Israelis are having a meltdown over the leak of a video of Israeli soldiers gang raping a Palestinian prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman torture camp.
The uproar isn’t about the dozen or so Israeli soldiers who inserted a sharp object into a Palestinian prisoner’s anus and ripped his rectum apart. No, it’s over the fact that it was made public at all — and leaked by Israel’s Chief Military Advocate, no less.
On Sunday night, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the top lawyer supposedly in charge of making sure the Israeli army follows the law, was arrested after having revealed last Friday that she was the one who had leaked the infamous rape video to the media over a year ago.
The court case against the suspected rapists — who are not even charged with rape, but “aggravated abuse” and “causing aggravated injury” — is still ongoing. Meanwhile, Tomer-Yerushalmi is now being leveled with charges such as “breach of loyalty,” “breach of trust,” “dereliction of duty,” and “disrupting investigative operations,” Israel’s Channel 12 reported in Hebrew.
In her resignation letter, the ex-Military Advocate said she approved the video leak “in an attempt to rebuff the deceitful propaganda against the law-enforcing elements in the army.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netantahu did not miss the opportunity to dramatize the matter, portraying the whole case as an attack on the nation: “This is perhaps the most severe public relations attack that the state of Israel has experienced since its establishment,” he railed.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called the case a “blood libel,” promising that “all required sanctions” would be taken against Tomer-Yerushalmi, including stripping her of her rank.
“Anyone who falsely spreads blood libels against IDF soldiers and prefers the welfare of the Nukhba terrorists over theirs is not worthy of wearing the IDF uniform and belongs in prison,” the Defense Minister said. Although, as the Times of Israel and other news sources clarified, the Palestinian detainee who was raped by the reservists in Sde Teiman was a civilian and not a Hamas fighter.
Even still, the leak is playing to the rapists’ favor, since the nature of the leak might end up compromising the position of the prosecution.
What’s notable about all this is the popular outrage in Israel, with widespread sympathy toward the “wronged” soldiers turning the affair into a national story — in support of their right to rape Palestinians with impunity.
‘Instead of hugs, we get accusations’
In late July last year, the Sde Teiman gang rape leak was already at the center of protests by right-wing activists and politicians and activists — not over the rape itself, but over the fact that the suspects were facing trial.
The case’s prime suspect, Meir Ben-Shitrit, had already become a media star in Israel, as if he were the victim. On Saturday, he again appeared on Israel’s right-wing Channel 14, where he was framed as the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
“Maybe everything here is rotten,” the host coaxed.
“Yes,” Ben Shitrit answered. “There is one big rot here, and it’s being revealed in front of our eyes.”
The accused gang rapist called for the arrest of the Chief Military Advocate and her staff: “they all need to be arrested, their telephones need to be confiscated, and the same needs to be done to them as they did to us. Not as revenge — it needs to be done because they are criminals.”
On Sunday, a group of soldiers who are also suspects in the case made a video of their own, standing in front of the Israeli Supreme Court. Unlike Ben Shitrit, they were masked.
“I stand here today because I am tired of staying silent,” one of them said. “Instead of hugs, we get accusations. And instead of thanks, we got silence.”
“You did not allow us to respond or explain. You gave us a show trial in front of the cameras and already decided who was guilty,” the soldier went on.
“We will not remain silent. We will keep fighting for justice and for our families. You may have tried to break us, but you forgot that we are a force of a hundred men,” he added.
Rally around the rapists
In Israel, there is widespread popular sympathy for the rapists. In August of last year, two out of three Jewish Israelis who were polled said they would oppose the criminal prosecution of the suspects even if “there is a basis for the suspicion.” At most, a few “disciplinary measures” would be warranted, 65% of respondents said. In Israel, this effectively means a slap on the wrist.
Tomer-Yerushalmi, in her resignation letter, said that the detainees at Sde Teiman were “terrorists and terror operatives of the worst kind,” yet called for the “basic understanding” that there are “actions which must never be taken even against the vilest of detainees.” The ex-Military Advocate was complaining that this rationale “no longer convinces everyone.”
This whole drama demonstrates a profound truth about Israeli culture. In fact, the primary rape suspect himself, Ben Shitrit, put it well. There is “one big rot” here, and it’s “being revealed in front of our eyes.”
How much more do we need to see before we’re convinced Israel is incapable of prosecuting its own crimes?
Here’s more blood libel:
From Le Monde, “In Israeli prisons, hunger and torture are ever-present”
A shopkeeper, a construction worker, a community leader: Three Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, three different backgrounds, united by the same traumatic experience. These men spent months, even years, in Israeli prisons under “administrative detention,” meaning without trial or judgment and for a potentially unlimited duration….Under this system, which Israeli and international human rights organizations have condemned as a form of “incommunicado detention” or even “forced disappearance,” they were never informed of the reasons for their arrest – nor the charges, if any, held against them.
In Israeli prisons, hunger and torture are ever-present
From the Guardian:
Torture in Israeli prisons rose sharply during war, says freed Palestinian author….Nasser Abu Srour, whose prison memoir has been translated into seven languages and is tipped to win a major international literary prize this month, was among more than 150 Palestinians serving life sentences who were freed as part of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire and then immediately exiled to Egypt, where most remain in limbo….Abu Srour, 56, recounted a sharp increase in the use of beatings and the deprivation of food and warmth after the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023.
Torture in Israeli prisons rose sharply during war, says freed Palestinian author | Palestine | The Guardian
Ironically, Netanyahu is on the money here. Public relations, hasbara, propaganda – call it what you will – has been at the heart of Israel’s presentation of itself to the world for nearly a century. For a long time it worked: the Nakba never happened; the USS Liberty was an unfortunate accident; Arabs are just bloodthirsty savages, even though they have equal rights in Israel; Palestinians turned down our generous peace offers over and again; we have the most moral army in the world. You get the picture.
Yes, we get the picture: Israelis filmed sodomising a helpless prisoner.
They Tortured Lambs In The West Bank
Caitlin Johnstone
Nov 03, 2025
“Israeli settlers were filmed torturing lambs which belonged to Palestinians in the West Bank.
Gouged their eyes out. Smashed them with cinder blocks. Beat them to death in front of their mothers.
Lambs.
It’s not the most evil thing the Israelis have done. Not by a long shot. Hell, all of human civilization subjects animals to cruel abuses every minute of every day through the horrors of factory farming.
But this particular incident shines a special sort of light into exactly what’s going on behind Israeli eyes over there in that sadistic society.
Think about the hatred and savagery you’d need to summon up within yourself to gouge the eyes out of a living baby sheep. Think about the kind of person you’d have to become to do something like that to an innocent creature.
Those lambs didn’t know they were Palestinian. They didn’t know anything about Hamas or October 7 or the Nazi Holocaust, or any of the other reasons Israelis generally cite for their abuses of human beings.
They were just sitting there, doing absolutely nothing that could possibly be construed as harmful by even the most talented hasbarist.
And those settlers went in there and inflicted completely gratuitous suffering upon them.
This, to me anyway, just says so much about the level of vitriolic hatred by which the state of Israel is sustained. It’s baked in to the way the whole state is set up.”
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/they-tortured-lambs-in-the-west-bank
It’s not just Israel, our federal appellate judges have just turned back the clock to the Civil War era. See: US appeals court says Florida can ban Chinese citizens from buying property – Reuters
That tactic fell out of favor because the Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed just before the 14th amendment, was the first federal law to define citizenship and ensure that all citizens have the same rights to own property, make contracts, and seek legal protection as white persons. Citizens have enjoyed equal protection of law under the 14th Amendment since the pretextual exceptions were declared unconstitutional in 1952. Denying US citizens the right to buy property, adopting racial real estate covenants, and stripping citizenship from Chinese persons born here was 1880 era racist claptrap.
42 U.S. Code § 1981 – Equal rights under the law requires that every citizen be given the same rights as white persons. So how do two Florida 11th Circuit Federal Judges create an exception that allows any citizen to be prohibited from buying property in 2025?
This was first adopted as The Civil Rights Act of 1866 prior to the 14th Amendment equal protection clause:
CHAP. XXXI.—An Act to protect all Persons in the United States in their Civil Rights, and furnish the Means of their Vindication.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall have the same right, in every State and Territory in the United States, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, to the contrary notwithstanding.
While I am not Jewish (even if my husband calls me
אשת החיל שלו, שהיא באמת מיהודה ולא מזויפת כמו פולשת ציונית בפלסטינה הגנובה), I do know the halakhah that applies to destruction of food, trees, and sources of water. I doubt that RAMBAM would consider a Zionist colonial settler a Jew.
📜 Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melachim uMilchamot (Laws of Kings and Wars) 6:8–10 (paraphrased)
🌿 Summary
⚖️ Broader Principle
Rambam expands this verse from warfare to a general ethical rule: all forms of wanton destruction are prohibited. The olive tree, being both valuable and life-giving, often symbolizes the prime example of what bal tashchit protects.