Israeli security forces on Tuesday enlisted the help of ZAKA’s Diving Unit in the ongoing search for the cellular phone of Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, Israel’s former military advocate general, now behind bars.
ZAKA, an emergency response nonprofit, sent personnel to Tel Aviv’s Cliff Beach in a large-scale effort to locate the phone. They are covering an area up to 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from where Tomer-Yerushalmi was eventually located.
Even if the phone is never found, cyber experts say some of the material, such as applications which routinely back up to the cloud, may be recoverable.
Tomer-Yerushalmi, who has admitted leaking a video connected to the Sde Teiman Affair, disappeared on Sunday for several hours, sparking a full-scale manhunt in an ongoing drama that has rocked the nation.
The former MAG’s disappearance was initially thought to be a potential suicide as her car was found abandoned at the beach and she had left a brief, obscure note for her family, which said, in part, “Don’t look back.”
She was located several hours after her disappearance. In the interim, her phone disappeared.
According to a leaked police interrogation, when asked about the device, Tomer-Yerushalmi answered: “Maybe my phone fell into the sea. I don’t remember.”
The police asked: “Where did you disappear for three hours? An entire country was looking for you. Your family was crying out with worry.”
She replied: “I’m confused, I don’t know what’s going on with me.”
The police asked how she had managed to call her husband. She said, “Someone I encountered in the vicinity gave me his phone.” Asked for the identity of the person, she replied: “I don’t know, someone. I don’t remember anymore.”
On Monday, the Tel Aviv District Court held a hearing in which it extended her incarceration by three days, until Nov. 5.
The judge, in her decision, said the former MAG is suspected of fraud, breach of trust, abuse of office, obstruction of justice and the passing of information by a public servant. Tomer-Yerushalmi’s lawyer appealed the ruling, saying that there was no danger of obstruction of justice. The judge rejected the appeal.
Also detained was Chief Military Prosecutor Col. Matan Solomesh, who is suspected of playing a central role in the conspiracy to cover up the source of the leak.
The Military Advocate General’s office claimed to the High Court of Justice in September that it had launched an investigation into the matter, but was unable to locate the responsible party.
The story began in July of last year when IDF Military Police arrested nine reservists guarding the Sde Teiman detention center in the Negev as part of a probe into an incident of alleged sexual abuse of an imprisoned Hamas terrorist.
Tomer-Yerushalmi’s office came under fire from many on Israel’s right, who claimed she had falsely accused innocent Israeli soldiers during wartime.
Tomer-Yerushalmi acknowledged in her resignation letter on Friday that she had approved the leak of the video (released in August), claiming that she had done so to “fend off false propaganda directed against the military law enforcement authorities.”
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for an impartial investigation into the leak.
He described the incident as “causing enormous damage to the image of the State of Israel, the IDF, and our soldiers. This is perhaps the most severe propaganda attack the State of Israel has experienced since its establishment.”
Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin announced on Tuesday that he would appoint retired Judge Asher Kula, the Ombudsman for Complaints Against Judges, to handle the matter.
He had earlier informed Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara that she could not investigate the leak incident due to a potential conflict of interest, suggesting she may have been involved in the affair as well.
Likud Knesset member Ariel Kallner told Israel’s Channel 14 on Sunday that the day before the video was leaked, the far-left group B’Tselem, which accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza, issued a report accusing Israeli prisons of becoming torture camps and demanding that MAG do its job and investigate.
“Our MAG Corps and all our legal system are closely connected in terms of worldview, and maybe not only that, to the haters of Israel in all kinds of places, such as B’Tselem and others,” said Kallner.
MK Simcha Rothman of the Religious Zionism Party, chairman of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, who helped craft the coalition’s judicial reform program, posted to X on Sunday:
“For years, the judicial system has grown accustomed to the fact that it investigates itself. This is about to change,” he said.
Rothman told the Knesset Channel on Sunday: “This is certainly not the only case in which the [judicial] system’s desire to protect itself trampled on all the laws and all the rules. There are cases that I know of, and there are cases that I speculate about.
“It is very clear and unambiguous—the system for years has become accustomed to doing whatever it wants here. The idea you can get away with murder? In the prosecutor’s office it’s true. It exists.”
Worth noting is that the scandal only came to light when a senior MAG official failed a routine polygraph test conducted ahead of promotion. The test was unrelated to the Sde Teiman affair, but when the official failed, investigators notified the new head of the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) David Zini, who passed the information along to IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir.
On Sunday evening, Zamir met with senior officers of the Military Advocate General Corps to discuss the scandal.
“The events of recent days have caused severe harm to the trust of both the IDF and the public in the military justice system,” said Zamir, according to an IDF statement.
“Even if certain officers acted in a grave and improper manner, I have full confidence in our ability to learn from this difficult event and to restore trust in the Corps, given its dedicated efforts on behalf of IDF soldiers and commanders over the past two years and beyond,” he said.
