The suspension of Military Advocate General Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, suspected of involvement in leaking the video from the Sde Teiman base, is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom of a systemic illness spreading throughout Israel’s public service and now reaching its most sacred institution, the Israel Defense Forces.
If the allegations are true, and the military advocate general indeed approved the release of the video, she bears personal responsibility for inflicting severe harm on IDF soldiers who can no longer show their faces abroad, for the grave damage caused to the State of Israel and for the diplomatic tsunami that followed. The video, edited and distributed worldwide, became a devastating propaganda weapon against Israel and one of the key triggers behind the surge in antisemitism now felt by Jewish communities across the globe.
Of course, no single video caused all this harm. Yet rarely in history has a blood libel been so sophisticated, popular and destructive toward the Jewish people and their state, perhaps not since the infamous Goldstone Report, also written by a Jew.
If the suspicions prove true, the advocate general did not act alone. She operated within an ecosystem in which no one stopped this disgraceful act. Even after clear evidence emerged discrediting the video’s authenticity, some continued to defend it despite witnessing firsthand the immense damage inflicted on Israel.
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Protesters burn Israeli flag in Colombia, on Oct. 7, 2025
(Photo: Raul Arboleda / AFP)
This is not the case of a single rogue individual but a continuous phenomenon within a wider circle of influence. The focus, therefore, must shift from the personal to the systemic. How did Israel come to nurture senior officials who view their own nation as an adversary and their own people as a threat to be dismantled?
Within the military context, how did the IDF promote to the rank of major general someone whose worldview appears so distorted, to the point of compromising national security and eroding public trust?
For decades, at least four, Israel has been waging an internal war over its identity. This is not a struggle between “Jewish” and “democratic” values, but between the Jewish nation-state and the vision of a “state of all its citizens,” which effectively means the dissolution of the Jewish state.
Over time, ideologies undermining Israel’s legitimacy as the nation-state of the Jewish people have infiltrated the public sector, worldviews that scorn the Zionist ethos, branding it as “racist” or “dangerous.” According to this outlook, the next generation must inherit a different country, one stripped of national character, of collective identity and of the Jewish resilience that defined its founders.
Dr. Ruth Kabbesa AbramzonThis intellectual and moral corrosion has taken root deeply. It has fostered loyalty to foreign agendas and distorted the judgment of decision-makers, leading to choices that contradict Israel’s national interest and endanger the security of the people living in Zion.
This, therefore, is not merely a criminal affair. It is a wake-up call regarding the state of Israel’s civil service as a whole. We must restore the public sector, and the military within it, to its original mission: to defend the State of Israel, to serve the Jewish people and to act for their safety and prosperity, not the opposite.
- Dr. Ruth Kabbesa Abramzon is an expert in governance and public management and chair of Mothers for Israel.