The Israeli army's former legal chief, who recently resigned over leaked footage showing Palestinian detainees being sexually abused, held back from investigating war crimes in Gaza, Haaretz has revealed.
Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi refrained from investigating the abuses out of fear of right-wing backlash, senior army reserve and investigative officers told the Israeli news outlet.
One officer cited by Haaretz recalled feeling uncomfortable with Tomer-Yerushalmi's response to Israel's killing of 7 World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza in April 2024.
"She decided to hand it over to the IDF's operational investigation mechanism. When the findings made it clear that the case required a Military Police investigation, it never happened," the officer said, adding that the case "simply disappeared".
Another incident cited in the report is the Israeli army's killing of 15 Palestinian medical personnel in March. The medics were later found buried in a pit with their hands bound and signs of torture.
Gaza's authorities said an Israeli army engineering vehicle buried the bodies under two piles of sand, with the army later placing an emergency light from a rescue vehicle on top of one of the mounds.
A security source, who described the incident as "wrong", said an operational investigation team submitted a "softened" report about the killings, while resisting pressure to submit the case to the Military Police Investigations Unit.
The same source said Tomer-Yerushalmi's decisions were affected by "incitement against her and the social media discourse".
"She was simply afraid to open investigations. Where was she when the IDF used Palestinian civilians as human shields? Where was she when aid was blocked? When universities and hospitals were bombed?" the source said.
The report also cites Israeli army sources who said that the military's former legal chief showed initial opposition to the US and Israeli plan to set up the Gaza Humanitarian Fund - the aid group whose distribution centres became the sites of massacres of Palestinians desperately seeking help.
The sources said Tomer-Yerushalmi had asked for the GHF to be supervised to ensure legal compliance, but later delegated responsibility to the Defence Ministry's legal advisor.
"Once she realized it had become political – that the U.S. company was effectively backed by the Israeli government and that IDF officials connected to the right were operating it – she disappeared," a source said, adding that the withholding of aid became commonplace.
The same source said that until her resignation on Friday, Tomer-Yerushalmi was also expected to open a criminal investigation into a tank strike on a hospital in Khan Younis in August which killed 20 people, including five journalists.
Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned on Friday after admitting she had approved the August 2024 leak of a video showing Israeli soldiers sexually abusing Palestinian detainees from Gaza.
The abuse investigation led to criminal charges against five soldiers and stirred an uproar, including riots by Israelis who attempted to break into military centres in defence of the accused soldiers.
Tomer-Yerushalmi's admission has reignited controversy in Israel over the incident, although much of the outrage has focused on the leak itself, rather than the abuse of the Palestinians.