"They should have broken this season of 'The State of Israel' into several seasons. This one feels like there's too much going on."
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A few days before the final living hostages were returned, I was outside of shul just before Shabbat afternoon Mincha was to begin. A few of us were hanging around, waiting there to be a minyan. It was beautiful outside, but tense. Were the still living hostages really going to get home? In what condition would we receive them? Could this nightmare really soon be over?
A friend put it perfectly when he quipped: “It’s going to be so nice to be able to go back to arguing about women’s roles in the shul.” No one had as much as mentioned that formerly controversial issue in more than two years, and now, we might just be lucky enough to argue over that?
Well, yes and no. Because even if the living hostage issue is thankfully resolved (though tragically, the horror of the dead hostages still being held continues), anyone hoping for a slow news cycle in Israel has this week been sorely disappointed.
As a quip in the FB post just above put it yesterday:
“They should have broken this season of ‘The State of Israel’ into several seasons. This one feels to me like there’s too much going on.”
In addition to all the “is Trump durning Israel into a vassal state?” (65% of Israelis say yes, but that’s for a different day), negotiations over the continuing of the cease-fire, the composition of the international force, upcoming elections and more, two bombshells got dropped on Israelis this past week—both of them very ugly scandals that threaten to rock the political system.
That FB post is cute, but there’s very little that’s funny about all that’s going on. It’s all also very confusing. So today we’re going to try to unpack what’s going on in this scandal, and then later this week we’ll get to the huge scandal in the Histadrut, Israel’s largest labor union.
Australian TV has by and large been absurdly critical of Israel for the past two years, but I came across this brief report, which I thought was actually fairly succinct and rather fair. So for those who’d like a brief video-intro to the issue, there’s this:
But the placid tone of the Australian report misses the rage that is taking over Israel, on “both” sides, over this issue. Here’s Assaf Sagiv, perhaps Israel’s foremost conservative public intellectual, with his take. One can agree or disagree, but his post is important for its showing how the right see this catastrophe.
So after we’ve finished with the self-righteous moral preaching, the facts are beginning to emerge — and their severity cannot be dismissed. A conspiracy that reached the top levels of the Military Advocate General’s office; a Chief Military Prosecutor behaving like a common criminal; a police investigation so sloppy it raises deep suspicion; arrogant and tone-deaf conduct — if not worse — by the Attorney General; and a political and media lobby working to silence criticism through crude manipulation, what-about-ism, distractions, and emotional blackmail. The stench reaches to the heavens, and it will no longer be possible to defend such a rotten system by claiming that its critics are enemies of the rule of law. The rulers of the law themselves have become its enemies, and we had better not confuse the two.
So, who is Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, and what is she accused of having done?
Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi is a major general in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who served as the chief military advocate from September 2021 to October 2025. She was the second woman in the IDF’s history to hold this rank. Tomer-Yerushalmi grew up in Netanya, studied law at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and graduated with honors. She later earned a master’s degree in law from Tel Aviv University and completed further advanced legal studies in the United States. Over her career, she held key legal and advisory roles in the IDF, including being the gender affairs advisor to the chief of staff and heading the advisory and legislation department of the Military Advocate General’s Corps before her appointment as chief military advocate general. She was known for promoting gender equality and legal protections within the military.
The current crisis involving Tomer-Yerushalmi centers on her resignation a few days ago then her arrest over the unauthorized leak of classified surveillance footage showing Israeli soldiers allegedly abusing a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman military detention facility during the Gaza war. She admitted to authorizing the release of this classified video to the media. After she resigned before the weekend, following intense political backlash, particularly from hard-right politicians, she went mi
United States
