Military AG: Arresting officers at Sde Teiman wore masks as they face ‘dozens of threats’
IDF court extends detentions of five of 10 reservists accused of sodomizing inmate, as right-wing MKs assail Tomer-Yerushalmi during Knesset hearing on July 29 arrests
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
The military advocate general told a Knesset committee on Sunday that there have been “dozens of threats” against the military police officers who arrested reservists accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian inmate at the Sde Teiman detention facility, as ultranationalist lawmakers accused her of seeking to harm Israel Defense Forces soldiers.
Speaking during a hearing of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi said that, given the threats, it was a “reasonable decision” for the officers to wear masks during the arrest.
Pushing back against critics during a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Tomer-Yerushalmi insisted that Israel is a nation of laws and that the army is obliged to investigate violations of the laws of war — arguing that such an approach was not a source of weakness, but a source of strength.
Responding to claims that she was “sacrificing the fighters for the benefit of international tribunals,” Tomer-Yerushalmi argued that probing wrongdoing preserves the values of the IDF and highlights its morality rather than tarring all its members with a single brush.
However, the independence of the military justice system is indeed “essential to the state’s arguments in international tribunals,” she added, according to a statement by the committee.
The officer also noted that “there are countries for which the question of whether they sell and supply us with munitions is [determined by] whether we investigate when we receive a complaint.”
The Knesset meeting came as a military court extended until Tuesday the detentions of five of the 10 reservists accused of sodomizing an inmate at the Sde Teiman detention center.
The IDF’s top lawyer has become the subject of significant criticism by members of the coalition after nine of the servicemen were arrested by masked military policemen during a raid on the Sde Teiman detention base in southern Israel in late July. Speaking at the Knesset on Sunday, Tomer-Yerushalmi defended the policemen for donning masks during the arrest, given the threats they have received.
After the arrests, a mob of far-right activists and lawmakers broke into the base and demonstrated, and later stormed the Beit Lid base where the suspects were being held.
Among the lawmakers who participated in the protests were Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, MKs Yitzhak Kroizer and Limor Son Har-Melech from the Otzma Yehudit party, Religious Zionism MK Zvi Sukkot, and MKs Nissim Vaturi and Tally Gotliv of Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party.
At one point in the Knesset session on Sunday, Vaturi — who was seen among the mob at Sde Teiman — called Labor MK Gilad Kariv a “lowly terrorist” for defending the investigation against the reservists. Kariv retorted by calling Vaturi “both an idiot and a liar.”
On Saturday evening, the Israel Police and the Criminal Investigations Division of the military police both confirmed that a police-led probe had been launched into the attacks on the IDF bases.
Following the incidents, a protest was also organized outside Tomer-Yerushalmi’s home, with protesters calling her a “betrayer of the people of Israel,” leading the IDF to announce that it was stepping up her security, both in-person and around her residence.
During a subsequent protest in Tel Aviv, MK Har-Melech appeared to threaten Tomer-Yerushalmi, telling demonstrators that anybody who prosecutes Israeli soldiers for alleged criminal acts during the war in Gaza will themselves be “charged and prosecuted as the lowest of traitors.”
Such activities have eroded her office’s status and raised questions around the world about our ability to investigate ourselves, Tomer-Yerushalmi told lawmakers on Sunday.
During the hearing, Har-Melech called Tomer-Yerushalmi “obsessed with doing bad things to the soldiers,” while Sukkot and Gotliv yelled at the senior officer, according to Hebrew press reports.
Gotliv was finally expelled from the hearing by chairman Yuli Edelstein (Likud) after she accused Tomer-Yerushalmi of leaking footage of the alleged assault of the prisoner to the press.
The footage, aired by Channel 12 last week, showed soldiers at Sde Teiman taking aside one of the detainees, who had been lying face down on the floor, then surrounding him with riot shields while they allegedly committed the abuse. The detainee was subsequently taken away for medical treatment for severe injuries.
Taking to X (formerly Twitter) after her expulsion from the committee, Gotliv confirmed that she had accused Tomer-Yerushalmi “or someone acting on her behalf of leaking the videos” to the press.
“The leaking of the videos is a global mega-attack under the auspices of the military advocate general,” Gotliv continued during a subsequent meeting of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. “She did it to maintain her good name. She put herself before our fighters.”
“She should stand trial, but there is no one to investigate her,” she added.
Members of the Israeli right have long objected to efforts to hold Israeli troops to account for alleged war crimes.
Last month, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir slammed State Prosecutor Amit Aisman over an investigation into three Israeli civilians detained on suspicion of killing a Palestinian man on October 7 and stealing weaponry from Israeli troops.
In 2017, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed a petition calling on then-president Reuven Rivlin to reconsider his decision not to pardon an IDF soldier convicted of killing an incapacitated Palestinian attacker.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
