STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Israel's former top military lawyer is under arrest because she leaked video footage showing Israeli soldiers abusing a Palestinian detainee. She went missing on Sunday night, and there were fears for her life, but she now is in custody. NPR's Daniel Estrin is covering the story from Tel Aviv. Hi, Daniel.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: I guess we should note at the beginning, we're going to be discussing graphic details of alleged abuse over the next four minutes or so. Where's the story begin?
ESTRIN: It begins last summer. It's in the middle of the Gaza war. A group of soldiers was arrested and charged with abusing a Palestinian detainee at an Israeli detention center where they were guarding detainees. Now, according to the indictment, the Palestinian detainee was blindfolded, his hands and legs were bound, and the soldiers beat him and stabbed his bottom with a sharp object that tore his rectum, and he needed multiple surgeries. This was the most prominent alleged war crime that Israeli authorities prosecuted from the Gaza war.
INSKEEP: And what happened after the soldiers were charged?
ESTRIN: Wow. Far-right Israeli lawmakers and demonstrators stormed the base where the military court is. They stormed the detention facility where the soldiers were being held. They were coming to these soldiers' defense. Some of them were defending the soldiers' actions, saying that they were justified in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack in 2023, and others were actually accusing the military's advocate general of faking the allegations against these soldiers. So after that, Israeli TV got hold of leaked security camera footage, allegedly showing the soldiers in the act.
The new twist here, Steve, is that a few days ago, the military's top lawyer, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, admitted that she was the one who leaked that footage to Israeli TV to show that these weren't fake charges. Now, you're not supposed to leak evidence in an ongoing case, according to Israeli law, and she had allegedly lied about trying to find the source of the leak. So she resigned on Friday, and it sparked a major firestorm here. Israel's hard-right leaders are blaming her for leaking the footage and making Israel look bad. And even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it perhaps Israel's worst public relations attack in its history.
INSKEEP: OK. It is very interesting. So the focus here is on the leak of the images of the abuse, not so much the abuse itself. But then what happened with her disappearing?
ESTRIN: Yeah. She went missing Sunday evening, and authorities went searching for her. Israeli media reported she was feared to have died by suicide. But then she was found alive, and she's been taken into police custody for leaking the footage, and she remains in custody today.
INSKEEP: OK. So clearly, you're going to be covering this story again. We're going to be hearing about this again. This story is nowhere near its end. But why is it significant for Israel that this is the debate right now?
ESTRIN: I think the takeaway here, Steve, is to look at the far-right pressure in Israel. It's backed by the Israeli government, and it's focusing on targeting the prosecution of this alleged war crime and not the alleged war crime itself. The military's advocate general, its top lawyer, has a main job to give legal backing to Israel's military actions in Gaza and to investigate when the army allegedly commits crimes and to show the world that Israel can investigate itself...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
ESTRIN: ...At wartime. But there does appear to be a chilling effect here, with all of this pressure against what she's done, exposing the evidence of this abuse. Israel's newspaper Haaretz is reporting anonymous military officials saying that the pressure against her for investigating this abuse case was so high that she allegedly has not prosecuted even arguably more egregious alleged war crimes like Israeli military killings of medical staff in Gaza, of journalists and of aid workers.
INSKEEP: NPR's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv. Thanks so much for your reporting as always, Daniel.
ESTRIN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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