Supporters of accused soldiers gather outside military court ahead of hearing

Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter

At the gates of the Beit Lid military base near Netanya, a mother of three named Hila gives her youngest instructions on the phone on where to find a painkiller for his migraine.

Hila’s husband is awaiting arraignment at the military court inside the base, one of nine reserves soldiers suspected of torturing a Hamas terror suspect being held at the Sde Teiman camp in the Negev. The prisoner sustained injuries to the rectum. At least some of the soldiers are suspected of raping the prisoner, as well as assaulting him.

Hila, 39, asked friends to look after their children while she sits outside the base in the sweltering summer heat. With her are about 30 activists and friends of the reservists.

“These are not criminals, they are our soldiers, who have given the past nine months of their lives for Israel’s security,” she tells The Times of Israel about the nine men in custody.

The gathering is a smaller and toned-down follow-up to the rioting by far-right activists that happened here and at Sde Teiman yesterday, when the nine troops were arrested. Footage from both bases shows rioters breaching the gates, in scenes that Opposition Leader Yair Lapid and other politicians have condemned roundly.

A soldier serving in the Military Police’s investigative unit, which handled the probe into the alleged torture, says that his commanders asked the unit’s soldiers to remove their unit tags and blue berets while they are outside the base for fear the protesters would target them. “It’s crazy, now I’m supposed to fear Israeli civilians as well as Hamas terrorists?”

Shai Glick of Betzalmo, a right-wing rights organization, says he does not object to the investigation, but to the way it was carried out. “Raids, arrests, are not the way. Any investigation can be conducted respectfully,” he says.

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