Less than a week ago, Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was the Israeli Armed Forces’ top lawyer, charged with ensuring compliance with the law within the country’s Armed Forces.
Now, she is arrested as part of a criminal investigation into the leak of a video showing alleged abuse, including sexual abuse, against Palestinian inmates in a notorious Israeli military prison.
A frequent target of the Israeli right, Tomer-Yerushalmi’s rapid downfall became a national scandal, overshadowing the video at the center of the case.
The case dates back to July 2024, when IDF (Israel Defense Forces) legal authorities opened an investigation into soldiers who were allegedly caught sexually assaulting a Palestinian prisoner during the war in Gaza, while around two dozen other detainees remained lying face down nearby, in the Sde Teiman military prison.
The investigation and subsequent arrest of the soldiers fueled an intense political reaction, with some members of the right wing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition even participating in protests and riots in front of the Sde Teiman prison and the military court where the soldiers were taken.
The video was first shown by Israel’s Channel 12 in August 2024, but it was not the first report to raise concerns about conditions at the base.
. A month later, Israel announced that it would begin decommissioning the facility.
But this did little to mitigate the virulence of the criticism directed at the Armed Forces’ top lawyer.
On Wednesday, Tomer-Yerushalmi was suspended from her role as military attorney general after Israel’s attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, announced a criminal investigation into the leak.
Two days later, Tomer-Yerushalmi submitted his letter of resignation, acknowledging that he approved the release of the video and taking “full responsibility for any material that was released to the media within the unit.”
In her letter, she wrote that a “campaign of incitement” against her reached its peak following the decision to investigate the soldiers in Sde Teiman. “This campaign continues to this day and causes deep and serious damage to the Israel Defense Forces, its image and the resilience of Israel Defense Forces soldiers and commanders,” she wrote.
“There are things that cannot be done even against the worst detainees,” she wrote. “Officers in the (legal) unit suffered repeated personal attacks, cruel insults and even real threats. All this because they upheld the rule of law in the Israel Defense Forces – together with and alongside their commanders.”
For the right wing of the Israeli political spectrum, the resignation and investigation were not enough. Hours after Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned, Defense Minister Israel Katz said he would take “all necessary sanctions against her,” including revoking her patent.
Katz, who issued no fewer than seven statements against the top military lawyer in less than a week, accused her of involvement in a “blood libel” against soldiers, although the veracity of the video was not questioned and five soldiers were indicted in February 2025 for detainee abuse. They denied the accusations.
“The worst public relations disaster” for Israel
Netanyahu called the leak “a huge reputational blow,” describing it on Sunday as “the worst public relations disaster in Israel’s history.”
The Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, classified the lawyer’s conduct as “criminal behavior under legal disguise” and called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the leak.
Then, Tomer-Yerushalmi disappeared.
For several hours on Sunday, the Israeli army and police were unable to locate the woman who, until a few days earlier, had been the country’s top lawyer for the armed forces.
The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) said in a statement that it would “employ all available means” to locate her “as quickly as possible”.
After an intensive search, she was found on a beach north of Tel Aviv.
On Sunday night (2), police arrested Tomer-Yerushalmi on suspicion of multiple crimes: fraud and breach of trust, abuse of official power, obstruction of justice and disclosure of information by a public official.
She has not yet been formally charged nor has she pleaded guilty or innocent. His next hearing is scheduled for Wednesday (5). The lawyer representing Tomer-Yerushalmi declined to comment on the case.
Tomer-Yerushalmi is also suspected of having allegedly misled the Supreme Court of Justice, as well as senior military and judicial officials, about the leak of the images, and even of having submitted a false statement to the court.
In addition to Tomer-Yerushalmi, other senior legal officials from the Military Public Prosecutor’s Office are also implicated in the leak and the alleged attempted cover-up. According to police, there are five suspects in the investigation.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian prisoner at the center of the alleged abuses has been returned to Gaza as part of the US-brokered ceasefire agreement, raising doubts about the prospects for an effective trial of the soldiers accused in the case as the alleged victim is not available to testify.
The case became part of a broader attack on the Israeli judiciary by Netanyahu’s coalition.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin is trying to prevent Baharav-Miara – also a frequent target of the right – from investigating the leak, suggesting that the attorney general’s own involvement in the case also be examined.
“Anyone involved in conflicts of interest will not be part of the investigation,” Levin insisted in a statement last week.
“The lies that have been constructed here over the years, while trampling on the rights of entire populations and seriously harming the security of the state and the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, are gradually crumbling,” Levin said. “A group that has become accustomed to treating the country as if it were its own is being replaced.”
Baharav-Miara’s office responded in a letter, stating that Levin was trying to “illegally interfere” in the investigative process, which “impedes its progress.”
