As Israel’s far-right ministers defend even the most blatant and revolting crimes, Chris Bambery analyses the descent of the country and its political system

The Israeli Defence Force’s top military legal officer, military advocate general, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, has been arrested and held in prison after she admitted leaking video footage of Israeli soldiers raping and assaulting a detained Palestinian from Gaza. The victim was hospitalised with broken ribs, a punctured lung and rectal damage, according to the indictment against the soldiers.

The video footage shows soldiers gang raping a Palestinian detainee with a metal rod that caused the injuries to his anus and lungs. A doctor at Sde Teiman who examined a detainee who suffered sexual abuse stated, ‘I couldn’t believe an Israeli prison guard could do such a thing.’

The horrific incident took place in July 2024 in the Sde Teiman military detention centre in the Negev Desert, which is notorious for the torture of Palestinian detainees. Tomer-Yerushalmi launched an investigation and subsequently eleven soldiers were held for interrogation.

Amnesty International interviewed a fourteen-year-old child from Jabalia, in northern Gaza who was arrested and detained on 1 January 2024. He told Amnesty that interrogators had beaten him, burned him with cigarettes, and kept him blindfolded and handcuffed.

In May 2024, three anonymous Israeli employees at the camp spoke to CNN as whistleblowers, corroborating and detailing reports of abuse and poor conditions. They gave detailed reports and images of enclosures where detainees were blindfolded and not allowed to speak or move.

When news of the detention of the eleven IDF soldiers spread, a far-right mob gathered outside the detention centre calling for the investigation to be dropped. Far-right Knesset member Zvi Sukkot was filmed slipping through a fence and entering the detention centre. A protest was also held outside Tomer-Yerushalmi’s house, where she was branded a ‘traitor’. Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, far from denouncing the rape, said that that ‘IDF soldiers deserve respect’ and must not be treated as ‘criminals’. National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is responsible for the prison service, told Israeli media on the day of the reservists’ arrest that it was ‘shameful’ for Israel to arrest ‘our best heroes’. Smotrich’s video message went on to demand ‘an immediate criminal investigation to locate the leakers of the trending video that was intended to harm the reservists and that caused tremendous damage to Israel in the world and to exhaust the full severity of the law against them.’ Ben-Gvir claimed that any action, even gang rape, is permissible if it is undertaken for the security of the state.

When an Arab MP, Ahmad Tibi, asked in the Israeli Knesset if it was legitimate ‘to insert a stick into a person’s rectum’, Hanoch Milwidsky, a member of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, responded: ‘If he is a Nukhba [Hamas militant], everything is legitimate to do! Everything!’

Far right reaches for more power

Days later, five soldiers were charged with aggravated abuse and causing serious bodily harm. They have not been named and are currently not in custody or under any legal restrictions.

Attacks on Tomer-Yerushalemi over the affair have grown in recent weeks after reports appeared saying she was responsible for leaking the video. She was subject to growing abuse on social media. Last Friday, Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned. Stating in her resignation letter that she had authorised publication of the video to defuse attacks on military investigators and prosecutors working on the case. On Sunday afternoon, her partner reported her missing and her car was found empty at a beach in the Tel Aviv area with a note inside. Police then found her.

The far-right commentator Yinon Magal posted on X, ‘we can proceed with the lynching’, adding a winking emoji. Soon after, protesters gathered outside her house, chanting ‘we will give you no peace’. The defence minister, Israel Katz, later accused her of ‘spreading blood libels’. Tomer-Yerushalmi has now been arrested on suspicion of fraud and breach of trust, abuse of office, obstruction of justice, and disclosure of official information by a public servant, Israeli media reported.

On Sunday, Netanyahu called  Tomer-Yerushalmi, ‘the worst public relations disaster Israel has ever experienced.’ The accused soldiers also held a press conference. They wore masks as they denounced her. There was not one word of remorse for the criminally indecent assault of which they are accused.

All of this takes place against the background of attempts by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government’s unanimous vote to sack Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. In August, the High Court of Israel issued a temporary order halting her dismissal. Baharav-Miara, the country’s most senior legal official, has been leading the prosecution of Netanyahu during his trial on corruption charges.

Baharav-Miara has been at odds with Netanyahu since 2023 when his government tried to enact legislation limiting the independence of the judiciary. That sparked huge protests which only ended after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack into southern Israel.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Israeli MPs passed a new bill giving the government wide-ranging powers over the country’s television and radio groups. The Financial Times reported that the ‘sweeping bill — which must pass two more votes in parliament to become law — was put forward by Israel’s hawkish communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, who has long sought greater control over Israeli media groups. The new legislation would establish a single regulator for broadcast media — the majority of whose members would be appointed by Karhi — which would oversee broadcasting and streaming platforms.’

Two Zionisms

All of this reflects a growing fault line within Israel. At this point, it’s important to state there is little or no concern over Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza or over the de facto annexation of the West Bank. However, there is mounting tension between two camps within Zionism. The majority is with Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, not just in pushing for a Greater Israel but in reducing parliamentary democracy, judicial independence and in pushing measures designed to create a theocratic state.

In December 2022. The coalition government led by Benjamin Netanyahu was made up of six parties: Likud, United Torah Judaism, Shas, the Religious Zionist Party, Otzma Yehudit, and Noam. For the first time in the country’s history, the government has been made up primarily of religious parties. More than half of the seats in the coalition are actually occupied by far-right parties. The New Yorker  reported: ‘These parties, and factions of parties, can be divided into three groups: The largest alliance, with fourteen seats, is religious Zionism, whose forebears were preoccupied with preserving the rabbinic privileges afforded by the British Mandate in the new state of Israel – such as supervision over marriage, burial, conversion, and dietary laws, and state-supported religious schools – but which, since 1967, has been overtaken by the messianic claims of West Bank settlers. The Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, with seven seats, represent self-segregating communities living mainly in and around Jerusalem. Shas, with eleven seats, are a populist, anti-élite party of Orthodox Mizrahi immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East, who tend to be poorer and less educated.’

Smotrich and his ideological ally Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Strength) party head up the far right, based on the settlers in the West Bank. They ‘share an anti-Arab ideology and a messianic belief in the Jewish people’s right to what they call “Greater Israel”. This would be a Jewish state which would also include the West Bank, which they referred to as “Judea and Samaria”, as well as Gaza and part of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.’ The settlers and the far right wish to demolish the al-Aqsa mosque in Jersualem and to replace with a Third Temple.

The other camp is made up of largely secular Jews, mainly of European origin, who look back to Zionist leaders like David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, and Golda Meir, premier during the 1967 Six Day War. These have made up, until recently, Israel’s elite and retain a strong presence in the military, intelligence services and judiciary.

However, the settlers and the far right have established a strong presence in the IDF, which works closely with them in the West Bank. Settler and far-right reservists also became key to the genocidal war in Gaza, particularly as the numbers failing to turn up to serve rocketed. The far right will continue to push for a purge of people like Tomer-Yerushalmi and Baharav-Miara, whom they hate with a passion. No matter that they too are committed Zionists.

What does this mean? Palestinians can expect no solidarity from inside Israel but such divisions can weaken the Israeli state. 

Emigration has more than doubled since 7 October 2023.  Haaretz reported in May: ‘Nearly 60,000 Israelis left the country last year and didn’t return – more than twice the number in 2023. A full 81 percent were young people and families, often between 25 and 44 years old, the statistics bureau says. And the company Ci Marketing found that around 40 percent of Israelis still here are considering leaving.’

The Jerusalem-based Israeli historian, Frédérique Schillo, calls it a ‘phenomenon of unprecedented magnitude.’ Adding: ‘For a long time, the departure of Israelis was not studied, the authorities were reluctant to talk about it: the idea of Israel, a supposed refuge for Jews from all over the world, letting its children leave was absolutely taboo.’

Further moves towards creating a theocratic state will only accelerate this. It will also add to growing unease in the diaspora – particularly in the USA where a sea change has taken place among young Jews in regards to Israel.

For the coalition Netanyahu has created, there is no going back. And whatever his fate in the courts, his alliance seems to have long-term majority support.