Levin Names a Retired Judge to Run the Sde Teiman Leak Inquiry

Israel's Justice Minister, Yariv Levin, announced on Tuesday that he intended to appoint a retired judge as a special prosecutor to lead the investigation into Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the former Military Advocate General, the Israel Defense Forces' most senior legal officer.

Levin said Judge Asher Kula, at the time the State Ombudsman for Judges, would take the case over from Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, whom he said could not take part because of a conflict of interest. He argued that Baharav-Miara's office had earlier put arguments to Israel's High Court of Justice on behalf of the Military Advocate General's Office that he contended were inaccurate and misleading. "I believe that the Ombudsman for Judges, both as an institution and personally, is the best possible solution to what is required in this case," Levin said, adding that the appointment would enjoy broad public trust. He formally notified the interim Civil Service Commissioner, Daniel Hershkowitz, that Kula (71, and previously deputy president of the Nazareth District Court) had agreed to take the job. Baharav-Miara rejected the conflict-of-interest claim as unfounded and said the minister had no authority to bypass her office.

What the Sde Teiman affair is

Tomer-Yerushalmi, who resigned days earlier, is accused of fraud, breach of trust, abuse of office, obstruction of justice and unlawful disclosure of classified material over the leak of security-camera footage from the Sde Teiman military detention facility in southern Israel. The video shows the alleged abuse of a Palestinian detainee by IDF reservists.

The chronology, set out by the Times of Israel, runs from a detainee's hospitalisation with severe injuries in July 2024, through the arrest of reservists and a political storm over the prosecutions, to the broadcast of the footage by Channel 12 in August 2024 and the indictment of five reservists in February 2025. Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned on 31 October 2025, taking responsibility for approving the leak, which she said was intended to counter what she described as false propaganda against military law enforcement.

The original release records that five IDF reservists from the Force 100 Military Police unit were indicted in February for assault and causing severe injury, that the Palestinian detainee at the centre of the case was returned to Gaza on 13 October when Israel freed hundreds of Palestinian prisoners under the ceasefire, and that the legal aid organisation Honenu, which represents two of the reservists, called for the indictments to be annulled immediately.

The beach search and the missing phone

Tomer-Yerushalmi was in custody at the time of Levin's announcement. She had disappeared for hours along the Tel Aviv coastline before her arrest; her car was found at Hatzuk Beach and a large police, rescue and military search followed, using sea, land and technological means, the Times of Israel reported on 2 November 2025. Police traced her personal phone to the Herzliya beach area but could not find the handset itself, with one police source saying it had simply "disappeared". She was located alive, given a health check, and arrested that evening. Israeli authorities have since searched the Herzliya shoreline for the phone, suspecting it was thrown into the sea; investigators are examining possible obstruction of justice alongside the leak itself. Following her arrest she underwent medical and psychological evaluation before being taken to Neve Tirza women's prison in Ramla.

What the High Court did with the appointment

Levin's plan did not survive. On 16 November 2025 the High Court of Justice unanimously upheld his authority to appoint an outside figure to supervise the criminal investigation, citing what it called the irregular and extreme circumstances of the case, but annulled the choice of Kula: a clause in the law governing the post of State Ombudsman for Judges bars its holder from taking any other role, Justice Yael Willner ruled, according to the Times of Israel. The court set conditions on any replacement: senior legal standing, law-enforcement experience and no political affiliation, past or present.

The facility at the centre of the case

Sde Teiman is a military base in southern Israel that was turned into a detention facility after the Gaza war began, and used to screen and interrogate people captured in the Strip. The original release says it has held more than 1,000 detainees from Gaza suspected of involvement in terrorist activity. Israeli human rights groups petitioned to close it; in September 2024 the High Court declined to shut the facility but ordered the state to hold detainees there in line with Israeli law, noting that conditions had improved substantially since the petition was filed and that the number of detainees had fallen from a peak of around 700 to several dozen by the end of that August, the Times of Israel reported.

What the announcement did not settle

Levin's statement did not say what powers a special prosecutor would hold, how the investigation would be resourced, or what would happen to the material already gathered by the attorney general's office. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in remarks at the start of Sunday's cabinet meeting, called the affair the most severe propaganda attack the state had faced and said he expected an independent and impartial investigation; he did not say who should conduct it. The name of the Palestinian detainee in the footage has not been released.