‘Bordering on anarchy’: IDF chief sounds alarm after right-wing mob overruns 2nd base
Removed from Sde Teiman facility, activists storm Beit Lid base, where soldiers suspected of abusing Gazan are held; ministers and coalition MKs fuel and join hours of protests
Far-right activists on Monday evening broke into a military base where soldiers detained on suspicion of abusing a Palestinian terror suspect were being held for questioning, hours after a separate IDF facility was stormed by a right-wing mob fuming over the arrests.
The anarchic scenes of mass break-ins Monday, fomented by several members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, some of whom took part in the forcible entries, sparked angry condemnation from IDF chief Herzi Halevi, who said they harmed the army, Israel’s security and the war effort.
Netanyahu, Halevi, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and President Isaac Herzog all harshly criticized the rioting outside Sde Teiman base and appealed for calm on Monday afternoon, but their words did nothing to prevent a mob outside the IDF’s Beit Lid base in central Israel from carrying out a similar break-in hours later.
The protests were sparked by the arrests earlier in the day of nine Israel Defense Forces soldiers suspected of the serious abuse of a Palestinian terror detainee at the Sde Teiman military facility in southern Israel, causing an outcry among far-right politicians.
Members of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party announced that they were on their way to Sde Teiman to protest the detention of the soldiers.
“The spectacle of military police officers coming to arrest our best heroes at Sde Teiman is nothing less than shameful,” said Ben Gvir, whose ministry controls the Israel Police and Israel Prison Service. “I recommend that the defense minister, the [IDF] chief of staff and the army authorities back the fighters and learn from the prison service,” he declared. “The summer camps and patience for the terrorists are over. Fighters should get full backing.”
Far-right lawmakers including Otzma Yehudit’s Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu and Religious Zionism MK Zvi Sukkot mobilized their supporters, calling on them to show up outside Sde Teiman to protest the soldiers’ detention. Sukkot, Eliyahu and Likud MK Nissim Vaturi were among those filmed illegally entering the IDF facility amid the riot.
After moving from Sde Teiman to Beit Lid, where the soldiers were brought to be questioned, dozens of protesters also broke into that base, which houses the Military Police and some IDF courts.
Some 1,200 activists were estimated to have gathered outside Beit Lid. Crowds of them faced off with soldiers at the gate of the base, chanting, “Release the warriors” in reference to the detained soldiers.
בתי הדין הצבאיים בבסיס בית ליד
צילום: איציק שאג pic.twitter.com/Oqd5mrnQ7f
— יענקי כהן | Yanki Coen (@yankicoen) July 29, 2024
Police said Monday night that they had dispersed the mob that broke into Beit Lid, saying in a statement that “a number of citizens” breached the base and that they were “dispersed in a matter of minutes.” No arrests were announced in either incident.
מפגיני הימין מנסים לפרוץ את הכלא כדי לשחרר את העצורים. איפה הצבא? איפה המשטרה? איפה השב״כ? pic.twitter.com/FuBrHmLDp1
— Yoav Ribak (@YoavRibak) July 29, 2024
Some of the protesters rioting at Beit Lid wore IDF uniforms and appeared to be armed.
A picture shared on social media showed Likud Knesset member Tally Gotliv standing alongside masked, armed protesters outside the base and addressing the crowd.
Gotliv had earlier encouraged her supporters to mass at the base on behalf of the detained troops. “Come in your multitudes,” she urged, echoing comments from other right-wing politicians who also egged on the riots.
המהומה בבית ליד: רעולי פנים חמושים במדים על משאית, לצד ח"כ גוטליבhttps://t.co/G5clWDCVSw
צילום: רענן בן צור pic.twitter.com/D66VJIM9sE
— ynet עדכוני (@ynetalerts) July 29, 2024
Halevi, who gave full backing to the investigation by Military Advocate General Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi and the Military Police into the suspected abuse, later visited troops at Beit Lid, saying what had occurred bordered on anarchy.
“We came to Beit Lid… to make sure that nothing more serious happens. The arrival of rioters and attempts to break into the bases is serious behavior, against the law, bordering on anarchy, harming the IDF, the security of the state and the war effort,” he said.
Gallant said he spoke with Halevi and told him that the IDF has his full support to “take measures and act immediately to prevent unauthorized citizens from entering IDF bases.”
He criticized the break-in at Beit Lid as a “grave incident that seriously harms Israeli democracy and plays into the hands of our enemy in times of war.”
“I call on the Israel Police to act immediately against those breaking the law and on all elected officials to refrain from irresponsible statements that drag the IDF into the political arena,” Gallant added.
The army said several IDF companies from the West Bank and others not currently deployed were dispatched to Beit Lid Monday evening, and several battalions would be sent there by Tuesday to bolster defenses. It denied that any troops were being pulled out of Gaza to protect the base, but still warned that the rioting at the bases was directly harming Israel’s security.
The army noted that the rioting had been a major distraction from work being done to draw up plans for retaliatory action against Hezbollah in Lebanon following a weekend rocket strike in the Golan Heights that killed 12 children.
Top IDF officers, including Halevi, were forced to stop critical discussions on hostilities in the north to deal with the infiltration into the bases.
The investigation into the soldiers was launched after a detained terror suspect was brought from the base to a hospital with signs of serious abuse, including to his anus. He was arrested by the IDF in the Gaza Strip several weeks ago.
The right-wing Honenu legal aid organization, which is representing four of the reservist soldiers, claimed on Monday that its clients acted in self-defense in the alleged abuse incident.
The group said in a statement that the detainee attacked and bit the soldiers while he was being transferred from Ofer Prison to the Sde Teiman detention facility nearly a month ago, adding that one of the reservists was injured in the incident.
According to an Army Radio report, the abuse itself took place some three weeks ago at Sde Teiman, and the terror suspect was found at the military base in critical condition and taken to a hospital for treatment and surgery. He is now no longer in life-threatening condition, the report said.
‘Attempted coup against a weak PM’
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said the riots on Monday showed that Netanyahu is “weak” and has lost control over his government, urging him to fire ministers involved in the break-ins.
“We are not on the brink of the abyss, we are in the abyss,” Lapid warned in a statement. “All the red lines were crossed today.”
“This is not a riot, this is an attempted coup by an armed militia against a weak prime minister who is unable to control his government,” Lapid said. Lawmakers who stormed IDF bases are sending the message that “they are done with democracy, they are done with the rule of law,” he added.
“A dangerous fascist group threatens the existence of the State of Israel. They are the best thing that happened to [Gaza ruler Yahya] Sinwar and [Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah. If we don’t stand up to them, the country will fall apart. If Netanyahu does not fire the ministers who participated in these violent raids today, he is not fit to represent the State of Israel,” the statement concluded.
Labor MK Naama Lazimi announced on X that she had filed a complaint against Sukkot and Vaturi with the Knesset’s ethics committee over their involvement in breaking into Sde Teiman.
Shanna Orlik of the activist Hitorerut movement earlier filed a police complaint against Sukkot for breaking into Sde Teiman, which she pointed out is a criminal offense punishable by a prison sentence.
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich issued a statement saying that the protests against the arrests of the soldiers “are justified and I support them with all my heart.” Smotrich, however, issued a call to his supporters to “follow the law and protect the integrity of the army and the people,” and not to break into IDF bases or to “scuffle with our brothers the soldiers and the police officers.”
Arguing as military police arrived
The violence at Sde Teiman erupted after Military Police investigators showed up at the base on Monday morning to detain suspect soldiers, according to the military. TV footage showed the Military Police members, some of them masked to protect their identities, leading one soldier away.
A heated argument broke out between the Military Police investigators and soldiers at the base, and a group of far-right lawmakers and activists headed toward Sde Teiman to join the fracas, outraged at the detention of the soldiers. Some of those gathered outside then broke into the base itself.
According to the Ynet news site, several journalists attempting to cover the riot were attacked by protesters, including its own reporter Ilana Curiel, and police were needed to step in to protect her.
“They pushed me, spit on me, called me a slut, the Arabs’ whore, traitor” she recalled. “They threw my phone twice. I’m in tears.”
According to the news site, protesters at Beit Lid later Monday tried to block cars from entering the base, demanding they be searched and no car-carrying soldiers suspected of crimes be allowed in.
Regularly accused of abuses and other crimes against Palestinians, Israel maintains that such actions are not tolerated and claims to rigorously police its army, though critics claim that few are ever convicted of crimes. Moves to prosecute soldiers for alleged abuses have provoked outrage in the past, with some on the right arguing that troops dealing with complex, often hostile, situations should be granted a measure of immunity.
In a video filmed at Sde Teiman, Sukkot declared that “we cannot investigate the soldiers until we investigate those who failed” to prevent October 7. Taking up a megaphone, he told protesters: “We have no other army, this is an important demonstration, let’s go outside and not fight with the soldiers.”
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein announced amid the outcry that he would hold an urgent hearing on Tuesday to discuss the arrests of the soldiers.
“I will not lend a hand to scenes like the one seen today at the base in Sde Teiman,” Edelstein said. “A situation in which masked military policemen raid an IDF base is not acceptable to me, and I will not allow it to happen again. Our soldiers are not criminals and this contemptible pursuit of our soldiers is unacceptable to me.”
Justice minister revives overhaul call
Justice Minister Yariv Levin blamed the High Court of Justice — which he frequently criticizes — for the arrests of the soldiers, claiming that the move justifies the revival of his since-suspended judicial overhaul effort.
“I was shocked to see the difficult pictures of soldiers being arrested at Sde Teiman the way dangerous criminals are arrested,” Levin said, arguing that the soldiers in question had been engaged in “holy work” and that their arrest was the result of a “moral distortion that starts from the top, from judgments and decisions of the High Court.”
A petition to the High Court of Justice by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel has urged it to order the state to close the Sde Teiman after reports emerged in recent months of abuse at the facility.
The reports alleged widespread abuse of prisoners, including extreme use of physical restraints, beatings, neglect of medical problems, arbitrary punishments and more.
The IDF announced in May that it was investigating reports of abuse and torture of detainees in Sde Teiman following reports that the prisoners were being severely mistreated. Tomer-Yerushalmi, the military advocate general, said that as of the end of May, the military had opened 70 investigations that it was treating “very seriously.”
Earlier this month, Netanyahu told the High Court that Sde Teiman should only be used for short-term detention and questioning of Palestinian security detainees caught in Gaza.
Terror operatives and other suspects are generally initially held in detention facilities at the IDF’s Sde Teiman, Anatot and Ofer bases, before being handed over to the Israel Prison Service. The detainees are legally allowed to be held for 45 days before they must be either released or moved into the care of the IPS.
Following the abuse and torture allegations and the ACRI’s petition to the High Court, the state announced that the IDF would phase out the use of Sde Teiman, and prisoner transfers began immediately.
