Right-wing protesters, including several Knesset members, burst through the gates of two Israeli military bases on Monday to vent their rage after learning nine IDF reservists had been arrested that day on suspicion of sexually violating a Gazan prisoner who had been captured in Israel during the Hamas invasion and terror attacks on Oct. 7.
The reservists, assigned to guard terrorists, were arrested in the middle of the day by masked military police at the Sde Teiman military base in the Negev Desert, which has been doubling as a temporary detention center for terrorist suspects.
“The manner in which that arrest process was carried out was an absolute disgrace,” Lt. Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, the former head of military prosecution for Judea and Samaria, told JNS.
“You cannot send IDF soldiers in face masks to arrest other IDF soldiers. That’s not how a democratic country works. When a policeman goes to arrest a suspect he has to identify himself, give his name,” said Hirsch, currently the director of the Initiative for Palestinian Authority Accountability and Reform in the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
Hirsch said the arrests could have been handled better, and certainly not in the form of a midday raid as if the suspects were drug dealers. “They’re on their base. They’re on reserve duty. They’re not running away,” he said.
“That’s what’s caused much of the public outcry. They were already pre-judging these people as violent, disruptive criminals who had to be treated like gang warlords and that’s just not the case,” he said.
Angered in part by the mistreatment of the soldiers, demonstrators gathered at Sde Teiman, even managing to enter its gates. Hours later, protesters breached the court building next to the Beit Lid military police base in central Israel where the soldiers had been taken.
‘Turning our backs on our soldiers’
Hebrew media focused on fears that the country had entered dark waters in which the army, until now a unifying force in Israeli society, would no longer fill that function.
“I have been a military reporter for 22 years. I have never seen such sights,” wrote Channel 12 military reporter Nir Dvori. “The last body still standing in the State of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces, is in danger of being broken—this is the main point from the serious events we have seen during the past day.”
Protesters, however, argued that they were the ones defending the IDF against a Military Advocate General (MAG) run amuck, accusing it of setting the welfare of Nukhba terrorists—the “special forces” unit that led the Hamas attack into Israel—ahead of that of Israel’s soldiers.
Anger has been building among Israelis, particularly as Monday’s incident comes on the heels of a scandal that broke in early July involving the arrest of three Israeli volunteers who battled Hamas on Oct. 7 only to be accused of wrongfully killing a terrorist prisoner (the charge has since been dropped).
Yehuda Shlezinger, political writer for Israel Hayom, explained to a Channel 12 panel on Tuesday: “The feeling of many people in Israel, including the fighters, is that we are turning our backs on our soldiers; that it is more important for us to be righteous and [appear as] beautiful souls before the world than to take care of our fighters, our people.”
“We are talking in the end about the most despicable murderers in the world, and we care about the calories in the hot dogs they’re getting?” he said, referring to reports in April that Israel’s attorney general requested updates on prisoner conditions. Among the issues were whether jailed terrorists received too many hot dogs—processed food that could endanger their long-term health.
Adding fuel to the fire was a revelation leaked on Tuesday following a classified Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting. Col. Matan Solomash, the IDF’s chief military prosecutor, told the committee that Israeli military police prosecutors had been instructed to talk to former Arab detainees from Sde Teiman to see if they had been abused.
It wasn’t clear from the report if the army prosecutors were hunting for information to charge IDF soldiers or just contacting prisoners who had made accusations.
“It’s not something that’s necessarily irregular. If you get a complaint from a Gazan, and there have been complaints, then it’s not unusual for somebody to then contact them and ask for more details,” Hirsch said.
“If there wasn’t a complaint, then it is extremely unusual that they would go fishing for complaints,” he added.
Knesset member Simcha Rothman, chairman of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, stressed in a tweet on Tuesday that Solomash had said the Military Prosecutor’s Office had “initiated” the calls to former detainees in Gaza.
‘The place is filmed 24/7’
Regarding the accusations against the soldier suspects, their attorneys say they are entirely without foundation.
Honenu, a Zionist legal aid society, recently took up the defense of Israelis targeted by the Biden administration and is representing three of the accused.
“The nine who were arrested were guarding the Hamas terrorists since Oct. 7, about 300 days already. The military police attribute an incident to them of abusing a terrorist about a month ago,” a Honenu spokesman told JNS.
“After our attorneys spoke to the clients, the soldiers—we can say, first of all, that there is nothing to the accusations. It’s all lies and falsehoods,” he said.
The rest of the accused are represented by army-appointed lawyers, except for one, reportedly the central suspect, who is represented by a private attorney, Ephraim Dimri.
Appearing on Channel 14, Dimri denied a claim by prosecutors that photographic evidence exists.
“You can’t rape there, and you can’t carry out obscene acts. The place in Sde Teiman is filmed 24/7. It is impossible to commit illegal acts under cameras,” he said.
The soldiers claim that the terrorist in question attacked the soldiers when they arrested him on account of intelligence that he intended to cause a riot. During the arrest, he attacked and bit one of the soldiers and in the course of restraining him, he received the injury which the military prosecutor is attributing to sexual assault.
A hearing scheduled for Tuesday afternoon will clarify things “in the soldiers’ favor,” Honenu’s spokesman said.
He said that the military prosecutor was acting out of the belief that by taking the initiative to investigate Israel’s soldiers, the country would garner international support against efforts to bring Israel before institutions such as the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
“But in the end, the behavior is against the fighters, not for them,” he said.
Of the breaking into the bases, which has been roundly condemned, he dismissed it as a side issue. “The big story—and this is what should remain in the headlines—is the treatment of reservists who protect the most brutal and most horrible murderers out there only to find themselves sitting as criminals in cells.”
Hirsch, however, said the demonstrators had gone too far. “Even given the erroneous decision of the military police, it doesn’t justify anyone breaking into an IDF base. There should be limits on the scope of demonstrations. Breaking into army bases should be a clear limit. This is out of bounds.”