Search results for tag #israel
Sde Teiman detention camp was created shortly after the beginning of the war. A place was needed to detain the many new Palestinian prisoners. The civilian Prison Service wanted nothing to do with it. Sde Teiman is an existing military base near Be'er Sheva and the existing emergency military plan for a PoW camp was there. There was no plan for that many prisoners. The camp housed, at the time, several thousands of Palestinians. Some of them were Hamas people. Some weren't (this is where they were supposed to be interrogated, potentially).
While there were technically some plans for the camp, they were not prepared for the scale. And there were no trained prison guards. Therefore regular reserve soldiers were drafted to guard the camp, and a special unit, Unit 100, was created from volunteer reservists, to be the intervention force. They ended up more interacting with the prisoners.
There were rumors of misconduct in the camp, and military police didn't bother very much to investigate them. However, in some cases they had to: when a detainee ended up in hospital (which means that he couldn't be treated in the in-facility clinic) and doctors found signs of brutality, military police had to step in.
They already did this once in March 2024. And they we get to the events of April 2024 when another detainee ended up in hospital and an investigation was launched.
BTW: initially a sexual assault was suspected, but pretty soon the findings were re-examined and the allegations were changed to "merely" brutality. The MP investigators looked at video footage of the event and could clearly see that the event is hidden: the detainee was taken by 8 soldiers of Unit 100 who stood as a wall hiding the event from the camera. And afterwards he ended up badly injured.
So after a while the MPs came to investigate those soldiers. And at that point all hell broke loose. The soldiers did not want to go to jail. So they decided to overrule the MPs. Now don't get me wrong, soldiers overruling MPs by the way of brute force is a well honored military tradition, but not when done in plain sight.
In this case they called for all of their friends to come and help them. Not only for other soldiers in the base: everybody. Most of the people in Unit 100 happen to be settlers, and this is who they called. And thus not long afterwards there was a whole mob outside the gates of the base.
There was several politicians, including a (government) ministers and two members of parliament present. And they were heading the mob. Eventually the mob broke into the military base. Much so because the (civilian) police didn't do anything. Some of the MPs have managed to escape with detained soldiers, and a mob was waiting for them in their home base in Beit Lid (and again, the civilian police did nothing).
At this point a major outcry started in the right wing circles claiming that those poor soldiers did nothing and that they are being wrongly accused. Israel has already been heavily polarized, with an efficient propaganda machine that spreads lies of Netanyahu and co. and now that propaganda machine set its target on the (investigative) military police and the military prosecution, because it's obvious that that case is bollocks and why won't they release our heroes?
So at that point we finally get to Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi: the head of the Military Advocate General. She gets crisped by the right wing propaganda machine, including outright lies, merely for doing her job. And now she does her big mistake: she leaks the video footage. The footage shows the guards standing as a wall and hiding all the event from the camera. It is not a complete proof, but it shows that this was not "nothing happened".
It is stupid, because at that stage only the prosecution has that evidence, and therefore that leak can only come from a small set of people. And should could have released that footage in a simpler method: directly. she makes a further blunder by not admitting it was her.
Leaking the footage was a minor offense. The really bad thing she did was claiming to not have leaked it to various forums, including eventually to the (civilian) supreme court. This is something a high-ranking officer, let alone the Advocate General, must not do. When this was found, she was immediately forced to resign.
However, this is not the end of the story, because this affair lives on in the politically charged investigation to see who else knew (but I'll leave that one out).
All along, the minister and the MPs who broke into the base refuse to be interrogated regarding their part. People on the right try to shift the whole affair to be the issue of the military prosecution. And it's not. This case was very effective in deterring the military police and military prosecution from further probes into those fields.
Another thing to take from it is that people on our side are not always perfect, and that's OK. Tomer-Yerushalmi was right to press on the investigation. She was wrong in the way she leaked the video and later tried poorly to cover it up. But the fact that she was wrong, does not make our case wrong (and this likewise should apply on the other wise and to people we disagree with).
@Gerd_Brodowski
Didn't listen to that one. The problem is that Israel does not want to repeat 2006, when the Lebanese side promised there will be no Hezbollah near the border, but Hezbollah slowly rebuilt itself, under various covers and with an enormous arsenal.
There needs to be Lebanese control north of the Israeli border and not #Hezbollah control. Right now the Lebanese military is still weaker than the Hezbollah one.
#israel #lebanon : #war / #lowintensitywarfare / #militaryattacks / #dailylife / #civilians
„1 year ago, Lebanon & Israel signed a #ceasefire that was supposed to end a war between the militant group #Hezbollah & Israel, a war that left more than 4,000 Lebanese & more than 100 Israelis dead. But with near-daily Israeli attacks still taking place, life for civilians in Lebanon's south remains dangerous. Special Correspondent Simona Foltyn reports from that tense border.“
Funny how ‘annexation’ becomes ‘changing the map’ when it’s an ally. The West’s vocabulary shifts faster than its principles.
#Israel #Trump #Gaza #US #Hyprocrites #Europe #FreePalestine #Genocide #Uk #EU #Palestine #USPol #Zionism #Ukraine
Alt...
A split image showing two NPR headlines. The top headline from September 30, 2022 reads: “Putin illegally annexes territories in Ukraine, in spite of global opposition.” The second headline, dated November 30, 2025, reads: “During the war in Gaza, Israel drastically changed the map of the West Bank.” Both have phrases underlined in red to highlight the difference in wording.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin #Netanyahu asked the country's president on Sunday for a #pardon in his years-long #corruption trial, arguing that criminal proceedings were hindering his ability to govern and a pardon would be good for #Israel.
#law
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/netanyahu-officially-asks-israeli-president-pardon-2025-11-30/?utm_source=braze&utm_medium=notifications&utm_campaign=2025_engagement
President Isaac #Herzog's office said the request would be forwarded to the #pardons department in the justice ministry, as is standard practice, to collect opinions, which would be submitted to the president's legal adviser, who will formulate a recommendation for the president.
#Israel's Justice Minister, #YarivLevin, is a member of #Netanyahu's Likud party & a close ally of the prime minister.
There are various people in protests in #Israel who thank #Trump for the current cease fire. This includes many people on the left who are know very well who and what Trump is.
For starters, this acknowledges that the US president has done what our government failed to do. The Israeli government manages to keep the war going for two years (with the other partner: Hamas).
The stated goal of the Israeli government is a "complete victory over Hamas" using military power. And to release the Israeli hostages. Hamas basically tries to survive.
There are currently 58 hostages (not all alive) held by Hamas in the #Gaza Strip. Specifically, for all we know, they are probably mostly in an area in the center of the Strip. The IDF thus avoided and ground assaults into those areas, leaving them as generally safe areas for Hamas.
Therefore in the last year or so, Israel has not been getting much closer to defeating Hamas by military force. Those goals are very clearly conflicting.
And then again, people call for a "deal" to release all hostages. And ignore the fact that Hamas has just about no interest in doing so. Those hostages are all that keep Hamas afloat (That said, I hope to be wrong on that).
So basically for over a year we have a stalemate between the Israeli government and Hamas. Hamas won't release hostages. The Israeli government won't consider alternatives. And people of Gaza bear the consequences.
Or more specifically: the spend much of the time complaining that the conference does not protest about current situation in Gaza. Well: guess what: there's enough of that. Much of it by people who will talk in the conference.
But it's not good enough to be a naysayer and just complain that things are broken. It also helps if you know where you're heading. The current government is actually very bad at this and there's not enough public debate at what we should do going forward. Steering the public debate our way is quite useful.
Furthermore, being optimistic is important. If you're busy fighting a big machine all day, you need reasons to be optimistic. Granted, those should not be of the unrealistic and fanatic type. And this is another useful reason.
(Note: written from my alternative account that does not have a limit on the number of characters per message)
A picture I took yesterday at a demonstration in #Jerusalem:
https://tooot.im/deck/@tzafrir/114455460519068781
The text in Hebrew is a pun: הקטאר הטרויאני: the second word is the adjective "Trojan". The first word, קטאר, means Qatar. But sounds like the related word קטר: locomotive[*]. The colors are those of the Qatari flag. The silhouette is that of Prime Minister #Netanyahu.
Later on there were two actors, one with a fact mask of Netayahu and another dressed as a "Qatari Emir". I wrote before about this local #Qatargate:
https://cohens.org.il/social/tzafrir/p/1743448078.070798
Protesters are upset that while Qatar is considered to be a patron of #Hamas and generally of quite a few extreme Islamist groups, the Israeli government chooses it as a partner all too often.
[*] A bit of etymology: the word stems for an ancient word that is related to steam. As it happens, the the Arabic word for "train" is similar: قطار, vs. the name of the country that is قطر. It seems both words were coined in the era of steam trains.
So what did Netanyahu do in the face of a wave of protests: start a war. launched an attack on the #Gaza Strip. And later launched attacks on #Lebanon and intensified attacks on #Syria.
It did help to partially quell the protests. It did somewhat break their momentum and they failed to create a general strike or something close to it.
Note: this is certainly not the single goal of the recent attacks. It is also an excuse for some parts of the government of the more lunatic nature (BTW: Katz is not lunatic by nature. He just follows Netanyahu's orders to cooperate with the lunatics).
Netanyahu is known for not caring about hiring people with lax morality (e.g.: Natan Eshel) and even criminal behavior (e.g.: Ari Harow). The crux of this affair is that some of his closest aids also ran a side gig, and in their side gig (among other jobs) did some PR work for Qatar. A country Netanyahu himself occasionally considered an enemy.
And then we get the separate issue of Eli Feldstein. He was investigated on a different affair. And then it turned out that he could not get a government job because he failed to pass a security clearance. Netanyahu still wanted to hire him. So he looked for someone else to pay his salary. And that someone ended up being a lobbyist for Qatar in the US government.
There is also another document mentioned, that is very likely faked: I'm not going to elaborate on them, but they were republished by Memri after being published by some dodgy French sources.
So far the main issue for Netanyahu is potential financial misconduct (which could potentially amount to allegations of bribe). The real problem is that Netanyahu not only did not help the investigations: he immediately tried to fire the head of the secret service (who was running it, because the police are a bit lax nowadays). So basically he behaves as if he has something to hide.