Oren Ziv
+972 Magazine / August 1, 2024
Far-right protesters, soldiers, and MKs rallied for guards suspected of raping a Palestinian detainee. Once fringe, they’re now the public face of the state.
Among the hundreds of right-wing Israeli activists demonstrating outside the Beit Lid army base on the night of July 29, a group of masked soldiers carrying weapons stood out in the crowd. The soldiers were easily identifiable by the illustration on their badges: a snake inside the Star of David, the insignia of Force 100. Established in the wake of the First Intifada, Force 100 is an IDF unit responsible for overseeing Palestinian detainees and repressing uprisings in military prisons. Since October, the unit has also operated the Sde Teiman military base, where Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have been detained, abused, and tortured.
The soldiers came to Beit Lid to support and demand the release of ten of their comrades who had been arrested on suspicion of raping a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman. The detainee, according to Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHRI), was hospitalized three weeks ago with severe injuries to his rectum. Earlier that Monday, protesters and far-right Knesset members amassed outside of Sde Teiman after Israeli military police entered the base to detain the suspects, which included a commander in Force 100.
“The Military Advocate General [Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi] loves Nukhba,” read one sign outside Beit Lid, referring to the elite military unit of Hamas whose members the protesters believed were detained at Sde Teiman. “The Military Advocate General is a criminal,” read another.
Even lawmakers joined the attacks on Tomer-Yerushalmi. “I came to Sde Teiman to tell our fighters that we are with you, we will protect you,” declared Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) MK Limor Son Har-Melech, in a video posted from outside the detention center. “We will never allow the criminal Military Advocate General to hurt you. She cares about the Nukhba terrorists and cares about their rights, instead of caring for our fighters, she is weakening our fighters. History will judge her and we will judge her too.” Chanting at the soldiers and policemen guarding Beit Lid, protesters shouted, “Traitors!”
Along with members of Force 100, the demonstrators included Kahanists, hilltop settler youth from the occupied West Bank, supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and viewers of the TV station Channel 14. In the past, it was possible to say that these groups were a political minority. But today, they are in the government, they run the country’s law enforcement, and they are the face of Israel. One Israeli news headline said that the protesters “declared war on the State of Israel,” but they are in fact the state — a fact made clear by the support they received from ministers and parliamentarians.
For much of the demonstration, masked Force 100 soldiers stood directly in front of the few policemen and soldiers trying to prevent the rioters from entering the base. Yet the officers on guard did very little to disperse the crowd.
The police did not use horses or water cannon vehicles — tactics that are familiar to every Palestinian, Ethiopian, or ultra-Orthodox Israeli who has dared to protest. Even after demonstrators breached the entrances and broke into Sde Teiman, and later into Beit Lid, no one was arrested or even identified by the police. Only after many minutes, soldiers, some with shields and clubs, forcibly evacuated the rioters from Beit Lid. During the mass anti-government demonstrators in 2023, some protesters were stripped of gun licenses and others removed from army reserve duty after being arrested; it is clear that none of this will happen to Monday’s rioters.
‘I kicked B’Tselem’s photographer’
The terrifying sight of armed Israeli militias is well known to Palestinians and anti-occupation activists in the West Bank. In recent years, masked men, both soldiers and settlers, have been main agents of the occupation’s oppressive laws, even giving orders to Israeli police and other soldiers. Since the start of the war on Gaza, Jewish militias have operated throughout the country under the guise of “alert squads.” So on Monday, it was not out of the ordinary to see the gunmen walk around the demonstration unhindered.
From the ground, it was clear that the police simply did not want to evacuate the demonstrators from Beit Lid. And earlier in the day, when protesters broke into Sde Teiman, the police reportedly refused the army’s request for assistance. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has now demanded an investigation into whether National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir deliberately hindered the police’s response to the riots.
Since there were no serious clashes with the police or soldiers, many of the demonstrators vented their anger to the media: attacking, cursing and spitting on journalists, with the exception of the right-wing Channel 14 staff, who were greeted with applause.
“I kicked B’Tselem’s photographer,” one protester boasted to his friend, after attacking a foreign photojournalist and being pushed aside by other protesters. “Brahnu, we love you, but we hate Al Jazeera,” they called out to Channel 12 News reporter Brahanu Teganya.
“It is forbidden to photograph — it is against the law,” threatened one protester, as he approached the photographers. No such prohibition exists, but as far as the protesters were concerned, they are the law.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military court at Beit Lid held a closed hearing for the ten soldiers; two were released later that evening. This time, a large force of police officers surrounded the building, while a few dozen protesters stood outside. One young demonstrator held up a scarf with a Palestinian flag, shouting, “This is what the military attorney lost!”
Hila, a spouse of one of the arrested soldiers, spoke to the media outside the court. Due to a gag order on information about the suspects, she refused to provide her family name.
“My husband has been in combat since October 7 as a reserve soldier,” she said. “He was brought here yesterday for detention, in a humiliating and shameful way. I don’t believe that our country can act this way, and I’m here to raise his voice and those of the other soldiers.”
With regard to the accusations of rape, she said: “This is a testimony of a despicable Nukhba fighter with blood on his hands, who dared to complain, and all the county is raging because of it. We shouldn’t forget who our real enemy is. We are facing monsters, a terrorist organization, and I say we will defeat them.”
Two visions of Israeli violence
The source of the demonstrators’ rage, both at Sde Teiman and Beit Lid, was that Israeli law enforcement dared to interrogate soldiers. As far as they were concerned, soldiers deserve complete immunity — even if they commit rape. As MK Tali Gottlieb put it: “No matter what the suspicion, once it is soldiers and fighters guarding the Nukhba terrorists, no one will detain them.”
This marks a new low point for Israeli public discourse, though given the public climate since October 7, it is not surprising. For decades, too, in the vast majority of cases, soldiers are almost never held responsible for committing horrific atrocities — even those that amount to war crimes. According to multiple +972 investigations, soldiers in Gaza have been given the immunity to loot, vandalize, shoot, and kill at will – all with the knowledge of their commanders on the ground.
In the Israeli media, the riots at Beit Lid were portrayed as a struggle between the army and the police, or between the Israeli state and the mob. But this is far from the full picture. The army’s policy of turning a blind eye to right-wing militias in the West Bank and supporting the actions of lone soldiers, along with the systematic killing and destruction in Gaza, is precisely what has led us to this situation, whereby the interrogation of soldiers on suspicion of rape provokes such violent protests, backed by government figures.
But Monday night’s events also show another element of this story: the limits of the far right’s power. Even though they can ostensibly change policy themselves, such as by passing an immunity law for soldiers, coalition members are still having to demonstrate against their own government to make some of their most extreme demands heard. As such, it reveals some of the tensions that still exist within the ruling coalition.
It is difficult to say whether this case of prisoner rape — out of thousands of testimonies about the abuses in prisons and detention facilities — led to a probe and public arrests due to its severity, or because there were too many witnesses. It’s also hard to say with certainty if the moves was driven by the needs to show, against the background of international investigations, that the Israeli system can hold its “rogue” soldiers accountable.
But what is clear is that Monday’s riot represented a fight between two Israels. The first is of “mamlachtiyut” — a national ethos that reveres the institutions of the state, that shoots but sometimes investigates, that kills but with some limitations on “collateral damage,” that commits war crimes but does not boast about them. The other is one that takes pride in Israel’s crimes, refuses to apologize for them, and seeks to abolish any legal restrictions to limit rogue violence, even if it means clashing with the state.
The latter camp has increasingly become the public face of Israel — and it has helped bring the country to both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court in The Hague. International accountability may eventually diminish the power of Israel’s extremists, both inside and outside the government. But the path forward, as masked soldiers take the reins of power on the streets, is only likely to become more violent.
Oren Ziv is a photojournalist, reporter for Local Call, and a founding member of the Activestills photography collective
