The Rape That Never Happened
Israel's top military prosecutor leaked doctored footage, lied to courts, faked suicide—and exposed the Deep State
Tablet Magazine broke another blockbuster story! On July 29, 2024, forty Military Police officers raided Sde Teiman detention facility and arrested ten IDF reservists guarding Hamas terrorists.
The charge: raping a Palestinian prisoner with an instrument. Six days later, Israel's most-watched news program aired leaked security footage that went viral worldwide. Israeli soldiers, the video appeared to show, had sexually assaulted a detainee.
One problem. The rape never happened.
The video was doctored—two clips with different timestamps spliced together. The woman who leaked it, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, was Israel's top military lawyer. She would resign in October 2025, stage an apparent suicide, get arrested, and blow open a conspiracy reaching the highest levels of Israel's unelected bureaucracy.
This is how Israel's progressive elite manufactured a blood libel against their own soldiers.
What Actually Happened
Sde Teiman holds Hamas's Nukhba unit terrorists—the ones who led the October 7 massacre. Force 100 soldiers guard them with batons, tasers, and riot shields. No guns. If 80 handcuffed prisoners stampede together, the guards are finished.
On July 5, a high-risk prisoner arrived from another facility. During intake search, he attacked guards—biting, kicking, shouting for other inmates to join him. Force 100 moved him behind riot shields (standard protocol) and restrained him by force. The 18-minute security video shows a struggle. No clothing removed. No sexual assault.
After the search, the prisoner went to his mattress. Midnight: headache, given medication. Then the bathroom. 2:30 AM: complained of rectal bleeding.
Medical exams found a four-centimeter laceration inside the rectum, above the anus. No injury to the anus itself. Professor Alon Pikarsky, chief surgeon at Hadassah Hospital, reviewed the findings: forced insertion was impossible. The wound was consistent with self-inflicted injury.
The prisoner had smuggled contraband in his rectum. When the search made extraction urgent, he injured himself in the bathroom.
Medical evidence was clear. No rape occurred.
The Setup
The medical report came from Professor Yoel Donchin, board member of Physicians for Human Rights—a leftist NGO that spent months accusing Israel of systematic abuse at Sde Teiman. Donchin worked at the facility. He saw the injured prisoner and filed the report, triggering the investigation.
In interviews, Donchin compared Israelis to Nazis: "If the state thinks there is no limit to abuse, they should come kill them themselves, like the Nazis did."
This is your impartial medical expert.
Shin Bet interviewed the prisoner twice in July. He never complained of sexual assault. Not to physicians. Not to Shin Bet. Not to Military Police.
By July 29, when MPs raided Sde Teiman with masks and cameras, they had: no medical evidence of rape, no victim complaint, expert opinions stating forced insertion was impossible.
They arrested the soldiers anyway. Publicly. Theatrically.
The alleged victim wouldn't claim sexual assault until August 5—a week after the arrests, one day before the video leaked. In that interview, the prisoner asked investigators in Arabic: "What do I get in return if I tell?"
He was returned to Gaza in October, conveniently making cross-examination impossible.
The Leak
The arrests triggered riots. Right-wing politicians and protesters stormed Sde Teiman demanding the soldiers' release. International media ran with it: "Israeli extremists defend rapists."
Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, Israel's Military Advocate General, faced intense pressure. Death threats. Protests at her home. Accusations she favored terrorists over soldiers.
So she leaked classified footage to Channel 12's Guy Peleg, a correspondent who's called Netanyahu "Israel's worst enemy." On August 6, the video aired with narration suggesting soldiers "aware of cameras" were "concealing their actions with shields."
It went viral. Global condemnation. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the UN—all cited it as proof of Israeli war crimes. The ICC announced investigations.
Investigative journalist Ayala Hasson immediately noticed the video contained two separate clips with different timestamps—July 5 and July 29—edited together. One date, the prisoner wasn't even at the facility.
The evidence wasn't just leaked. It was fabricated.
Netanyahu would later call it "the most severe public relations attack Israel has experienced since its establishment." A government study found the video "undermined military support, increased threats to soldiers, and caused a sharp rise in antisemitic discourse worldwide."
Israel's top military lawyer had handed its enemies a propaganda gift. Intentionally.
The Cover-Up
When Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered an investigation into the leak, Tomer-Yerushalmi appointed her own deputy to lead it. She coordinated the cover-up via WhatsApp. Lied to the IDF chief of staff. Lied to the Supreme Court. Lied to the Knesset.
In September, a nonprofit petitioned for an independent investigation, noting the obvious conflict of interest. The state's response: no basis for such claims.
Tomer-Yerushalmi told the court under oath: too many people had access to the footage, technologically impossible to find the leaker.
They could have checked Guy Peleg's phone records. They didn't.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara—who oversees Netanyahu's criminal prosecution—backed Tomer-Yerushalmi's story. Told the court the leak caused no security damage. The Supreme Court accepted it.
This interlocking network—the court, the AG's office, the military prosecution—protected its own.
The Outsider
What broke the case wasn't journalism or politics. It was a polygraph test.
Maj. Gen. David Zini became Shin Bet director in October 2025. Religious Zionist. Eleven children. Father of eleven. Raised outside Tel Aviv's elite circles. Four former Shin Bet chiefs had opposed his appointment, calling him too extreme.
Zini wasn't part of the club.
On his third day, a routine polygraph landed on his desk. Tomer-Yerushalmi's former PR aide was seeking promotion to military judge. Required question: "Have you leaked classified documents?" She denied it. The machine said she lied.
Under questioning, she confessed everything. How Tomer-Yerushalmi authorized the leak. Coordinated the cover-up. Lied to everyone.
Zini sent it straight to the IDF chief of staff. Baharav-Miara reportedly told him not to inform the defense minister. He did anyway.
The house of cards collapsed.
The Unraveling
October 31: Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned, admitting she "approved the release of material to the media."
November 2: She went missing. Car found at Tel Aviv beach. Suicide note discovered. Massive search. Found alive hours later. Arrested immediately—fraud, obstruction of justice, abuse of office.
The "suicide attempt" convinced nobody. Too articulate. Too composed. Claimed she lost her phone.
A week later, a swimmer found the phone in the ocean. Battery half-charged.
It hadn't been underwater for a week. She'd disposed of evidence.
November 9: Hospitalized for pill overdose during house arrest. Another "suicide attempt." Same day, one of the Force 100 soldiers suffered a heart attack.
The military court president recommended halting all proceedings against the soldiers—the alleged victim was gone, returned to Gaza.
February 2025 indictment contained no sexual assault charges. Just "aggravated abuse." Even those charges look weak. The prisoner's injuries were self-inflicted. Medical evidence supports the defense.
The entire case was a hoax.
The Deep State
This scandal exposes Israel's real problem: an unelected elite operating as a political faction.
Attorney General Baharav-Miara blocks legislation, refuses to defend government policies, oversees Netanyahu's prosecution. When the government voted to fire her in August, the Supreme Court froze it. When Justice Minister Yariv Levin changed locks on their shared office, the Bar Association demanded his arrest.
Think about this: an attorney general investigating the prime minister's aides—potentially implicated in the Sde Teiman cover-up—claimed no conflict of interest and refused to recuse herself. The Supreme Court backed her until the evidence became undeniable.
This network—court, AG's office, military prosecution, former Shin Bet leadership—shares the same ideology, the same social circles, the same contempt for Israel's elected government. They're not civil servants. They're a resistance movement.
Former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, who Netanyahu tried to fire before Bar resigned, had close ties to anti-Netanyahu protest leaders. Implicitly threatened insubordination if judicial reforms passed.
What It Means
The Force 100 soldiers did their jobs. They guarded dangerous terrorists under impossible conditions. For their service, they were publicly smeared worldwide as rapists. Their families threatened. Their futures destroyed.
Why? Because Israel's military prosecutor needed to prove to international elites that she was morally superior to the politicians she despised.
The real scandal isn't what happened at Sde Teiman. It's what happened after.
Tomer-Yerushalmi manufactured evidence to destroy her own soldiers. Baharav-Miara helped cover it up. The Supreme Court enabled it. When exposed, Tomer-Yerushalmi tried to destroy evidence and fake suicide. Twice.
This is Israel's "juristocracy"—an unelected elite that manufactures atrocities when reality doesn't match their narrative.
Netanyahu's judicial reforms would address this: giving elected officials control over judicial appointments, limiting the Supreme Court's veto power. Critics call it authoritarianism. Supporters call it democracy.
What's undeniable: the current system enabled this hoax. Unaccountable bureaucrats weaponized false accusations against soldiers to maintain institutional power and signal virtue to international tribunals.
David Zini represents something new: an outsider with integrity. Whether he survives remains uncertain. Opposition leaders promise to fire him. The same forces that protected Tomer-Yerushalmi will target him.
But the public knows what they saw. Their military's top lawyer leaked doctored footage, lied for months, faked suicide, got caught. The Attorney General obstructed. The Supreme Court enabled it. Their democratic guardians behaved like authoritarians.
If Israel cannot reform its institutions, internal rot will destroy what external enemies cannot.
The Deep State that nearly destroyed the Force 100 soldiers will eventually destroy the state itself. Tomer-Yerushalmi's arrest is just the beginning of a reckoning Israel can no longer postpone.
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