Before her resignation, Defence Minister Israel Katz had said Gen Tomer-Yerushalmi would not be allowed to return to her post.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Warning: this story contains a description of alleged sexual abuse<\/b><\/p>\n
In her resignation letter, Gen Tomer-Yerushalmi said she took full responsibility for any material that was released to the media from the unit.<\/p>\n
“I approved the release of material to the media in an attempt to counter false propaganda against the army’s law enforcement authorities,” she said.<\/p>\n
That is a reference to efforts by some right-wing political figures in Israel to claim that the video and reports of abuse of detainees were fabricated.<\/p>\n
Gen Tomer-Yerushalmi went on: “It is our duty to investigate whenever there is reasonable suspicion of acts of violence against a detainee.”<\/p>\n
After her resignation was accepted by the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Katz put out a statement welcoming the decision.<\/p>\n
“Anyone who spreads blood libels against IDF troops is unfit to wear the army’s uniform,” he said.<\/p>\n
The leaked video was broadcast on the Israeli Channel 12 news in August 2024.<\/p>\n
The footage shows soldiers at Sde Teiman taking aside a detainee, then surrounding him with riot shields to block visibility while was stabbed in the rectum with a sharp object. The detainee was treated for severe injuries.<\/p>\n
After Israeli military police went to Sde Teiman to question 11 reservists over the incident, far-right protesters broke into the facility to show their support.<\/p>\n
Five reservists were subsequently charged with aggravated abuse and causing serious bodily harm to the detainee. They have denied the charges.<\/p>\n
The video was seen as concrete evidence backing up multiple reports of abuse of Palestinian detainees since the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel.<\/p>\n
Right-wing politicians in Israel, however, condemned the leaking of the video as attempt to defame the Israeli military.<\/p>\n
Last year, a report by a UN commission of inquiry alleged that thousands of child and adult detainees from Gaza had been “subjected to widespread and systematic abuse, physical and psychological violence, and sexual and gender-based violence amounting to the war crime and crime against humanity of torture and the war crime of rape and other forms of sexual violence”.<\/p>\n
Israel’s government said it rejected the accusations of widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees, and insisted that it was “fully committed to international legal standards”. It also said it had carried out thorough investigations into every complaint.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Israeli military’s top lawyer has resigned after saying that she was responsible for the leaking of a video that purportedly shows soldiers sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee last year. Maj Gen Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the military advocate general, had been on leave since a criminal investigation was launched by police earlier this week into how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40414,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40412\/revisions\/40414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}