Israel rocked by military lawyer scandal

She resigned last week after an explosive admission of leaking a surveillance video.

- MELANIE LIDMAN AND JULIA FRANKEL

AFTER resigning, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi disappeared, and was found after an intense search.

(OREN BEN HAKOON Associated Press)

Until last week, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was the Israeli army's top lawyer. Now she is behind bars and at the center of a scandal rocking the country after a bizarre sequence of events that included her abrupt resignation, a brief disappearance and a frantic search that led authorities to find her on a Tel Aviv beach.

The soap opera-worthy saga was touched off last week by Tomer-Yerushalmi’s explosive admission that she approved the leak of a surveillance video at the center of a politically divisive investigation into allegations of severe abuse against a Palestinian at a notorious Israeli military prison.

The video shows part of an assault in which Israeli soldiers are accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee.

By leaking the video last year, Tomer-Yerushalmi aimed to expose the seriousness of the allegations her office was investigating. Instead, it triggered fierce criticism from Israel’s hard-line political leaders. After Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned under pressure last week, her critics continued to lob personal insults.

She left a cryptic note for her family and abandoned her car near a beach. That led to fears she may have taken her own life and prompted an intensive search that included the use of military drones.

She was found alive at the beach Sunday night, at which point more vitriol against her was unleashed.

“We can resume the lynch,” right-wing TV personality Yinon Magal, an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, posted on X with a winking-face emoji.

After it was revealed that one of Tomer-Yerushalmi’s phones had disappeared, right-wing politicians and commentators began to accuse her of staging a suicide attempt as a way to destroy potential evidence.