rape

The Israeli military’s top lawyer, Major-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, has resigned after admitting to leaking footage showing the gang rape of a prisoner at the Sde Temain prison facility in August last year.

The video of the rape had originally been leaked to the press in early August in the midst of a right-wing backlash following the arrest of a number of soldiers for the rape of a Palestinian prisoner.

In her resignation statement on Friday, Tomer-Yerushalmi blamed pressure from the right-wing on her rape investigation for her decision to leak the footage, claiming that she was countering “false propaganda directed against the military law enforcement authorities”.

In the leaked footage, soldiers can be seen grabbing and leading away a blindfolded Palestinian prisoner before surrounding him with riot shields to obscure the rape.

“For 15 minutes, the accused kicked the detainee, stomped on him, stood on his body, hit him and pushed him all over his body, including with clubs, dragged his body along the ground, and used a taser gun on him, including on his head,” the original indictment stated.

According to medical information obtained by the Israeli daily Haaretz, the victim suffered a ruptured bowel, severe anal and lung injuries, and broken ribs as a result of the assault. He later required surgery.

What happened to the soldiers?

At least nine soldiers were detained in connection with the man’s rape. All but five were released relatively quickly.

In February, the remaining soldiers were indicted for “severely abusing” the detainee, but not raping him. The trial is ongoing.

A United Nations commission, reviewing the change of indictment and other instances of Israel’s use of sexual and gender-based violence, determined that the decision to downgrade the indictments, despite the evidence, “will inevitably result in a more lenient punishment” if there is a conviction.

Why weren’t Israeli politicians calling for accountability?

Because they determined that doing so was somehow unpatriotic.

A number of Israel’s far-right politicians, including Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, were among those who stormed the Sde Teiman prison in protest at the arrest of the soldiers for rape.

Israel’s hard-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir appeared to address Tomer-Yerushalmi directly in July 2024, writing in Hebrew, “The Military Advocate General, take your hands off the reservists!” he said, referring to the soldiers accused of rape.

Ben-Gvir’s fellow traveller on the far-right, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, was equally active on social media at the time, writing that the alleged rapists should be treated like “heroes, not villains”.

Returning to social media during the furore following the rape, Smotrich chose to ignore the credible accusations of rape and instead called for “an immediate criminal investigation to locate the leakers of the trending video that was intended to harm the reservists and that caused tremendous damage to Israel in the world, and to exhaust the full severity of the law against them”.

How have the critics reacted to Tomer-Yerushalmi’s resignation?

Many of the loudest voices in defending the alleged rapists were equally vocal in welcoming the resignation of the woman responsible for sharing evidence of that rape.

Writing on social media hours after Tomer-Yerushalmi’s resignation, Smotrich accused her and much of Israel’s judicial system of rank corruption, as well as launching what he called an “anti-Semitic blood libel” against their military.

Ben-Gvir was no less critical of Israel’s judicial system in the leaking of the footage, writing: “All those involved in the affair must be held accountable.”

Both ministers are active supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing attempts to weaken the judiciary and reduce its political oversight.

Have other crimes been committed at Sde Teiman against Palestinians?

At least 135 of the mutilated bodies returned to Palestinian officials in Gaza by Israel last week as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal, had been held at Sde Teiman, documents that accompanied each corpse showed.

Several of the bodies had been left with blindfolds on, and some had their hands still tied behind their back. One had a rope around its neck.

The same UN report that examined the reduced indictment against the soldiers also noted that detainees at Sde Teiman – including children – were regularly shackled, forced into stress positions, denied toilets and showers and beaten.

Some were subjected to sexual violence, including the insertion of objects, electric shocks and rape.

An L.A. County Superior Court judge handed a 146-year sentence to Hollywood producer David Brian Pearce on Wednesday for multiple rapes and the 2021 deaths of a model and her architect friend.

Pearce was found guilty in February on two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, who overdosed on fentanyl. Prosecutors said Pearce supplied them with the drug.

Pearce was also found guilty of crimes against a series of women between 2007 and 2021, including three counts of forcible rape, two counts of sexual penetration with force, one count of rape of an unconscious or sleeping victim and one count of forced sodomy.

“This sentence delivers long-awaited justice for Cabrales-Arzola, Giles, and the courageous sexual assault victims who came forward and testified,” L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan J. Hochman said in a statement.

“Not only were the victims sexually assaulted, but the lives of Cabrales-Arzola and Giles were stolen in one of the most devastating ways — a fentanyl-induced sexual assault by Pearce.”

A call to Pearce’s lawyer was not immediately returned.

Pearce’s co-defendant, 46-year-old Brant Osborn, is headed to a pretrial appointment on Nov. 18; after a mistrial in February, he will probably face a second trial.

In November 2021, Giles and Cabrales-Arzola, as well as Michael Ansbach, who had spent the day filming for a documentary Pearce was supposedly producing, went out with the producer and his roommate, Osborn. The night at an East Los Angeles warehouse rave involved heavy cocaine use.

The group returned to Pearce’s Beverly Hills apartment in the early-morning hours.

That was about all that was agreed upon among the parties.

Pearce provided the two women and Ansbach with gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) and fentanyl, causing Giles and Cabrales-Arzola to overdose, according to the district attorney’s office.

Although Cabrales-Arzola called a ride-sharing service, neither she nor Giles left.

About 11 hours later, Pearce dropped off Giles at a hospital; 90 minutes later, he did the same for Cabrales-Arzola, the district attorney’s office said.

Court records showed the car that dropped the women off did not have license plates, which Ansbach said he saw Pearce remove. Though Ansbach was originally arrested in connection with the women’s deaths, he became an important prosecution witness.

Giles was dead by the time she reached the hospital. Cabrales-Arzola survived for 11 days before being pulled off life support by her family.

Pearce maintained during his trial that he found the two women unconscious in his apartment around 5 a.m. near liquor bottles and a powdery substance. He said he didn’t think much of it, at first.

“The lifestyle that I was living at the time was not very conducive to regular behavior, if that makes sense,” Pearce, 43, testified earlier this year. “It was not uncommon for people to use my house as a crash pad, a party house. I know it’s horrible, but at least on a weekly basis friends were passing out at my house.”

Pearce said he grew concerned when neither woman woke up and repeatedly checked on them, eventually taking them to different hospitals.

He said he administered CPR but did not call 911.

Since his arrest in December 2021, seven women came forward to accuse Pearce of raping them.

In testimony that spanned two days, Pearce denied each rape accusation, saying he’d never met at least one of his accusers and dismissing the rest of the encounters as consensual.

Pearce described a booze- and drug-fueled lifestyle and said most of the women came on to him at parties or through dating apps.

“This case is a stark reminder of the devastation caused by fentanyl,” Hochman said. “Fentanyl poisoners who harm and exploit others will be held accountable.”

Times staff writer James Queally contributed to this report.