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Saturday 01 Nov 2025
LOCAL EDITION
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LOCAL EDITION
Palestinian prisoners captured in the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces at a detention facility on the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel. (Photo/AP)
Israel’s top military prosecutor has resigned, admitting she was responsible for leaking a video showing soldiers assaulting a Palestinian detainee at a notorious military detention centre, according to excerpts of the letter published by Israeli media.
The admission has embroiled the prosecutor, Military Advocate General Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, in a firestorm of criticism from the right-wingers dominating Israeli politics, who say her actions betrayed the state.
Tomer-Yerushalmi, widely viewed by the international community as being too soft on the war crimes conducted by Israeli soldiers, has little room to manoeuvre in Israel because of Israel’s far-right political climate and amid policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The leaked video was aired last year by Israel’s Channel 12 and showed an incident in which Israeli soldiers at the Sde Teiman detention facility in southern Israel had sodomized a Palestinian detainee from Gaza.
Even Israeli military investigation of the case prompted fury from hard-line ultranationalists who violently overran the facility in protest.
In her resignation letter on Friday, Tomer-Yerushalmi said that she had leaked the video to counter the criticism that the military was prioritising Palestinian detainees over Israeli troops.
According to excerpts of the letter published in Israeli media, she wrote that the military had a “duty to investigate when there is reasonable suspicion of violence against a detainee.
"Unfortunately, this basic understanding — that there are actions which must never be taken even against the vilest of detainees — no longer convinces everyone," she wrote.
Defense Minister Israel Katz and a chorus of Israeli politicians castigated Tomer-Yerushalmi following her resignation, and Katz said she would not be reinstated.
He said investigations would continue into those involved in the decision to leak the video.
Throughout Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, Israel’s treatment of Palestinian detainees — especially at the Sde Teiman facility where the incident took place — has been characterised by rights groups as abusive.
Detainees have been rounded up en masse and brought to detention facilities where they could be held for months without charge or trial. Many released detainees have reported frequent beatings from prison guards, scant food and awful conditions.
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Source: TRT
