The Soldier, The Lawyer, and The State: How the Arrest of Israel’s Top Military Attorney Shatters a National Myth 

The arrest of Israel’s former Military Advocate General, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, for leaking a video showing soldiers brutally assaulting a Palestinian detainee marks a critical fracture in Israel’s rule of law. Tomer-Yerushalmi authorized the leak to defend her investigators from right-wing politicians and mobs who were decrying the soldiers as “heroes” and the prosecutors as “traitors,” yet she was subsequently arrested for her actions while the government framed the exposure of the crime as the real betrayal.

This incident demonstrates a profound shift where the pragmatic national commitment to self-investigation—long a shield against international legal tribunals—is being overrun by a political movement that treats internal legal accountability as an act of treason, thereby shattering the delicate balance between military power and judicial oversight and signaling the erosion of legal norms from within.

The Soldier, The Lawyer, and The State: How the Arrest of Israel’s Top Military Attorney Shatters a National Myth 

In the fraught and complex narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, certain institutions have long served as pillars of national identity, both for Israel’s self-image and its presentation to the world. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is one. The country’s independent judiciary is another. For decades, the Military Advocate General (MAG) Corps has stood at the precarious intersection of these two pillars, tasked with the Sisyphean duty of ensuring that the army’s immense power is exercised within the bounds of law. 

The arrest of the recently resigned Military Advocate General, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, on charges of fraud, breach of trust, and obstruction of justice, does more than just headline a political scandal. It represents the violent collapse of this delicate balance. It is a story not merely of a leaked video, but of a nation grappling with a fundamental question: In a time of perpetual conflict, can the rule of law survive the rule of the mob? 

The Leak Heard Around the Nation 

To understand the gravity of Tomer-Yerushalmi’s arrest, one must first understand what she leaked and why. The video, which she authorized for release in August 2024, depicted Israeli soldiers from the notorious Sde Teiman detention facility allegedly carrying out a brutal assault on a Palestinian detainee from Gaza. The details of the indictment are harrowing: acts of anal rape, broken ribs, a punctured lung, and severe rectal damage, injuries so severe the victim required hospitalization. 

This was not an abstract allegation. It was a visual and visceral record of abuse. Tomer-Yerushalmi, in her resignation letter, stated her motive plainly: it was “an attempt to debunk false propaganda against army law enforcement bodies.” 

The “propaganda” she referred to was a fierce, politically-charged campaign. After the initial detention of 11 soldiers in July 2024, right-wing politicians and media pundits did not express shock or demand accountability. Instead, they championed the detained soldiers as “heroes” and labeled the military investigators as “traitors.” A far-right mob, incited by this rhetoric and including a serving minister and MKs, stormed the Sde Teiman base, demanding the investigation be dropped. 

In this environment, the video was Tomer-Yerushalmi’s counterpunch—a stark, undeniable piece of evidence meant to show the Israeli public, and perhaps the world, that the military justice system was pursuing a grave crime, not persecuting its own. It was an act of legal defense, both of the institution she led and of the principle that no one is above the law. 

The Backlash: When Accountability Becomes Treason 

The leak, however, detonated a political explosion. The government and its far-right allies framed her actions not as upholding justice, but as damaging the state. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement was telling. He did not express outrage at the torture depicted in the video. Instead, he called the leak “perhaps the most severe public relations attack that the state of Israel has experienced since its establishment.” 

This framing is crucial. The crime was no longer the violent assault on a detainee; the crime was the exposure of the assault. In this new calculus, the true threat to national security was not the erosion of moral and legal norms within the army, but the tarnishing of its international image. 

The campaign against Tomer-Yerushalmi quickly devolved from political criticism into something darker and more personal. It culminated in a chilling sequence of events: her partner reported her missing, her car was found empty at a Tel Aviv beach with a note inside, prompting a brief, worried silence from her detractors. Once she was found safe, the vitriol immediately resumed. Far-right commentator Yinon Magal posted on X, “we can proceed with the lynching,” accompanied by a winking emoji—a grotesque trivialization of mob violence. Protesters gathered outside her home, shouting, “we will give you no peace,” while Defense Minister Israel Katz accused her of “spreading blood libels.” 

This was not a debate about legal procedure; it was a demonstration of raw political power seeking to intimidate and dismantle an independent legal institution. 

The Collapse of the “Purity of Arms” and the International Shield 

For decades, the concept of “Tohar HaNeshek” (Purity of Arms) was a cornerstone of IDF ethos, the idea that military force must be used morally and ethically. While often contested in practice, it was a stated ideal. Simultaneously, Israel’s legal establishment cultivated another, more pragmatic defense: the principle of complementarity. 

International courts, like the International Criminal Court (ICC), are generally only meant to intervene when a national legal system is “unwilling or unable” to genuinely investigate and prosecute crimes. For years, Israel’s robust, independent judiciary and its military justice system were presented as proof that Israel could—and would—police itself. The role of the Military Advocate General was, as Professor Yagil Levy of Israel’s Open University notes, increasingly seen as “protecting soldiers from prosecution abroad… the law is not upheld as a value in itself, but as a defence against international tribunals.” 

Tomer-Yerushalmi’s arrest and the political frenzy that precipitated it shatter this defense. How can Israel claim to have a functioning, independent system of military justice when its top lawyer is arrested for trying to prosecute a severe case of abuse, and for being transparent with the public about why it was necessary? 

As the investigative reporter Ronen Bergman revealed, Tomer-Yerushalmi seemed to grasp this paradox perfectly. Just six weeks ago, she reportedly told colleagues, “Don’t they understand we had no choice? That the only way to address the wave of international legal proceedings is by proving we can investigate ourselves?” 

Her arrest sends the opposite message to the world: that those who investigate are more likely to be punished than those who commit the abuses. 

A Pattern of Impunity in a Landscape of Destruction 

The Sde Teiman case is not an isolated incident but a symptom of a profound shift. Throughout the recent war in Gaza, accountability for actions against Palestinians has been virtually nonexistent. 

• One Conviction: Despite widespread, documented testimony of torture and abuse in Israeli detention facilities, and dozens of Palestinian deaths in custody, there has been only one conviction of an Israeli soldier for assaulting a detainee during this war. 

• No Charges for Civilian Deaths: Not a single soldier has been charged for the killings of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, including in high-profile incidents that sparked global condemnation, such as the strikes on aid workers from World Central Kitchen and the killing of paramedics. 

• A Free Hand in Gaza: As Professor Levy points out, the MAG Corps under Tomer-Yerushalmi had already given the army “a free hand in Gaza... regarding the unprecedented collateral damage from airstrikes.” Her subsequent refusal to advance other war crimes investigations, as reported by Haaretz, under the pressure of public attacks, reveals a system buckling under political force. 

The arrest of Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi is therefore a watershed moment. It signifies that the fragile pragmatic commitment to the rule of law—the kind upheld for the sake of international legitimacy—is now being overrun by a political movement that views any internal scrutiny as an act of betrayal. It demonstrates that the greatest threat to a nation’s legal order may not come from outside critics, but from within, from those who believe that in a time of war, the law itself is a luxury they can no longer afford. The fortress, it seems, is being dismantled from the inside.