The revelation last week by Israel’s top military lawyer, Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, that she leaked the footage of a gang rape of a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman military detention centre in 2024 has shaken the country’s political and media establishment.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – whose leadership of the genocidal war on Gaza has drawn global condemnation – called the leak “perhaps the most severe public relations attack that the State of Israel has experienced”. Critics of Netanyahu’s view come from establishment voices desperate to defend the judiciary and state institutions, which they believe Netanyahu and his allies are exploiting the leak to undermine.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listLost amid headlines fuelled by the leak’s admission is the gang rape of the Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman on July 5, 2024. The attack was so brutal that the man was admitted to hospital with what the Israeli daily Haaretz revealed was a ruptured bowel, severe anal and lung injuries, and broken ribs – injuries that later required surgery.“It’s a huge story in Israel, but you won’t see the word ‘rape’ anywhere in it,” Orly Noy, editor of the Hebrew language Local Call, told Al Jazeera. “The contextualisation of the story is entirely different here than anything you or I might see.”Instead of focusing on the rape and the ongoing legal proceedings against the five suspects, the story has instead centred on Tomer-Yerushalmi and tho …
