\n<\/p>\n
The revelation last week by Israel\u2019s top military lawyer, Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, that she leaked the footage of a gang rape of a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman military detention centre in 2024 has shaken the country\u2019s political and media establishment.<\/p>\n
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu \u2013 whose leadership of the genocidal war on Gaza has drawn global condemnation \u2013 called the leak \u201cperhaps the most severe public relations attack that the State of Israel has experienced\u201d. Critics of Netanyahu\u2019s view come from establishment voices desperate to defend the judiciary and state institutions, which they believe Netanyahu and his allies are exploiting the leak to undermine.<\/p>\n
list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/p>\n Lost amid headlines fuelled by the leak\u2019s admission is the gang rape of the Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman on July 5, 2024. The attack was so brutal that the man was admitted to hospital with what the Israeli daily Haaretz revealed was a ruptured bowel, severe anal and lung injuries, and broken ribs \u2013 injuries that later required surgery.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a huge story in Israel, but you won\u2019t see the word \u2018rape\u2019 anywhere in it,\u201d Orly Noy, editor of the Hebrew language Local Call, told Al Jazeera. \u201cThe contextualisation of the story is entirely different here than anything you or I might see.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead of focusing on the rape and the ongoing legal proceedings against the five suspects, the story has instead centred on Tomer-Yerushalmi and those accused of helping her cover up the leak.<\/p>\n Speaking on Israeli television on Saturday night, a member of Netanyahu\u2019s Likud Party, Energy Minister Eli Cohen, told viewers that Tomer-Yerushalmi was \u201csupposed to be the bulletproof vest, the protector, of the [Israeli military] soldiers\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of that, she stabbed them in the back,\u201d he said about the lawyer who leaked footage of soldiers appearing to rape a prisoner. \u201cIn this case, we are talking about treason.\u201d<\/p>\n Defence Minister Israel Katz was no less damning, releasing at least seven statements targeting the military attorney in a week and accusing her of participating in \u201cblood libel\u201d against the five alleged rapists.<\/p>\n Focusing on Tomer-Yerushalmi, rather than the alleged rapists, is nothing new.<\/p>\n The former chief military advocate had been the subject of political pressure and accusations of covering up the source of the leak since the first reports of the rape emerged in August 2024. That pressure continued to build, culminating in the announcement from Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara in early October of an investigation into the source of the leak.<\/p>\n On Friday, November 1, Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned and admitted that she had been the source of the leak. Two days later, she was reported missing for several hours following the discovery of what friends and family worried was a suicide note, which prompted a large-scale search.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s Defence Minister Israel Katz said the leaked footage showing the alleged rape of a Palestinian prisoner by soldiers was \u2018blood libel\u2019 against the attack\u2019s perpetrators [Ronen Zvulun\/Reuters]<\/p>\n Within hours of being found safe, Tomer-Yerushalmi was arrested, and the suicide note was dismissed by Israeli prosecutors as a ploy. She has been charged with multiple offences, including fraud, breach of trust, obstruction of justice, and abuse of office.<\/p>\n Since Sunday, police have also arrested the military\u2019s former chief prosecutor, Colonel Matan Solomosh, on suspicion of helping Tomer-Yerushalmi cover up the leak. There have also been suggestions that the attorney general and her staff may have been involved.<\/p>\n \u201cRape doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d said political analyst Ori Goldberg, referring to how Israeli authorities are responding to news of the leak. \u201cWhat matters is the woman who leaked the tape and what they want to call the deep state.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor Netanyahu and others, this is evidence that the deep state has gotten too big for its britches and that, by accusing Tomer-Yerushalmi of collaborating with the attorney general, they have evidence of the treachery and a further means of undermining any civilian oversight there may be over their workings.\u201d<\/p>\n Netanyahu and his allies\u2019 fight with the judiciary dates back to what his critics call the \u201cjudicial coup\u201d of 2023, when he proposed a sweeping legislative overhaul of Israel\u2019s judicial system. He has also faced multiple charges of corruption since 2019.<\/p>\n The prime minister\u2019s proposed judicial reforms would grant his right-wing coalition the freedom to act without the check of the Supreme Court, potentially leading to a further crackdown on dissent and the rights of Palestinians.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara listens on as she attends a cabinet meeting at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem [Gil Cohen-Magen\/Reuters]<\/p>\n Attorney General Baharav-Miara has found herself in the firing line for resisting those reforms. In 2023, she issued legal guidance opposing the proposed judicial overhaul, writing that it would undermine Israel\u2019s checks and balances, and that it was \u201ca sure recipe for harming human rights and clean governance\u201d. She also told the prime minister to distance himself from the judicial reforms, noting that it would be a conflict of interest amid his own corruption trial.<\/p>\n \u201cThey want to cover up the rape,\u201d Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of the Israeli parliament representing the left-wing Hadash-Ta\u2019al faction, told Al Jazeera. \u201cThat\u2019s why they\u2019re dealing with the prosecutors and not the crime itself.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBenjamin Netanyahu is using this, just like the right wing is using this. They\u2019ve been repeating the same messaging ever since the story broke. This is how the judiciary works. These are your so-called checks and balances. Look at them, they\u2019re criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n Amid the political furore, the likelihood of prosecuting the alleged rapists appears to be diminishing.<\/p>\n On Monday, it emerged that the rape victim had been returned to Gaza in October as part of the exchange of captives, leading to speculation that he might not appear in proceedings against his alleged attackers.<\/p>\n Five of those indicted for the assault saw their charges downgraded to \u201cseverely abusing\u201d the detainee on Sunday, when they appeared outside Israel\u2019s Supreme Court wearing balaclavas to hide their identity.<\/p>\n A lawyer for the suspects, Moshe Polsky, told journalists that his clients could not expect a fair trial due to the leak, saying \u201cthe wheel cannot be turned back\u201d and that, consequently, the indictment process had been tainted.<\/p>\n One suspect, who declined to be identified, described himself and his fellow suspects as loyal patriots wrongfully targeted by a legal system they see as undermining their service. \u201cWe knew we had to defend the country [following the October 7 attack],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cSince that day, dozens of fighters are still fighting for justice not on the battlefield, but in courtrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n For observers such as journalist Noy, however, there is little to do with justice in the saga of accusation, counter-accusation and cover-up that has come to overshadow the brutal rape of a prisoner in Israeli custody.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the two sides, this is all about the system and nothing to do with the Palestinian victim,\u201d she reflected.<\/p>\n \u201cOne side sees it as [about] the old elite protecting itself, and the other about safeguarding the institutions of the state,\u201d Noy said. \u201cBut don\u2019t forget, these are the same institutions they need to protect to continue the abuse of Palestinians. These are the defences they offer up whenever they\u2019re criticised from overseas.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The revelation last week by Israel\u2019s top military lawyer, Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, that she leaked the footage of a gang rape of a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman military detention centre in 2024 has shaken the country\u2019s political and media establishment. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu \u2013 whose leadership of the genocidal war<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[267,2222,1056,1758,2164,150,3185,1913,358,6618],"class_list":{"0":"post-32312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-conflict","9":"tag-drama","10":"tag-focus","11":"tag-israelpalestine","12":"tag-israels","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-palestinian","15":"tag-political","16":"tag-rape","17":"tag-victim"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The politicisation of rape<\/h2>\n
The \u2018deep state\u2019<\/h2>\n
Justice lost<\/h2>\n