinon Magal posted on X with a winking face emoji.

Guy Levy, a spokesman for the ruling right-wing Likud party, went further in a telephone interview Monday in which he claimed, without providing evidence, that the leaked video had been doctored and that the accusations against the soldiers were false.

Tomer-Yerushalmi’s disappearance, he said, was little more than a “set-up” intended to generate public sympathy with a left-wing intellectual class that claims to preserve Israel’s democratic ideals.

“This is a cultural fight,” he said, adding that those who continue to defend Tomer-Yerushalmi do so outside of political tribalism.

But for Steiner of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, the case has forced Israelis to examine the deepening conflict between populist politicians and unelected bureaucrats that some Israelis view as out of touch.

“It’s not just about his personal tragedy, but also about the political battle that’s happening right now,” she said. “I think what gets the most attention is the struggle for power between politicians and administrative professionals.”