Ori Goldberg
+972 Magazine / November 7, 2025
The Israeli army’s top legal official is being hounded over her role in a scandal that has split the nation. Her complicity in the genocide goes unmentioned.
Jewish-Israeli public attention is currently consumed with a scandal surrounding a leaked video of Israeli prison guards raping a Palestinian captive inside the Sde Teiman detention facility last year. Yet, in typical fashion for today’s Israel, the public’s outrage has been directed not at the atrocity itself, but rather at the leak that exposed it.
At the center of the affair stands the Israeli army’s top legal official, Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi. Last week, after the government’s attorney general announced an investigation into the leak, Tomer-Yerushalmi was suspended from her position. She resigned two days later, admitting in her resignation letter to having been personally involved in leaking the footage to the media.
The clip was made public in August 2024 by Guy Peleg, the legal correspondent for Israel’s most-watched news program on Channel 12, to whom Tomer-Yerushalmi likely leaked the video. Later, when assigned to investigate the leak, she allegedly lied about her own involvement.
The case took a dark turn on Sunday, when Tomer-Yerushalmi vanished for several hours. Police found her car abandoned near a bench north of Tel Aviv, prompting fears of a suicide attempt. She resurfaced later that evening without her phone, and was taken into police custody. On Nov. 7, Tomer-Yerushalmi’s phone was found at a Tel Aviv beach, and she was released from jail to 10 days of house arrest.
This saga has dominated Israeli headlines in recent days. Alongside histrionic reports of New York City being taken over by a “Jew-hater,” it has all but erased any remaining discussion of events in Gaza — where, despite their army’s ongoing occupation and periodic bombings, there is little appetite among Israelis for continued coverage now that the “war” is over.
Now, as Hamas regains power in the 42 percent of Gaza not under Israeli military control, and with the few surviving hostages back home, Israeli society can withdraw back into its bubble of self-absorption. For most Israelis, after all, the genocide pales before the only thing that truly matters: inhouse bickering over the Jewish state’s “heart and soul.”
Two narratives, one glaring blind spot
Over the past two years, Maj. Gen. Tomer-Yerushalmi — the official responsible for all internal investigations and legal enforcement in the Israeli army — has almost entirely refrained from probing the countless, well-documented allegations against its soldiers. The Sde Teiman guards’ crime, however, as captured in the leaked video, was apparently so blatant and grotesque that authorities had no choice but to issue indictments.
When Israeli military police arrived at Sde Teiman to arrest the suspects, however, they were met by right-wing rioters and soldiers, including several members of Knesset hiding behind their immunity. Attempting to block the arrests, they insisted that the perpetrators did nothing wrong and that their actions were merely part of the Israeli war effort.
Tomer-Yerushalmi leaked the video of the rape soon after, and it quickly spread online. Protests by right-wing Israelis in support of the abusers grew in turn. But while many around the world were aghast at what could only be described as “right to rape” protests, the discussion in Israel quickly faded in favour of daily news of “successes” on the Gazan front. The case was largely forgotten for months, until the investigation into the video’s leak was announced last week.
In general, Jewish-Israelis have reacted in one of two ways to this unusual saga. The first response comes from the right, and it will be familiar to Americans who have grown accustomed to the discourse emanating from the likes of Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, as well as President Donald Trump himself. According to this narrative, the Military Advocate General was a cog in Israel’s own Deep State: an all-powerful leftist cabal bent on imposing “woke values” and protecting its own privilege.
In the Israeli version of the conspiracy, one of the Deep State’s aims is to destroy the Jewish character of the state, doing so partly through portraying Israel as immoral and lawless in the eyes of the world. According to this logic, the Military Advocate General sought to achieve this goal by instructing her “minions” to doctor the video of the abuse — an allegation that is patently untrue — and then to leak it.
The second common reaction to the scandal comes from liberal Israelis, those who have been protesting against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his judicial overhaul long before the Gaza genocide. Unsurprisingly, they make almost exactly the opposite accusation as those on the right: Netanyahu and his henchmen are the ones who have brainwashed Israelis and hijacked the country. Netanyahu is at fault for Israel’s scandalous response to the Hamas attack on October 7, and he is using all of his resources to topple Israeli democracy in order to ensure his political survival.
In their view, Tomer-Yerushalmi was justified in leaking the footage of abuse in Sde Teiman because otherwise it would have been suppressed by Netanyahu or those seeking to appease him, and the rapists would have walked free. True, she lied, but she was acting in service of the broader goal to preserve Israel’s rule of law and moral standing.
“Not only was [Tomer-Yerushalmi] brought to the brink of suicide, but also everything she represents, namely, law and justice in Israel, was at risk,” the Israeli author Dror Burstein wrote in Haaretz this week. “Her experience cries out to us, because in a place where evil and lies become the norm, there is no longer any place for justice and truth, no longer any place for the law and lawyers.”
You may have noticed one thing missing from both accounts provided above: the genocide itself. According to the first narrative, Israel cannot commit genocide — indeed, it was nearly the victim of a genocide itself on October 7, were it not for its own military prowess. And when “fighting the enemy,” Israelis have license to do whatever they want, including abusing the “terrorists” held in Israeli captivity.
For Netanyahu’s liberal critics, too, the genocide fails to make an appearance. For them, the Military Advocate General is the wounded soul of law and justice. The fact that for two years, her office has provided virtually limitless legal backing for a well-documented genocide, is apparently of no significance. The Gaza war was a necessity, they argue, and certainly not a genocide. What else could we have done after we were attacked so viciously?
At this fundamental level, the great majority of Jewish-Israelis find themselves in agreement. The annihilation of Gaza was clearly essential. Israelis had a right to defend themselves and that right has no expiration date. Everything that Israel decrees as “defensive” is legitimate, from bombing Lebanon and Syria to violating the “ceasefire” on a daily basis. If we can’t decide when we feel threatened, how can we feel secure? We were almost the victims of a genocide!
The abyss stares back
Above all, what the scandal surrounding the Military Advocate General highlights is that morality itself has lost all meaning in a genocidal society. The prison guards abused the Palestinian captive. They did so because they were given absolute power over his life and death, which they were happy to use.
Tomer-Yerushalmi was alerted to the existence of the video depicting the atrocity. She may have been outraged, but she was more concerned about the safety of “her people” in the Military Advocate General’s Corps than about the crime itself. Knowing that the right would hunt her and her colleagues down, she quickly leaked the video to a popular news correspondent, thus establishing its existence before it could be discredited.
Tomer-Yerushalmi had countless opportunities throughout the past two years to investigate and shine a light on other war crimes by Israeli soldiers, even if only to protect the Israeli argument of complementarity before the International Criminal Court (that is, we’re investigating ourselves so you don’t need to). She did not.
This time, she knew it would get political, so she was in a hurry. She felt she had beaten her opponents at their own game and was emboldened to lie about the leak. She was found out. She realized the damage this would cause “her people” and herself. According to some reports, she contemplated suicide.
All of it was a mafia-style conflict or a piece of political theatre, depending on the beholder. No morals were involved. After you permit a genocide to be carried out for two years, your morals are hollow shells. But genocidal fervour never settles for its initial victims; it always turns on the genocidaires.
Ori Goldberg is an independent Israeli analyst and commentator. He holds a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies and has taught and lectured at universities worldwide; he is the author of four books on Shi‘i revolutionary thought in Iran
