Israeli police have arrested the country’s former top military lawyer on suspicion of faking a suicide attempt to dispose of a phone containing incriminating evidence in regards to leaking a video apparently showing soldiers raping a Palestinian detainee.
Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi went missing on Sunday after leaving a note to the family and abandoning her car by the beach.
She was found at night alive and in good condition and brought to police custody.Â
Israeli Channel 12 news reported that police suspect Tomer-Yerushalmi staged the attempted suicide to get rid of her phone, which she tossed into the sea. The letter she left behind was described as “ambiguous” and staged.Â
She appeared in court on Monday with another suspect in the same case.Â
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Before her disappearance on Sunday, Tomer-Yerushalmi was set to be questioned over last year’s leak of surveillance footage purportedly showing soldiers at Sde Teiman detention camp gang-raping a Palestinian detainee behind riot shields.
On Wednesday, the Israeli army launched a criminal investigation into the leak.
Two days later, Tomer-Yerushalmi admitted leaking the video and resigned.
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‘Raped by female soldiers’: Palestinian in leaked Sde Teiman photo speaks out
The scandal has received widespread coverage in Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday calling for an independent investigation into the leak, which he says caused “enormous damage to Israel’s public image”.
“This is perhaps the most severe propaganda attack that the state of Israel has experienced since its establishment,” Netanyahu said.
The footage Tomer-Yerushalmi leaked was published in August last year amid backlash from ultranationalist Israelis at the time over a military investigation into the alleged gang-rape.
Tomer-Yerushalmi said she leaked the footage to counter pressure from far-right groups attacking the Military Advocate General’s office.
At least nine Israeli soldiers were questioned over the assault in late July 2024, sparking widespread anger across Israel, with polls showing that a majority believe the accused officers should not face criminal charges.
Only five soldiers were eventually indicted for “severe abuse” of the detainee, but not for rape. The trial is ongoing.
On Sunday, the accused soldiers called for the case to be dropped.
Israeli rape of PalestiniansÂ
Since the genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023, Israeli prison authorities and the military have been widely accused of abusing Palestinian detainees, including through rape, starvation, torture and the denial of medical treatment.
In March, the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found evidence of the systematic use of sexual violence by Israeli officers against Palestinians since the start of the war.Â
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The commission said it had documented cases of rape and sexual assault of male detainees, “including the use of an electrical probe to cause burns to the anus, and the insertion of objects such as fingers, sticks, broomsticks and vegetables into the anus and rectum”.
One victim told the commission that while he was “suspended from the ceiling”, officers inserted a metal tool “into his penis repeatedly until it started bleeding, and he fainted”.
Criminal investigations against Israeli soldiers rarely result in prosecutions in Israel.
In August, war monitor Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) reported that 88 percent of Israeli military investigations into allegations of war crimes by its soldiers since October 2023 have either been closed or produced no findings.
AOAV stated that these findings suggest Israel is seeking to create a “pattern of impunity” by failing to carry out conclusive investigations into cases involving “the most severe or public accusations of wrongdoing by their forces”.