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The soldiers accused of carrying out the attack gave a press conference outside the Supreme Court on Sunday, wearing black balaclavas to avoid identification.
The group said they could not receive a fair trial because of the leaked video, and were victims of an unfair “drumhead court-martial”.
Concerns over political influence on the IDF
On Sunday, Netanyahu characterised the fallout from the leaked video as “perhaps the most severe propaganda attack against the State of Israel” in its history.
Defence Minister Israel Katz said that anyone who fabricates “blood libels against Israeli soldiers was unworthy of donning IDF uniform”.
The incident in the southern Negev Desert has exposed, in the view of opponents to the current government, the creeping politicisation of the IDF.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described the footage as anti-Israel propaganda.Credit: AP
Tomer-Yerushalmi appeared to be a model servant of the state. Only the second woman to rise to the position, in 2021, she was appointed chief military advocate – effectively the IDF’s top lawyer.
However, the 51-year-old mother of three is now under investigation over the leak.
She had previously submitted an official statement to the High Court of Justice claiming she could not locate the source of the leak.
If leaking the video was sufficient to end her stellar legal career in the IDF, allegedly lying about it to Israel’s top court could be enough to land her in jail.
She is due to be questioned by police this week over her actions, and after significant concerns for her welfare when her car was found abandoned near a cliff-topped beach near Tel Aviv, officials said she had been found “alive and well”.
Protesters gather at Sde Teiman in Israel last year to show support for soldiers questioned over the alleged abuse of Palestinian detainees.Credit: AP
Tomer-Yerushalmi’s rapid fall from grace has shocked Israel, but it is why she felt the need to leak the video in the first place that is driving the public row.
The allegations of abuse at Sde Teiman by reservists from the IDF’s Unit 100, including a captain and a major, were already in the public domain before Channel 12 first broadcast the footage in August 2024.
The fact that the detainee was injured so grievously that he had to be admitted to a civilian hospital saw to that.
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With rumours of not just this incident but allegations of systematic abuse at Sde Teiman beginning to reach the international press, the Military Advocate General Office began an investigation following orders from Tomer-Yerushalmi.
It was the investigation into the IDF’s soldiers that first prompted backlash from senior figures within Israel’s government.
The abuse allegations, after all, were the last thing the government needed, with Israel’s international reputation tanking due to the brutality of the Gaza campaign and war crimes indictments for the prime minister in the offing.
The country was also still in the grip of profound shock and, for many citizens, fury at the October 7 massacre, with extremely limited concern for the treatment of detained Palestinians.
The backlash against the investigation included violent scenes as protesters, including politicians, broke into two military compounds to protest against the investigation.
A huge amount of political pressure, both public and, it is alleged, privately, was also directed at Tomer-Yerushalmi to drop the probe, including accusing her of manufacturing the allegations.
Her decision to leak the video evidence has been seen as her essentially buckling under this pressure – a desperate act by a hitherto by-the-book lawyer determined to prove that her team were not making things up.
It may well prove disastrous for her personally.
Others worry that, more importantly, the fact that such a senior IDF officer could come under such political pressure in the first place indicates an erosion of respect for the neutrality of the military.
For critics of Netanyahu, the so-called “MAG affair” shows that, having allegedly tried to politicise Israel’s judiciary, leading to months of protest before the war, he is now trying the same with the military.
Katz, seen as both a Netanyahu yes-man but also personally ambitious, is already accused of holding up the sign-off of senior military appointments – most of which are traditionally beneath the purview of ministers – in an effort to ensure political loyalty among the high command.
At the same time, Justice Minister Yariv Levin is trying to warn Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara against any involvement in the fallout of the Tomer-Yerushalmi case.
It follows the significant public disquiet over the dismissal of Ronen Bar, the director of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, earlier this year after he launched an investigation into Qatari influence on Netanyahu’s staff.
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The worry is that while Israel has always had rumbustious politics, the neutrality of its professional military and security services, which have traditionally remained sacrosanct, is under threat.
A lawyer for one of the five military guards at Sde Teiman has now called for the prosecutions to be dropped, arguing that proliferation of the now notorious video means his client cannot get a fair trial.
Whether or not that argument succeeds, Israel’s reputation as a country with the rule of law is once again in the dock.
