Abuse by Israeli soldiers

[justanotherpassword]

Israeli military's ex-top lawyer arrested over leak of video allegedly showing Palestinian detainee abuse https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0kpd97qqko

This has been extensively discussed in another thread. As I said there - this news article is misleading. She was not arrested simply for the leak of the video (and at the time the video was leaked, this abuse story was well known and had caused outcry in the Israeli public sphere; the soldiers involved were arrested). The more serious part of the story in legal terms, and why she was arrested now, is obstruction of justice. It is a very complicated case, but in short: when the abuse case happened, there were far right protests against the arrest of the soldiers concerned, including attempts to discredit the justice system. According to her own letter of resignation, Tomer-Yerushalmi decided to leak the security camera footage to Channel 12 News in order to protect the justice system from far-right accusations that soldiers from Sde Teiman were being arrested with no basis. However, her office later covered up the leak, claiming in an affidavit to the Supreme Court that the source of the leak could not be traced. This was done with the knowledge of several people in the legal system; there also seems to have been an attempt to destroy evidence (she is believed to have thrown her phone into the sea). All this is why she was arrested now: despite Bibi's spin, it's not because she uncovered abuse that was hidden - it was already a very well known and widely reported case.

@israelilefty whilst you are on the thread and mention you are Israeli - can I ask please why the government does nothing about the daily settler attacks against Palestinians who are trying to harvest olives. Why are the IDF also complicit in these attacks by either partaking or standing by and watching?

Where is the outrage in Israel when settlers routinely cut down and burn olive trees? Which is the source of livelihood for Palestinian farmers?

Israel loses it's legitimacy as a 'democracy' when they have settlers running rampage daily against innocent Palestinians who are rarely held accountable.

Oh I didn’t see the other thread. Must have missed it.

There are plenty of sources which will give a much fuller account than me, but basically; Netanyahu formed a coalition government with far right parties that represent the extremists of the settler movement. He needs them to remain in his government to survive. Ben Gvir, the leader of far-right party Otzma Yehudit is the internal security minister, and he has done everything in his power to protect violent Jewish extremists in the West Bank. I personally know some left wing Israeli Jews who go to support those harvesting olives in the West Bank but it's a drop in the ocean against violent extremists and a police force which is deliberately being held back rom investigating them.

I can fully understand concerns that she lied to the court - but the way it’s spun by Netanyahu’s government is that the leak itself was a « PR attack » on Israel.

I would have thought the biggest PR attack was that the alleged violence happened in the first place!

The lie by a senior lawyer was bad, but it doesn’t come close to the horror of the alleged physical assaults by 5 Israelis on an innocent Palestinian that happened in a state facility. I simply cannot imagine this happening in a prison of a western democracy.

www.timesofisrael.com/pm-palestinian-prisoner-abuse-video-leak-most-serious-pr-attack-against-israel-to-date/

Yes of course this is being spun in this way by Netanyahu: their government has spent its entire 3 years trying to delegitimise the judiciary and this is just another example.

As for other Western democracies - unfortunately there are plenty of parallels: Abu Ghraib; systematic abuse of Iraqi detainees by British forces in Iraq www.ecchr.eu/en/case/war-crimes-by-uk-forces-in-iraq/

This is why this is such a shocking case: the only hope against cases like these is a strong judiciary that will punish the perpetrators, and the fact that the chief military prosecutor acted outside the law - even for the "right reasons" releasing the video - undermines the prevention of future abuses.

Yes. I was reading about this. They are going all out to make out that rape never happened so an important step is to punish her instead of the rapists.

Just as a reminder about the state of the detained at SdeTemain at the hands of the IDF:

Haaretz July 30 2024

Sde Teiman Doctor Who Saw Abused Gazan Detainee: 'I Couldn't Believe an Israeli Prison Guard Could Do Such a Thing'
Excerpt from the Haaretz article as a reminder of the injuries reported by the doctor who saw the detainee:

Information obtained by Haaretz shows that the Gazan detainee suffered from a ruptured bowel, a severe injury to his anus, lung damage and broken ribs. He was taken to a hospital for an operation.
"If the state and Knesset members think there's no limit to how much you can abuse prisoners, they should kill them themselves, like the Nazis did, or close the hospitals," Donchin said.

And what the US and UK did was a stain on their reputation- but wasn’t on Uk nor US soil. Cannot remember the whistleblowers being scapegoated.

The five soldiers involved were arrested and have been charged with aggravated abuse and aggravated assault.

Again, she is not being scapegoated for whistleblowing (she wasn't supposed to released the video, but that's one of the lesser issues here in legal terms): the seriousness of this case is because she and her colleagues lied in an affidavit to the Supreme Court and obstructed the course of justice.

And about abuse on your own soil - I don't see a difference on whose soil it takes place. Abuse of prisoners by soldiers is abuse of prisoners by soldiers. It just happens that the war with Iraq didn't take place on the UK or US border so they were able to conveniently situate the prisons out of sight overseas.

She felt she had to leak in the first place due to resistance about her investigating the assaults. I do agree with you about the seriousness of her misleading the supreme court - but, as an outsider - the main crime here is the alleged assaults, including sexual.

I cannot imagine anything like this happening on Uk and US soil- due to the governance structures in place. The reason the abuses happened in Iraq and even Guantanamo Bay was precisely because of lack of oversight - including legal.

What about the rapist that was paraded about on the television chat shows in Israel and the protests about the right to rape?

@Stripes56 wasn’t Guantanamo Bay literally set up there FOR that reason. So it was out of public gaze.

Also (and I know @israelilefty) can speak for themselves they had a long running thread on here and answered questions respectfully. They are not responsible nor I imagine have an answer to every question put to them.

I echo what has been said about the Maj Gen though and the response from the events. There was considerable outcry at the time in Israel. The recent events are about what they did.

@Stripes56 if you look at our prison system there are horrible abuses of power regularly. Do you have much experience of some of our worst prisons and what goes on?

Exactly - it wouldn’t have happened on US soil because of concerns about legal processes and other governance procedures. There are no prisoners on U.S. soil that are being held without trial either. Enhanced interrogation measures were terrible but at least didn’t require corrective surgery.

Of course I dont expect people to answer any question if they don’t want to!

I do read newspapers regularly but have yet to come across anything comparable in UK prisons - except by violence by other prisoners! Nothing comparable to the allegations against these 5 Israelis, resulting in the need for surgery to the poor Palestinian man. And also done in impunity and in the presence of so many others.
Imagine what it must also have been like for the other Palestinians made to lie on the floor and listen to what was happening. I can’t bring myself to watch the video, but can imagine how dreadful it must have been.

I am not trying in any way to minimise the severity of this abuse. The perpetrators should be punished to the full extent of the law - and rightly they have been charged with serious crimes.

However, I find the glib assertions of "it wouldn't happen here" problematic. It's nice that you have such confidence in the way your soldiers treat prisoners - confidence that is not borne out by reality of what has happened in recent conflicts in which UK/US soldiers were involved.

Sde Teiman, where this case of abuse (and other incidents) happened, is not a regular Israeli prison run by the prison service. It's a military detention facility, like Basra or Abu Ghraib. It was closed in 2006, but was reopened in 2023 because the prison service had no way to cope with the hundreds of high-security prisoners, including hundreds of fighters from Hamas's elite Nukhba unit who led the Oct 7 atrocities, who were picked up by Israeli forces during the early days of the war. It was staffed by reserve soldiers from a counterterrorism unit who in the past had dealt with high security prisoners, and by others who, because of the circumstances, had received rudimentary training only. As you might imagine, when there is general conscription, the people who go to those roles are generally not quiet philosophical kids from middle-class homes. They are also not dealing with criminals whose crimes affected someone they don't know: they are dealing with prisoners many of whom (including the prisoner who was abused) were active members of a terror organisation that committed appalling attacks just down the road from the facility, and whose organisation was almost certainly responsible for the death of people they knew personally.

None of this is to excuse the crimes nor the structures which enabled them. It's just to say: don't be so sure it wouldn't happen in your back yard, because all the evidence from military detention by British and US troops suggests the opposite - and that's even in wars fought far from home and by professional armies without the need for universal conscription. Luckily very few people alive in the UK or USA today have experience of being in an active state of warfare, and even then the wars were not fought on home soil. Short message: by all means judge us. But do so with humility, praying to G-d that you will never need to find out how you, your country and your fellow citizens actually act in a situation of active warfare on home soil and your immediate borders.

@Stripes56i don’t think you understand what I am saying. The fact the US made sure Guantanamo Bay wasn’t on US soil pretty much tells you they wanted to circumvent human rights from the get go. A planned route around it. Things do happen with the US and UK military routinely as it does with prison (let’s not imagine we know everything that happens)

I know about Ben Gvir and the coalition. I'm asking how Israel can call themselves a 'democracy' when the state is actively involved in terrorising innocent Palestinians? The settlers movement supported by the IDF and the government of Israel, deligitimises any notion of the myth that Israel likes to call themselves; 'the only democracy in the middle east'.

Isn't the land supposed to be sacred? Why do they seem to have such hate towards Olive trees? Olives are sacred, yet they are constantly hacking down olive trees and burning the land.

Why does Israel not do anything to tackle the home grown settler terrorists in their own backyard? Instead, go out of their way to arm and enable their terrorism.

I understand what you’re saying - there was a reason why Guantanamo bay was required and yes it was to circumvent US laws. That’s why it couldn’t have happened on US soil!

I didn’t say things don’t happen in our prisons - but show me something comparable.

The most disturbing thing about this particular Sde Teiman incident was the response of a proportion of the Israeli population to it, which demonstrated a level of depravity I had not witnessed before

A riot for impunity shows Israel’s proud embrace of its crimes
Far-right protesters, soldiers, and MKs rallied for guards suspected of raping a Palestinian detainee. Once fringe, they’re now the public face of the state.

https://www.972mag.com/sde-teiman-beit-lid-protests-detainees/

https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/1/israelgazapalestinianprisonerstorture

Also this 972 article is interesting regarding comparisons

“The situation there is more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.” This is how Khaled Mahajneh describes the Sde Teiman detention center as the first lawyer to visit the facility. More than 4,000 Palestinians whom Israel arrested in Gaza have been held at the military base in the Naqab/Negev since October 7; some of them have subsequently been released, but most remain in Israeli detention.”

https://www.972mag.com/sde-teiman-prisoners-lawyer-mahajneh/

Exactly, it's not to excuse British/American crimes during war, of which there have been plenty (including rape). Assange and other whistle-blowers exposed these crimes and there was rightly an outcry from local populations.

These soldiers at Sde Teiman:
"took turns to rape (a stick, a phone, a fire extinguisher) their victim on camera until they exploded his intestines & raptured his rectum. Ministers, MPs, religious leaders… all praised the rapists. National TVs hosted the rapists."

The victim : "underwent 20 surgical operations, inc. colostomy & urostomy, & is still suffering medical complications until now"

I had not read the full details of the assault @BelleHathor that is absolutely horrific, actually makes me feel physically ill, that poor man, the comments by Israeli politicians are even more shocking since they know the details. I wonder did the poster on here who expressed that they were ok with the sexual torture of Palestinians know ?

”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.